Graffiti 2009-10

ALICE ZHU

It’s the start of a new decade, bringing joy and new resolutions. But along with it comes grief and sorrow as well: on January 12th, 2010, a powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the country of Haiti, 100 metres away from its capital of Port-au-Prince.

I found out about the event during my geography class. The day immediately following the earthquake, my geography teacher spent half of the class filling us in on the details of the earthquake of the situation in Haiti. He told us everything that we needed to know about what had happened, and prompted us to do further research regarding the topic: —only then did I find out that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Through this assignment, I realised that my geography teacher helped us to analyze the tremendous impact this earthquake had on a developing country that is inhabited by only 8.7 million people.

But let’s say if this event was poorly discussed in class and some of the details were missing. In that case, wouldn’t most students just shrug it off? Because the truth is, that earthquakes do occur frequently, and because of this we, as a society, have begun to accept them as a regular occurrence in our lives.

Since one of my teachers had discussed the this event in class, it made me curious as to whether other teachers, especially other geography teachers, had talked about the event with to their classes as well. When asked whether her geography teacher had discussed the event before with her class, Yasmin Virani said that the teacher had “briefly touched upon the topic.” Kelly Wong, who doesn’t take geography, says that none of her teachers had mentioned the the earthquake in her classes. Are we aware of what is happening outside of Canada? Should the staff at NT be doing more to inform their students abou current events? Although this event seems to have taken place a long distance away from where we live, it does have an impact on the entire world.

Besides wondering whether news regarding the quake was being spread throughout the school, I was also curious as to what the staff and students at NT were doing to raise funds for the victims in Haitiof the quake. The French club, run by Ms. Ovington, raised funds for Haiti through a bake sale that took place during lunch during on the days of NT Idol. Ms. Ovington said that “the bake sale and other donations had summed up to a total amount of about $300” and that “[they were] also collecting toothbrushes and toothpaste for Haiti”. Well, why is that when food and water are the necessities? Apparently, the French club had decided to raise funds for Haiti before the massive earthquake had struck. They had a choice of raising funds for either Rwanda or Haiti, (two French countries that were are both impoverished). Consequently, the club had chosen Haiti. As said by Ms. Ovington added that, “Wwe are very fortunate here in Canada and we should do as much as we can to help.”

Perhaps we should do something more to help the victims of the Haiti earthquake, but recently in January 2010, NT had a whole week dedicated to raising funds for this year’s charity, Not For Sale, a campaign dedicated to ending slavery and human trafficking. There was also the International Lunch week, which also fundraised for the same charity.

Christl Cheng, a Grade 12 student at Northern S.S., said that Northern had hosted a pie-eating contest, a free-style rap contest, and a bake sale. One class also went around the school collecting donations for Haiti. Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t fundraise for Not For Sale, but rather perhaps that we could should do a little more to help restore Haiti after the earthquake.

Earthquakes do occur on a regular basis, but no country deserves to suffer through one – especially not a developing country such as Haiti whichthat has had a rough past with political instability and cannot cope as well with the after effects of impact the earthquake had on its people. That is why we must work together as a community and a society to ensure that the this country will be healed.