Budget: Dollars & Sense?

As we come to the end of the school year, those of us involved in the MyPlace Project would love to get a snapshot of what young people think about their place in the world. A special blog post form has been created for this purpose. There are three videos to choose from. The idea is to pick the video that most interests you and write your best response.

1. Write a post where you answer the question “What can we do to make the world a better place?” Use one of the three videos as the starting point for your response.
2. Write as well and hinestly as you can.
3. When you’ve finished writing, please take a short survey if you haven’t already.

   

This research is designed so that we can create better learning activities for students. When you are ready, click on the image above or click here to make a post about how we can make the world a better place.

Hi. I’m Tom March. I’ve met some of you and all of your teachers. I’m the one who made the MyPlace (not MySpace!) Web site for this project. I’ve really been energised reading your posts. Anyone who says that young people are “self-obsessed” hasn’t talked to any of you lately!

It made me wonder, what if we combined Ms. Scanlon’s early post about the $100 water well in Cambodia with all the enthusiasm you students have shown? Couldn’t you achieve amazing things! And Real things!

Here’s the Challenge: Make a Difference!
Maybe I can elaborate a little… I see two parts to the challenge:

1. See how much you and your friends can save in one week by giving a miss to Teenage Affluenza. We have five schools, basically from the “leafy suburbs of Melbourne,” and many of you have said how something could and should be done. Collecting some $ is the first step.
2. Ms Scanlon found a great person-to-person way to make $100 help a whole community live healthier and longer. Robert Thompson was able to buy a water buffalo for $250 that changed the lives of four generations of a family in China whose life had been really tough. Watch the video on YouTube and get blown away (your teacher has a copy of the video if YouTube is blocked).

Then make a choice: do you want a little friendly competition or to work together? Which do you think could make the biggest difference, a bunch of groups of friends competing with others to collect the most $ and make the biggest impact on real people’s lives or all of you working together to gather one big sum of $ and find the very best use of it? I have no idea which might work best. But I do know you can make a difference. Are you willing to try?

Add your comment to this post. You can take on the challenge as 5 schools, one class, a group of friends or one single person. What do you think?

I think we can manage our money by doing a big thing were we devide

our money into parts for each big city and go from there and if they

run out of money to bad and all the left over money goes to one big

govemeat

Teenage Affluenza is spreading fast

• What does it make you feel and think?
• List all the things that you use or consume each day. Think about from when you wake in the morning until you go to sleep at night.
• Put a ? (tick) next to all the things that you think are “essential” to you.
• Put a ? (question mark) next to those that you think you could either do without or cut back on.

How “rich” is a person with $40 / week? - Check the GlobalRichList

• What would change if you were Living On Less Than A Dollar A Day
• See what proportion of the population lives on under $1 a day in different countries
• Miniature Earth - shows a population of 100
• “The unhappier you are, the more ice cream you get“
• Savings Plan Simulator

Get Involved with MyPlace Pages

• Use a hotlist of links on Economics
• View MyPlace Del.icio.us links on Economics
• Add information to the Wiki page on Economics
• Join and post to the MyPlace Community Blog on Economics