Category: Service Events

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Driving With Selvi

On the 28th of February, I attended the screening of a film called Driving with Selvi. Here is the information:

About the Film:
“In 2004, Selvi was an eighteen-year-old runaway living in a shelter for girls. Like so many girls in India, Selvi was forced to marry at a young age, only to find herself in a violent marriage. With no sympathy from her family and no hope that things could get better, she planned her ultimate escape. She went to a highway with the intention of throwing herself under the wheels of a bus. Instead she got on the bus…and went on to become South India’s first female taxi driver. Driving with Selvi (53 min.) follows this young woman’s courageous ten-year journey from despair to happiness. We see a remarkable transformation as Selvi finds her voice and defies cultural expectations that view women as expendable or worthless – learning to drive, starting her own taxi company, leading seminars to educate other women, marrying a man she loves, and much more. No one is more surprised or delighted by her accomplishments than Selvi, herself. Once an abused child bride and now an empowered working mother, she has learned from her life experiences to value education so that her daughter’s life will be easier than her own. For viewers, Selvi’s insights are our inspiration”

About the Director:
“Elisa Paloschi is a filmmaker, producer and photographer who is drawn to stories with a human voice. With over 20 years experience in documentary film production, she is the founder of Eyesfull Inc., a Toronto based independent production company dedicated to making non-fiction films with social relevance that reflect the diversity of the human voice.”

This was an amazing movie and I enjoyed it throughout. Hopefully, this sort of action becomes more prevalent throughout the world.

Selvi:

 

 

Reference:

Driving With Selvi

https://www.timeout.com/london/film/driving-with-selvi

Elisa Paloschi: Cultivating Your Creativity, Telling Stories With Purpose, And Making Driving With Selvi

 

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Write for Rights

From 5 pm on the 7 December till 5 pm on 8 December, in recognition of International Human rights Day, I participated in the Write for Rights campaign. This campaign is operated by Amnesty International which is a London-based non-governmental organization (NGO) extremely focused on human rights issues. This organization claims to have over 7 million members and supporters around the world. The Write for Rights campaign is where, for example, myself, can come and write letters that appeal and advocate for specific human rights violation cases, urging governments to recognize their role and responsibility in the situation and encouraging them to take effective action. Some could even stay overnight to finish their letters. UWCSEA urged us to become the voice for these people through this “writeathon”. Last year the UWCSEA community wrote over 2000 letters and they want to beat this record this year. 

Although I wish I had time to write letters to all the issues that we could write about, I prioritized myself to write a letter to the government of Myanmar and Madagascar. My first letter was directed to Madagascar to help Clovis Razafimalala who is an environmental activist in Madagascar. Madagascar is a burst of life and extraordinary beauty as 75% of its animals are in fact found nowhere else in the world. Rare plants that include over a thousand types of orchids and the amazing rosewood forests where Clovis, his wife and two young daughters live. However, the black market is using this forest to make luxury products for the rich which is a billion dollar industry, therefore, causing a lot of power. In addition to that, Clovis has unfortunately faced harassment, attacks and criminal charges and was recently charged for allegedly encouraging protesters to loot an administrative building despite not attending the protest and is now at risk. The traffickers desperately want to silence him and are only in person fighting against powerful and influential forces. As you can see, I am very determined to help this cause as I am a strong activist for the environment.

 

As I mentioned before in an earlier post, I attended the conference about the Rohingya crisis so decided to write about this. In addition to this, I would also like to talk about Sun-Dac which is a daycare in Singapore for the mentally ill. My mentor class has contributed to the Reverse Calendar Donations that will help the centre get spiced up.

Courtesy of the images and information and Quick Reference:  

Amnesty International
Louisa Radford for the image on the OLP.

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Rohingya Guest Speaker

On Friday 13th in October, I had the pleasure to meet Loretta Dalpozzo who is a journalist and documentary producer with 17 years of experience. She came to speak about her recent experience with filming in refugee camps in Bangladesh with the Rohingya. Loretta spoke about a range of issues to do with the current crisis including stories from the refugees, the responses of the Bangladesh government and the UNHCR and the role of journalists as advocates for refugees. It was very interesting to hear about this crisis happening in Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma).  I think the work that she is doing and the role of being a journalist are very powerful and I hope she continues this form of activism, although indirect action. Below is an image of  Loretta Dalpozzo:

Courtesty and Quick Reference: 

http://telegiornaliste.freeforumzone.com/mobile/discussione.aspx?idd=10841838&p=4 

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/asia/rohingya-aid-myanmar-bangladesh.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/06/asia/rohingya-bangladesh-myanmar-intl/index.html

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Sea Shepherd Conference

On Monday the 27th of November, I got to meet Mike and Liza (both Austrailian) from The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society which is a non-profit, marine conservation organization based in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, Washington, in the United States and in Melbourne and Victoria in Australia. They were founded by Paul Watson, Starlet Lum, Ron Precious, Al Johnson in June of 1977.

Seas Shepherd Logo

We’ve got to learn and hear the exciting and interesting stories that they had from working with this society. For example, they had arrested  (along the with the Timor-Leste police) 18 Chinese fishing boats off the coast of Timor-Leste (East Timor) where they were supposed to fish for Tuna and instead were illegally fishing for sharks. They counted thousands of sharks and the captains on the boat were charged also for human rights abuses. Their work consists of two very different actions that they take. As you may have noticed, the first action is very direct and aggressive tactic where they ram into boats if they are suspected of illegal fishing or other related Marine Environment abuses. The other more subtle is the advertising and events that consists of beach cleanups and information about plastics in order to minimise single-use plastic usage.

However, we talked about this society in my Global Perspectives (GPers) class and we talked about the controversies of this organization. Unlike many similar organizations, they take the very direct impact that is unique to the other such environmental and peace groups. Taking this sort of action that we talked about in our GPers class, maybe the opposite mentality that environmental groups tend to have. Instead of going to peace, this society aims to ram into boats and take serious actions that for some people can be considered as aggressive and violent. The reason that this society has done this type of actions is that one of the co-founders called Paul Watson has a perspective that protests are very submissive when he used to work for Greenpeace. However, that is their perspective and I still support the work that they have been doing.

Courtesty and Quick Reference:

Sea Shepherd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MY_Sam_Simon

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/world/shepherd+battle+with+japanese+whaling+ships+ends+with/14428765/story.html

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Run For Rights

Below is the Run for Rights Poster:

The reason that this is such as late post is that I haven’t worked on my portfolio for a long time. I have looked at some others portfolios and decided to create a post on this. The Run for Rights campaign was a way for the UWCSEA East community to run almost 5 kilometres around Bedok Reservoir and to hopefully gain sponsors which are donated to two GCs: Daraja, Myanmar A New Dawn and Colours of Kattike. Daraja works in Africa and Colours of Kattike works in Nepal.

I was able to get 100 dollars in donation and I ran pretty fast (if I may say so myself) around Bedok Reservoir. My whole family were also there to run and it was a really great experience. In addition to that, I was able to get pizza after the run which was great because a lot of children like pizza and it was amazing.

However, I am still bothered by the fact that not all GCs are environmentally conscious. This is obvious because of almost all other GCs apart from the one I am part of and others, dealing with other important issues other than the environment including poverty, education and equal rights. There was some deal of wastage but I think if this event were to continue and if there was another event similar to this next year, I would definitely be apart of it.

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Toiletries for Cambodia

When I was at TIS (Tokyo International School) in Grade 7, we had to do some kind of community service as a requirement for our school. I decided to start a campaign called “Toiletries for Cambodia”. Fortunately, my grandmother has a friend who works for a school in Cambodia called “Mr. Mattias & Seng Nga English School”. I was able to collect toiletries from the TIS community and ultimately send those toiletries to her (Jenny Johansson), who then further gave it to the school.

This was an amazing opportunity this it might seem weird for me to do this kind of thing as I am very passionate about the environment. However, I assure you, I did this because I wanted to try something different for a change and this seemed like a great opportunity. This link is to the website that the school has created.