The World is More Than I Know

For my Global Scholars Grant Proposal project, my classmate Alexa and I are focused on trying to raise money for Families Forward Learning Center, a two-generational non-profit organization in Pasadena. I've been volunteering at Families Forward (formerly known as Mothers' Club) since the 7th grade, and it's truly an indispensable organization. Here's some background on FF:  An overwhelming majority of families served at Families Forward are immigrants. ( Sarah Kimbrough, director of Families Forward, estimates that at least 75% of FF’s served population have recently immigrated to the U.S.) Families Forward aims to “prepare families living in isolation and poverty to succeed in school and in life through two-generation learning programs.” Their website adds: “ Despite significant needs, families in the Northwest Pasadena area are often overlooked for vital services and support because the surrounding areas happen to be among the wealthier communities in Los Angeles Co...

Earlier this month, my friends and I planned our summer graduation trip to Europe. After scouring the internet for the cheapest flights available, finding $50-a-night Airbnbs, and promising various things to our parents, we booked our trip. This June, we fly into Paris. From there, we spend a few days in Nice and take a day trip in to St. Tropez. Then we go to Barcelona, and finally, in July, we finish in Madrid. It's an understatement to say that I'm immensely excited. It feels like a rite of passage to travel to somewhere new and foreign and exciting upon graduating high school. (Clarification: a rite of passage for those with the financial means to make it possible.) I've been to Europe once-- to Denmark-- but have never been to any of the places we're slotted to go. I can't wait to see what museums we discover, what parks we frequent, what coffee shops we wander into. In Madrid and Barcelona, I can't wait to practice my Spanish. I plan on keeping up a travel...

I've been taking Spanish language classes since Kindergarten. Up until middle school, we didn't learn much more than colors and some animals, but the sixth grade curriculum started to ramp up. As a middle schooler, it was hard (and very frustrating) to try and learn a second language. But in 9th grade, I took a GIP trip to Cuba. After visiting, for the very first time, a Spanish speaking country, I viewed the Spanish language through an entirely new lens, and I became newly intent on trying to learn as much of it as I could. In my AP Spanish Lang class, we're reading works by Julio Cortazar and Jose Marti. What we read is beautiful and mystifying, but I still find myself missing out on some of the harder vocabulary or disguised symbolism. Thus, I've tried to push myself to make Spanish a priority outside of class, too. I'm not too strict about it, but there is a lot of Spanish film, art, and other media that's interesting and fun to watch, as well as being educa...

"My Neighbour the Rapist"  Link In July of 2018, the BBC released a 45 minute documentary chronicling the rape crisis which currently plagues, among many others, South African township, Diepsloot. The township's rapists rape endemically and with impunity, and the community goes unprotected by law enforcement officers (according to foreignpolicy.com, "National Police Commissioner Lt. Gen. Khehla Sitole told South African members of Parliament that there is a deficit of 62,000 police officers across the country." The rapists have caused  HIV and AIDS epidemics throughout townships just like Diepsloot, and townspeople have started taking the law into their own hands. "My Neighbour the Rapist" covers the desperation and isolation which has led to a new rise in vigilantism-- vigilantism which promotes an extermination of rape (and thus an extermination of the rapists themselves). In places like Diepsloot, rapists are being killed in town squares, at the h...