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Med egen blogg på Trollheimsporten - www.elisebear.blogg.no
Elise Bjørnstad vant esseykonkurranse i USA
Elise Bjørnstad (18) har vært utvekslingsstudent i USA i ett år. Ho har hatt tilhold i lille Ukiah i Oregon, der ho har gjennomført andreåret i videregående. I en esseykonkurranse for heile verda var ho blant 30 som vant tur og representasjon til Washington DC - svært imponerende av en utveklslingsstudent! Esseyet heter Abuse and Poverty in Childhood og handler om mishandling og fattigdom og hvordan vi skal løse dette i verdenssammenheng.
Barnemishandling og fattigdom
Elise Bjørnstad fikk oppgaven av læreren ved skolen i Oregon, Norma Barber. Ho hadde meldt på elever på internett til Gulen Institute Youth Plattform . Oppgaven var å skrive ett essey på mellom 1500 og 2000 ord om child abuse (barnemishandling) og child poverty (fattigdom).
- Esseyet skulle inneholde løsninger på disse problemene i verdenssammenheng, forteller Elise Bjørnstad, som nådde heilt opp i konkurransen og var blant 30 av 1700 innsendte bidrag, som fikk invitasjon til ei stor samling i Washington DC med foredrag, seremonier, møter og utdelinger. Her fikk ho sammen med følge, mor Anni Karlstrøm, treffe senatoren i Oregon og fikk oppleve svært mye med sightseeing Capitol og Det hvite hus, samt en tur til New York med Time Square og frihetsgudinnen.
Svært lærerikt
- Det var svært lærerikt og interessant, sier Elise. Ho har egen blogg www.elisebear.blogg.no, som du også finner på Trollheimsporten her. Der kan du lese alt om turen til Washington.
Nå er det sommerferie heime i Rindal og Elise har ikke fritidsproblemer. Ho har tre sommerjobber. Du vil finne henne på Trollheimsporten, der det fortsatt blir blogget. I tillegg skal ho arbeide hos Rindal Bensin & Service og som hjemmehjelp i Rindal kommune.
Alle kan delta
Til høsten er det tredjeåret ved Surnadal vgs som gjelder, men akkurat nå gleder ho seg aller mest til sommeren i Rindal.
- Ho anbefaler og oppfordrer engelsklærere her i landet til å melde på elever til dette. Det er utrolig god øvelse i engelsk, sier ho.
Under kan du lese heile esseyet til Elise Bjørnstad:
Abuse and Poverty in Childhood
Creating solutions for the challenges faced by children today.
By Norwegian Exchange Student Elise Bjørnstad, Ukiah High School 11th grade, Oregon.
I chose the topics Abuse and Poverty in Childhood because abuse and poverty in childhood might appear anywhere in the world, no matter religion, belief or ethnic background. In other words, this is a worldwide problem that every community face, and it is a major problem that might be very difficult to discover without any visible traces to follow.
Child abuse is the emotional, sexual, physical mistreatment, or neglect of a child made by another person, but mostly of the responsible guardian of the child. You know the child is abused when the responsible adult does not provide adequately for various needs, such as food, clothing, hygiene, education or medicine. The abuse may also be physical, in which an adult’s aggression is directed at a child. This aggression can involve punching, striking, kicking, slapping, pulling ears or hear, stabbing, shaking or any other physical touch that might hurt. In addition the aggression will for the most part affect the child mentally.
Child neglect is the type of abuse where the responsible adult does not provide adequately for various needs, including physical (not providing adequate food, clothing or hygiene), emotional (not providing nurturing or affection), educational (not providing adequate education), or medical (not medicating the child or taking him/her to the doctor). There are many effects of child neglect, such as children not being able to interact with other children around them. The continuous refusal of a child’s basic needs is considered chronic neglect.
Another type of abuse is the physical abuse. It is physical aggression directed at a child by an adult. This abuse can involve punching, striking, choking, burning, shoving, slapping, bruising, pulling ears or hair, stabbing, kicking, belting or shaking a child. Shaking a child can for example cause shaken baby syndrome, which can lead to intracranial pressure, swelling of brain, diffuse axonal injury, and oxygen deprivation.
The third type is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent abuses a child in a sexual way. This include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities regardless of the outcome, indecent exposure of the genitals to a child, viewing of the child’s genitalia without physical contact, actual sexual contact against a child, physical contact with the child’s genitals, displaying pornography to a child, or using a child to produce child pornography. Effect of this abuse include guilt and self-blame, flashbacks, nightmares, fear of things associated with the abuse, self-esteem issues, sexual dysfunction, chronic pain, disorder, addiction, self-injury, depression, suicidal ideation, somatic complaints, stress, mental illnesses, anorexia or bulimia, and physical injury to the child.
The last main type of abuse in childhood is the psychological and emotional abuse, and out of all the possible forms of abuse, emotional abuse is the hardest to define. It can include something as simple as name-calling, ridicule, destruction of personal belongings, torture or destruction of a pet, excessive criticism, inappropriate or excessive demands, withholding communication, or humiliation. So if someone just wants to have a little fun by calling someone anything, it could be counted as abuse because the child can care a lot about it, no matter if it is meant in a positive or negative way. Anyway, the victims may react by distancing themselves from the abuser, internalizing the abusing words, or fighting back by insulting the abuser. The emotional abuse can result in abnormal or disrupted attachment development, a tendency for victims to blame themselves for the abuse, learned helplessness, and overly passive behavior.
According to the American National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, in 1997 neglect represented 54% of confirmed cases of child abuse, physical abuse 22%, sexual abuse 8%, emotional abuse 4%, and other forms of abuse 12%.
Causes for these actions are many. However, it is almost impossible to know if the cause of child abuse is a marital strife, or if both the marital strife and the abuse are caused by tendencies in the abuser. Children resulting from unintended pregnancies are more likely to be abused or neglected, substance abuse can be a major contributing factor, most commonly alcohol, cocaine, and heroin, unemployment and financial difficulties are associated with increased rates of child abuse, and studies have found that not biologically related parents are up to a hundred times more likely to kill a child than biological parents.
There will always be violence in childhood, and it may be difficult to help these children because violence in home might be very difficult to discover if the child don’t have any physical mark of it, such as a bruise or a scar. Children easily don’t talk with anybody about it because they are scared something will happen.
To prevent violence in childhood is not so easy. The National Academy of Sciences concluded that affordable contraceptive services should form the basis for child abuse prevention. “The starting point for effective child abuse programming is pregnancy planning,” according to an analysis for US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. Other ways to prevent this violence is organizations or groups where people meet for example, but it is very difficult to prevent this abuse because of fear of what might happen if they told anybody.
Creating solutions for the challenges faced by children today.
By Norwegian Exchange Student Elise Bjørnstad, Ukiah High School 11th grade, Oregon.
I chose the topics Abuse and Poverty in Childhood because abuse and poverty in childhood might appear anywhere in the world, no matter religion, belief or ethnic background. In other words, this is a worldwide problem that every community face, and it is a major problem that might be very difficult to discover without any visible traces to follow.
Child abuse is the emotional, sexual, physical mistreatment, or neglect of a child made by another person, but mostly of the responsible guardian of the child. You know the child is abused when the responsible adult does not provide adequately for various needs, such as food, clothing, hygiene, education or medicine. The abuse may also be physical, in which an adult’s aggression is directed at a child. This aggression can involve punching, striking, kicking, slapping, pulling ears or hear, stabbing, shaking or any other physical touch that might hurt. In addition the aggression will for the most part affect the child mentally.
Child neglect is the type of abuse where the responsible adult does not provide adequately for various needs, including physical (not providing adequate food, clothing or hygiene), emotional (not providing nurturing or affection), educational (not providing adequate education), or medical (not medicating the child or taking him/her to the doctor). There are many effects of child neglect, such as children not being able to interact with other children around them. The continuous refusal of a child’s basic needs is considered chronic neglect.
Another type of abuse is the physical abuse. It is physical aggression directed at a child by an adult. This abuse can involve punching, striking, choking, burning, shoving, slapping, bruising, pulling ears or hair, stabbing, kicking, belting or shaking a child. Shaking a child can for example cause shaken baby syndrome, which can lead to intracranial pressure, swelling of brain, diffuse axonal injury, and oxygen deprivation.
The third type is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent abuses a child in a sexual way. This include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities regardless of the outcome, indecent exposure of the genitals to a child, viewing of the child’s genitalia without physical contact, actual sexual contact against a child, physical contact with the child’s genitals, displaying pornography to a child, or using a child to produce child pornography. Effect of this abuse include guilt and self-blame, flashbacks, nightmares, fear of things associated with the abuse, self-esteem issues, sexual dysfunction, chronic pain, disorder, addiction, self-injury, depression, suicidal ideation, somatic complaints, stress, mental illnesses, anorexia or bulimia, and physical injury to the child.
The last main type of abuse in childhood is the psychological and emotional abuse, and out of all the possible forms of abuse, emotional abuse is the hardest to define. It can include something as simple as name-calling, ridicule, destruction of personal belongings, torture or destruction of a pet, excessive criticism, inappropriate or excessive demands, withholding communication, or humiliation. So if someone just wants to have a little fun by calling someone anything, it could be counted as abuse because the child can care a lot about it, no matter if it is meant in a positive or negative way. Anyway, the victims may react by distancing themselves from the abuser, internalizing the abusing words, or fighting back by insulting the abuser. The emotional abuse can result in abnormal or disrupted attachment development, a tendency for victims to blame themselves for the abuse, learned helplessness, and overly passive behavior.
According to the American National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, in 1997 neglect represented 54% of confirmed cases of child abuse, physical abuse 22%, sexual abuse 8%, emotional abuse 4%, and other forms of abuse 12%.
Causes for these actions are many. However, it is almost impossible to know if the cause of child abuse is a marital strife, or if both the marital strife and the abuse are caused by tendencies in the abuser. Children resulting from unintended pregnancies are more likely to be abused or neglected, substance abuse can be a major contributing factor, most commonly alcohol, cocaine, and heroin, unemployment and financial difficulties are associated with increased rates of child abuse, and studies have found that not biologically related parents are up to a hundred times more likely to kill a child than biological parents.
There will always be violence in childhood, and it may be difficult to help these children because violence in home might be very difficult to discover if the child don’t have any physical mark of it, such as a bruise or a scar. Children easily don’t talk with anybody about it because they are scared something will happen.
To prevent violence in childhood is not so easy. The National Academy of Sciences concluded that affordable contraceptive services should form the basis for child abuse prevention. “The starting point for effective child abuse programming is pregnancy planning,” according to an analysis for US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. Other ways to prevent this violence is organizations or groups where people meet for example, but it is very difficult to prevent this abuse because of fear of what might happen if they told anybody.
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money, and child poverty refers to the phenomenon of children under eighteen living in poverty. The child poverty applies to children that are coming from poor families or orphans being raised with limited resources. There are children that fail to meet the minimum acceptable standard of life for the nation where that child lives, and they are said to be poor. In developing countries these standards are lower and when combined with the increased number of orphans the effects are more extreme.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) “children living in poverty are those who experience deprivation of the material, spiritual and emotional resources needed to survive, develop and thrive, leaving them unable to enjoy their rights, achieve their full potential or participate as full and equal members of society”. The Child Fund International (CFI) definition is based on Deprivation (lack of materialistic conditions and services), Exclusion (denial of rights and safety) and Vulnerability (when society can’t deal with threats to children). The definition of child poverty is a combination of economic, social, cultural, physical, environmental and emotional factors, and they have very changing living conditions and complex interactions of the body, mind and emotions are involved.
The outcomes of the child poverty are mainly in education, health and socialization, fertility, labor market, and income. Some suggest that children of low-income parents have an increased risk of intellectual and behavioral development problems. There are also a risk of the displaying behavior and emotional problems, such as impulsiveness, and difficulty getting along with peers, and family poverty is associated with higher risk for teen childbearing, less positive peer relations, and lower self-esteem. The children can also get a very bad health as they get older, and health problems can be such as asthma and anemia. (Anemia is a decrease in number of red blood cells or less than the normal quantity of hemoglobin in the blood.)
To prevent child poverty there can be set an absolute or relative monetary threshold. If a family does not earn above that threshold the children of that family will be considered to live below the poverty line. So, the family has to have enough money and resources to take care of the child, and this includes that the child been taken care of by given the quantity of goods and services.
These thresholds vary from country to country. Some countries do not require as much as other countries based on the country’s economy and number of population for example. In Europe, and a lot of other developed countries, use a relative poverty threshold, typically 50% of the countries average income. Relative poverty does not necessarily mean that the child is lacking anything, but is more a reflection of inequality in society. Measures of child poverty using income thresholds will vary depending on whether relative or absolute poverty is measured and what threshold limits are applied. Using a relative measure, poverty is much higher in the US than in Europe, but if an absolute measure is used when poverty in some European countries is higher.
Causes for this child poverty are many, but the majority of poverty-stricken children are born to poor parents. Therefore the causes like adult poverty, such as government policies, lack of education, unemployment, social services, disabilities and discrimination significantly affect the presence of child poverty. Economic and demographic factors such as deindustrialization, globalization, residential segregation, labor market segmentation, and migration of middle-class residents from inner cities, constrain economic opportunities and choices across generation, isolation inner-city poor children. Lack of parental economic resources like disposable income also restricts children’s opportunities.
These two problems will always exist, but there are possibilities to decrease the amount of poverty and abuse in childhood by having organizations and thresholds. Children need help, and there are good chances to make child poverty and child abuse happen more rarely if we really work for it.
References:
1. Poverty. Wikipedia. Last modified on 2 December 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty
2. Child abuse. Wikipedia. Last modified on 5 December 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse
3. Children and Poverty Campaign. Care.
http://www.care.org/campaigns/childrenpoverty/
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) “children living in poverty are those who experience deprivation of the material, spiritual and emotional resources needed to survive, develop and thrive, leaving them unable to enjoy their rights, achieve their full potential or participate as full and equal members of society”. The Child Fund International (CFI) definition is based on Deprivation (lack of materialistic conditions and services), Exclusion (denial of rights and safety) and Vulnerability (when society can’t deal with threats to children). The definition of child poverty is a combination of economic, social, cultural, physical, environmental and emotional factors, and they have very changing living conditions and complex interactions of the body, mind and emotions are involved.
The outcomes of the child poverty are mainly in education, health and socialization, fertility, labor market, and income. Some suggest that children of low-income parents have an increased risk of intellectual and behavioral development problems. There are also a risk of the displaying behavior and emotional problems, such as impulsiveness, and difficulty getting along with peers, and family poverty is associated with higher risk for teen childbearing, less positive peer relations, and lower self-esteem. The children can also get a very bad health as they get older, and health problems can be such as asthma and anemia. (Anemia is a decrease in number of red blood cells or less than the normal quantity of hemoglobin in the blood.)
To prevent child poverty there can be set an absolute or relative monetary threshold. If a family does not earn above that threshold the children of that family will be considered to live below the poverty line. So, the family has to have enough money and resources to take care of the child, and this includes that the child been taken care of by given the quantity of goods and services.
These thresholds vary from country to country. Some countries do not require as much as other countries based on the country’s economy and number of population for example. In Europe, and a lot of other developed countries, use a relative poverty threshold, typically 50% of the countries average income. Relative poverty does not necessarily mean that the child is lacking anything, but is more a reflection of inequality in society. Measures of child poverty using income thresholds will vary depending on whether relative or absolute poverty is measured and what threshold limits are applied. Using a relative measure, poverty is much higher in the US than in Europe, but if an absolute measure is used when poverty in some European countries is higher.
Causes for this child poverty are many, but the majority of poverty-stricken children are born to poor parents. Therefore the causes like adult poverty, such as government policies, lack of education, unemployment, social services, disabilities and discrimination significantly affect the presence of child poverty. Economic and demographic factors such as deindustrialization, globalization, residential segregation, labor market segmentation, and migration of middle-class residents from inner cities, constrain economic opportunities and choices across generation, isolation inner-city poor children. Lack of parental economic resources like disposable income also restricts children’s opportunities.
These two problems will always exist, but there are possibilities to decrease the amount of poverty and abuse in childhood by having organizations and thresholds. Children need help, and there are good chances to make child poverty and child abuse happen more rarely if we really work for it.
References:
1. Poverty. Wikipedia. Last modified on 2 December 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty
2. Child abuse. Wikipedia. Last modified on 5 December 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abuse
3. Children and Poverty Campaign. Care.
http://www.care.org/campaigns/childrenpoverty/
4. Child Poverty. Wikipedia. Last modified on 15. November 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_poverty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_poverty
5. Children and Violence. NIMH, National Institute of Mental Health.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/child-and-adolescent-mental-health/children-and-violence.shtml
