ABOUT - PROJECT  ARISE

How can we as 8th-grade students in southern Washington, develop a product inspired by our learning objective theme, “Abolition Then & Now,” fostering civic responsibility and protecting human rights? We aspire to create a change in the worldview of racism and poverty, along with making an impact on those who are already working to stop these problems. We decided to create a website with a blog, poems, Instagram pages, and fundraisers working to save those suffering today. The reason we wanted to do this for our project is that we have heard of people working to stop racism and poverty. However, not much action is being done for these global issues. Consequently, we decided to work to help stop racism as a result of no one putting enough effort into it nowadays as much as it accounted for back during the times of racial segregation. To create this project we made a criterion for ourselves, deciding on why this topic was important to us individually, what impact our product will have on society, and how our website will be connected to our theme “Abolition Then & Now”.

 The criteria we decided on for Project ARISE is, we are going to show how corrupt racism is in our community back then and even now. We wanted to use this criterion because we have heard about many problems such as slavery, and the mistreatment of African Americans in the past to the present day. This caused us to want to try to create awareness of how racism still hasn't changed many years after it was called out and “changed”. By using Project ARISE, we will address these problems with a different approach than others have in the past. 

This project is important to us because we want to shed light on these parts of the world that are put in darkness and often ignored. Another reason this is important to us is we all have close friends or family who have had to experience these things. Some personal experiences as well. It will be good for other people to be educated on the topic of racism and poverty in our community now. We hope to give everyone a different view on these topics and a better understanding of how they can help and support people going through these struggles. 

For the outcome of our project, we hope to spread awareness about what is going on for African Americans in high-poverty areas and show how racism is present everywhere. We would also like to raise money to donate to a fundraiser. The fundraiser is The Black Parent Initiative (BPI) in Portland Oregon, which helps families achieve financial, educational, and spiritual success. 

As a team, we hope that our project supports the Abolition Then & Now topic by addressing the problem of racism. Racism has been going on for an extremely long time, and many people have tried abolishing slavery in the past so we are going to add the abolishment now. Adding to the abolishment now means making a difference in the view of racism in today's world. Many people think that racism is gone because of the acts done in the past. However, there still are many problems happening. Such as the George Floyd incident back in May 2020. We devote ourselves to making an impact on the ending of racism. 

Human rights are important to all mankind. Our project will show civic responsibility in protecting human rights by creating a website with a blog, Instagram, and poems about racism and poverty then and now. It will be for the people of Clark County and Multnomah County. They will be educated to have a different perspective on racism then and now. With this, we hope that it protects human rights such that all humans are made equal, even if their skin is a different color, and their clothes are less fancy than your average kid next door.

Racism is a big factor in poverty as well. A big example of this is Hurricane Katrina. Almost 28% of the New Orleans population was poor before Hurricane Katrina evacuation, and most of them were African American. Over half of the population affected by the hurricane were African Americans as well. These complications caused them not to return to the city after the storm.  The homes of African Americans were 3 times as likely to be flooded than the home of white humans. Therefore, racism and poverty play big roles in each other.

Our project driving question is, “How can we, as 8th-grade students of Camas School District, develop a product inspired by our learning objective theme, ‘Abolition Then & Now,’ fostering civic responsibility and protecting human rights?”. We will do this by creating a website with a blog, Instagram, and poems about racism and poverty, then and now. It will be for the people of Clark and Multnomah County so that they will be educated to have a different view on these important and sensitive topics. 

When our project comes to an end, we hope that our website educates all to want to find ways to end racism. Racism impacts everyone, even those who aren't victims. We also hope others see the way poverty is impacting our world by interacting with our website. About 9.2% of the human population is living in poverty. Our target is to have our main audience realize that both racism and poverty are huge real-life problems. So our website with a blog, donation section, many impactful facts, and quotes will address these worldwide issues.