#4 My Final Summary/Reaction

Throughout this semester is was definitely able to gain a better understanding of what poverty really is. By researching and learning a good deal of information, I can definitely say that I have gained a great deal of knowledge on the subject. Not only am I more informed, but I can definitely say that I now know more about what people are going through and can put myself in their shoes. When I got the results of my poverty survey, I wasn't at ll surprised to find out that my hypothesis had been correct. I had guessed that majority of people really did not know a great deal about poverty at all. My questions were more fact based than other people who gave surveys because I really wanted to see the percentage of people who did not know specific information in order to be able to prove my point.For example, when asked " What percentage of humanity lives on less than $10 a day?", 64% of the people I surveyed answered incorrectly. Some other things that more than half of the people surveyed got incorrect were " How many children die each day due to poverty? and "What is the poverty line for a family of 4?". I think that many people have a basic idea about poverty but don't really know the specifics. After this semester of research I am happy to be more informed about poverty so that I can help broaden other people's knowledge as well. Hopefully with a more extensive knowledge I can put it to good use and help to make a change for the better in regards to poverty and make a difference in the world.

#3 Revised Summary/Plan/Update

For my research plan I did not really change anything that I previously thought I was going to do. I still have to send my survey out to more people but from what I have done so far I can say that my hypothesis seems to be holding true. People do not know a lot about poverty, even though people might think that they do. My questions are fact based rather than opinion based so that I can get results on how much information people know. I am going to send my survey to many more people so that I can be sure that my hypothesis is right, however so far I have seen that my thoughts have been correct.

#2 Strategy/Plan for Research

For my survey, I plan to make a Google doc. with questions regarding how much people in the middle class actually know about poverty. Since I learned an enormous amount about poverty, and really didn't know as much as I thought I did, I believe that many people also probably do not know a lot about poverty in the world. I am going to put my survey on Facebook so that my friends and people my age will be able to answer the questions and I can get the perspective of younger people. I am also going to have my mom send the survey to the people that she works with so I can see how much people who are older than me know about poverty. I would seem to think that people who are older might have a better understanding of poverty than those who are younger. However, my survey will help me better see what people actually know and what they do not know or understand so that I can help inform them on things they may never have realized are going on right around them every day.

Quarter 2 #1 Suggested Research Method/Why? Poverty

For my semester project I am thinking about using survey research to find out just how much people actually know about poverty. Being that I learned so much through my research in the previous quarter, I thought it would be interesting to see if people know the things I just recently learned. Before I did my research, I thought I knew so much more than I actually did about poverty. I think it will be interesting to see how much people know, or don't know on the subject of poverty. I think that I might ask some questions about certain factual information on poverty while also asking some opinionated questions. Since I have really learned a great deal of information, hopefully my survey will help me to see what people don't understand about poverty so that I might be able to teach them some things that they don't already know.

#8 What Can I Take from All of This?

Summary of Research

 Through all of my research this semester, there are many things I can take away.  When I first began looking for things that I could blog about, I didn't really think that I was going to necessarily find many ways in which poverty was coming to an end. However, I was surprised to see that much of my research involved ways in which poverty was beginning to decline in the world or how other people were trying to put an end to it. If I could take away anything in particular it would be that we are all the solution to ending poverty. If we are pro-active people with the right mindset anything is possible; even seemingly impossible things. I realized that there really are tons of organizations that are extremely dedicated to ending poverty around the globe and that it is pretty easy to become involved and to help wherever possible. Knowing this, I hope that I can become involved with helping to end poverty in any way that I can. Hopefully the knowledge that I have gained this semester will be the first step in my road to helping end poverty.

#7 Biodiversity and Ending Poverty?

Why Should You Care About Wildlife? How can it Help End Poverty?

In the article that I found, it talks about how Biodiversity and Wildlife help to keep the economy going and keep us away from poverty. Animal, plant and marine biodiversity keeps ecosystems functional which in turn allows us to survive, get enough food to eat and make a living.Biodiversity is critical to ending poverty because many people depend on nature itself for their livelihood. Because many animals are becoming extinct, it has become increasingly hard for people to survive because they lack food which helps them to eat and make a living. It is also critical to the poor because 75% of the poor live in rural areas and are dependent on nature to live. The World Bank has invested has over $1 billion invested in protecting wildlife and provides the means to protect wildlife to many areas of the world via financial support. Investments in biodiversity can create jobs and raise incomes. The Bank’s US$ 5.5 million investment in South Africa’s Greater Addo Elephant National Park created 614 jobs for people living in the surrounding areas.When we protect animals and plants, we are also protecting  the ecosystems that underlie our economies and well-being. I think that it is wonderful that simply protecting the environment (which we should be doing anyway) we can help in potentially decreasing the poverty rate around the world. Simple things that we do in our daily life can not only help other people who may be in poverty, but can also help to reduce the poverty rate. Hopefully by enforcing Biodiversity we can start helping to end poverty around the world.

#6 The World Bank

    The World Bank Website

The website that I just came across I think is the most helpful and interesting thing that I found so far all semester. As you can see from the picture below, the World Bank is an organization trying to rid the world of poverty. The World bank has many projects and operations with which it is involved and is constantly trying to make people aware of what poverty is and how we can try and stop it. I really enjoyed this website because it has such a variety of different things to read about and tons of data and statistics that are relevant to my topic of poverty. This one website gave me insight to things I never knew about and supplied me with many articles to read without having to keep changing to a series of different websites. Just about anything that I could need or want to discover about poverty is now so easy for me to find because this website has everything I could want to know about poverty. I would encourage everyone to take the time to read through some of the organizations and plans for stopping poverty; you never know how you can help to make a difference in the world by doing something simple. I noticed that there are live chats on this website for people to express their own views about poverty. I hope to participate one day and to hear other people's ideas so that I can try and make a difference in the world of poverty too.