If I told you that somewhere around the world infants are getting injected with a vile poison. A venom that doesn’t kill immediately rather it slowly cripples the child, taking away his/her quality of life and decreases his/her life expectancy by 15 years. How would you feel? Would you burst in tears? Punch a wall and recite every swear word in the dictionary? Or even make it your life’s goal to put an end to this monstrosity? Well, I want you to remember those feelings very well while reading the rest of this vlog, because the story I told might not be perfectly real but it holds a lot of truth.
Children & Obesity
More than 19% of children suffer from obesity worldwide which adds up to a frightening 14.4 million children. Four out of five of those children will remain obese as adults which will result in them losing 15-20 years of life on average. Are you starting to get the analogy and to connect the dots? Children aren’t getting injected with crippling poison, but they are getting exposed to crippling quantities of food with poison like nutritional values. I got interested in the subject of obesity in children after plotting 2 maps using the WDIData. One map for the obesity rates in children worldwide, and the other for the diabetes rates worldwide. What I found was shocking. I found that most countries with higher than average obesity rates in children has higher diabetes rates (as can be seen in the plot below).
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After doing some research (because of my findings), I concluded that an obese child is a diabetic adult in the making. Obese children face four times the risk of developing type 2 diabetes which is a leading cause of death worldwide (9th). Why isn’t obesity in children treated like the atrocity it is? I believe that feeding children unhealthy foods is akin to giving them a cigarette and telling them to light up.
What should we do?
After some research, I found that the most prominent solution and the one most sworn by is awareness. Awareness for the children at schools about healthy lifestyle and the importance of fitness, and more importantly awareness for the parents regarding obesity and its repercussions, healthy living, and
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. – Benjamin Franklin
Education is the pillar of society. Education is the only way to a good life. Education is the future.
But do it smartly.
With every generation coming on, every aspect of life is changing whether it’s the way you communicate with others, how you move from one place to another, EVERYTHING. Continuous learning will always show good results, either in the short term or the long term. However, one must not overdo it. Looking back at the last two decades, humanity has experienced several major events, COVID having the biggest impact. As businesses shut down, lockdowns and social distancing imposed, numerous people found themselves jobless, regardless what their experience or level of education is.
We can see on the map how unemployment rates have been increasing around the world in the last decade, especially in the last two years when COVID had a heavy impact. To dig deeper into the level of education of unemployed individuals, we can see in the second graph how individuals with basic, intermediate, and advanced education faced an increase in unemployment rates between 2019 and 2020. This graph shows had advancement in education has led to lower unemployment rates, hence showing the impact that higher education had during the COVID crisis where firms were cutting down on expenses by keeping individuals who can handle a heavier load. In the Education graph, we can see how figures for most educational levels have increased in 2020. This shows how the pandemic has reminded people of the importance of continuous education, however, the impact of this increase was not seen directly.
Continuing education is definitely a great plan for people to follow in order to keep improving and moving forward in their careers, lives, or personal growth. However, one should allocate enough time and effort to decide on the next step they are planning to take as the pandemic has shown us how some people with specific levels of education in certain fields are irreplaceable. More awareness should be shared with people of all ages, to show them the importance of education, and more importantly how to decide the optimal path for them.
Lebanon is suffering from an economical and financial crisis since 2019. The world bank has classified this crisis as one of the worst 3 crises since mid-nineteenth century. One main reason behind this crisis is the high external debt and its services which have led eventually to a great negative impact on Lebanon’s GDP. One way to control the increase of this debt is working on the development of the agricultural sector.
Problem:
The external dept as well as its services have increased dramatically over years. This increase was highly sharp between the years 2019 and 2020. At the same time, this high increase in the debt was associated with a decrease in GDP growth, specifically between the years 2016 and 2020.
Solution:
The contribution of agriculture in the GDP of Lebanon was decreasing over years. So, supporting the agricultural sector would be one of the solutions that can help freezing the increase in debt. In fact, Lebanon has the required elements to do that, i.e., a cultivatable land and water resources. According to the World Bank collection of development indicators, Lebanon has 64.32% of its land cultivatable.
Supporting the agricultural sector means that the government is requested to work on a plan that can improve the agricultural sector. This is important as a development in the agricultural sector would be reflected as an increase in the agricultural production. Therefore, this will lead to a decrease in the imports and an increase in the exports of agricultural products. Finally, all of this would cause a higher contribution of agriculture in GDP and a decrease in borrowing and debt levels.
This proposed solution has been adopted by many other countries to support their economy. According to the World Bank, agriculture has accounted for more than 25% of GDP in developing countries in the year 2018.
Findings:
Developing agricultural sector is essential for the development of the Lebanese economy.
Improving the agricultural sector will help Lebanon in getting out of the economic and financial crisis.
Recommendation:
The government should construct and implement a plan that can enhance the agricultural sector in Lebanon.
“When children must split their time between fetching water and protecting their families’ greatest wealth, the livestock, their education suffers” Marco Prates
Marta Ndimaoshitya
Meet Marta Ndimaoshitya:
Marta is a 12-year-old educated girl. “Educated?”, You might say. “Then what’s the problem?”, you might wonder. Well, the problem isn’t with Marta, it’s with Marta’s 3 siblings who have dropped out of school because there is no water for them to undertake the long walk to reach the school. The only reason Marta is able to go to school is that it is close to her home. You might have thought of many reasons why they are unable to receive proper education, but I doubt this one would have crossed your mind. Unfortunately, many children around the world live a life similar to Marta’s siblings and even worse.
The below visualization will offer a clear sight of the countries that are suffering from children being out of school the most. I wish to shed light on these countries as the aim is not just to know the number of school dropouts, it is also to help solve the major factors that render this behind each specific country.
Countries like Libya, Nigeria, Chad, Ghana, and many more experience very high numbers of children out of school. Some of the factors that render this are poverty, gender inequality, child marriage, lack of access to clean water, and armed conflict.
Recommendations:
Raise awareness on the importance of education
Provide financial support for poor families
Provide flexible, affordable, high-quality school options
This is Hamisi, an 11 year who has a career as a miner.
Hamisi dropped out of his third year of primary school and left his home village after his father was unable to pay for his uniform and school fees. Although Hamisi’s parents have their own half-acre coffee farm, their income fell sharply because of the decline in the market price for coffee throughout the world. Hamisi works up to 18 hours and earns between 60 cents to $ 1.2 a day.
The health of the children like Hamisi is very poor, as they breathe in the harmful graphite dust found in the mines and have poor nutrition, surviving on 1 meal a day.
Child slavery in big industries such as agriculture and manufacturing is an ongoing issue, and they are slowly being resolved by governments and organizations fighting child labor. Stories such as the ones mentioned above are common scenarios in developing countries where there are large sections of the population who are still deep in poverty.
Facts:
+ 8.4 M in the last 4 years alone. According to a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, the number of children in labour has increased to 160 million worldwide.
72.1 M are estimated to be in child labour in Africa. 9% of African children are in hazardous work – the highest of all the world’s regions representing 31.5 million.
1 in 5 children in Africa are employed against their will in farms and mines.
Recommendations:
Increase the number of years for compulsory education.
Create more job opportunities with higher salaries for parents.
Set a minimum age at which people can legally be employed.
