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Topic
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Bringing People Together for Your Cause
Engaging With Media
Engaging Online
Making Your Advocacy Personal
Getting Stuck During Your Advocacy Journey
How To Do Advocacy Research
Free Nelson Mandela
July 18, Mandela Day, the day that Nelson Mandela was released from prison, 28 years ago. I cannot say anything else than that Mandela is one of my heroes and biggest examples. It started in a very dark period in my life where I faced many and big problems. In my family, where there was no harmony and a big lack of love, I just broke up with the girl I loved and I studied in France where I got terribly depressed. Suffering mental illness is difficult. It feels like a trauma and you don’t know how to solve it. There is no positivity, it feels like someone has driven over you with a big car and...
The measles of mankind
*This article was originally written and published in July 2016 at UNICEF Voices of Youth’s former website. It has since been moved here. I recently watched a documentary that explores how different nations tend to formulate our national identities around cultural products. “Whose is this Song?” by Adela Peeva is a comparative work about a wandering melody. A number of nations stake out claims on the song. The tune in question is known to me as “Üsküdar’a Gider İken.” I used to sing it in my school choir as a little child. Although it is hardly a building block for our culture, I was shocked...
Creating our future
If, like me, you want to honor that long-standing promise to the next generation that they will inherit a better world than we did, then this essay might give you a little bit of hope. Because change is not only possible - it has started. Admittedly the context of change and modification of our world is not easy peasy neither rosy. Tax-dodging corporations, attacks on refugees, populism, intolerance, extremism, billions of people in poverty or 'just about managing', droughts, wildfires, floods, etc. are all causing so much of trouble to millions of people all around this tiny world. The...
Gathering Information Through Personal Engagement
Developing Your Advocacy Plan
Monitoring Your Advocacy Activities
Soaring to Global Heights
Using Video to Raise Social Awareness
What is there to be celebrated?
As she gears towards the celebration of her 172 birthday, I mutter, confused to confide in her curse of ceaseless disasters. What is she truly celebrating? Her long but fruitless existence leading her children to beg and bootlick as they crumble at the mercy of exploiters. She stumbled, startled at the impediment placed upon her by so-called colonialism. A complete dissolution to her sovereignty. She claimed to be independent when truly dependency is at the avenue of her already weakened appearance-leading her children skedaddling in search for solace. And I wonder, what is there to be...
This is my planet
…. degradation, deforestation, pollution - are largely caused by us, humans, and I want to talk to you about it now… It worries me to read, “The biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%, natural ecosystems have lost half their area and millions of species are at the risk of extinction”. Today the situation is critical; we have made many mistakes and caused problems like air pollution, water pollution, global warming… Before I mention a few solutions of how we can solve these problems, I want to highlight how we formed them. What happened in 1750 has changed the course of history - a year when...
My case-study on marriage rituals among Christians in India
During my final year of high school, I had conducted a case study to understand the marriage rituals that took place among certain Christian communities in India - such as the Christians of Kerala, Goa and Mizoram - compared to the marriage rituals among Christians in western countries. The objective of my case study was to highlight the noticeable differences in these marriage rituals among the Christian communities in India as opposed to the Christians living in the west. To begin, a questionnaire was sent out to twenty three respondents belonging to Christian communities in both India as...
From rolling blackouts to electric trains: Tanzania economic miracle
2006 to 2013 marked the long and darkest period in the energy history of Tanzania. The longest drought period of 2005-2006 contributed to hydroelectric power plants inefficiencies leading to rolling blackouts. Efforts were made to rescue the problem, accompanied with the resignation of ministers, including the prime minister. By December 2009, rolling blackouts had triggered people to switch to the use of generators, leading to an increase in the cost of petroleum which increased the cost of import bills, goods and services and, eventually, the inflation rate to 12.1 percent. Citizens’...