Final Product

My personal project is about helping orphans because I feel that they are very pitiful to grow up without a proper family. The aim of my product is to create awareness among people on the need to help children in orphanages.

My final product will be a newsletter which will contain informative articles about orphans and how to help them. The newsletter will also feature interviews with volunteers at orphanages where they will share their views and ideas on how to help them. The newsletter will include pictures to make it interesting for readers.

TWO ARTICLES

Keeping children in families

Some communities in the US are considering placing foster children in large orphanages, children's homes, and educational institutions, but this was opposed by North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC). They said that children belong in stable, loving families and  believe that children should be surrounded by caring, nurturing adults in a family to allow them to lead physically, emotionally, and mentally healthier lives.

The NACAC supports the idea that children should be with their birth families and if this is not possible, a relative, foster, or adoptive family would be the best solution. The NACAC believes that placing children in institutions is harmful to them as research showed that institutional care has negative impacts on child development. Doctors, public health experts, and psychiatrists from some universities studied the orphanage issue and found that young children are vulnerable to the medical and psychosocial hazards of institutional care. In the short-term, young children risk contracting health problems and developing language impairments. In the long-term, they are likely to become psychologically affected and economically unproductive adults.

Research found cases of high staff turnover, poor staff training, and few opportunities for professional advancement among institutional child care staff. In turn, the children could be negatively affected. Other research that even good institutions can harm young children, leave teens ill-prepared for the outside world.

On the other hand, children who were adopted experienced more caring and closer attachments to their caregivers as compared to those who grew up in orphanages. Children who grew up in orphanages seemed to experience less individual caring and continuity in care.

The NACAC proposed several programmes and strategies to keep children in families. First and foremost are those that work to keep families together. An example is the Jeremiah program, which provides housing and support to women and their children for women who escaped from domestic abuse to raise their children in safe surroundings. Across the US, adoption and foster care programs have succeeded in finding an increasing number of families for orphans.

Model programs also show how supporting foster and adoptive families can help children find a loving family. In Illinois, a program called Generations of Hope converted an abandoned military base into housing for foster and adoptive families of large sibling groups. Generations of Hope offers rent subsidies for seniors who serve as mentors to the children living in the foster and adoptive families. In addition, the program provides therapists and weekly training and support for the families. The expectation is that the foster families will adopt children in their care if the children become available for adoption, providing children with the forever families that they deserve.

Ways to Help Orphans

Orphans should not be deprived of opportunities to grow into fine people. It is important that they receive care like any other children. One way to help them grow up to be good people is to become their friend and counselor. Children often need emotional support, and this is all the more so for orphans. They need much love, care and concern and know that they are not on their own. By being a friend to them, they would feel accepted instead of feeling that they are rejected.

We can also help them by becoming a teacher to them. Becoming a teacher to them means teaching them to discover the things around them, apart from school subjects. In the meantime, we can become a role model for them to look up to.

Another thing we can do to help them us by giving them basic items for survival like food and clothes or things they can have fun with. For children, playing can be one of the greatest methods of enhancing their creativity. We can thus provide them with a positive source that lets them channel their creativity towards it. We sould also teach them to work independently to attain something they want. In this way, we impart god values to them which will help them become good individuals in the long run.

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250 words for PP

I am interested in Health and Social as my Area of Interaction because I feel that this is a very meaningful topic. Through this AOI, I can interact with other people and help them make their life better. I hope to be able to contribute to society by helping those less fortunate people in society who need help. Some people are less fortunate than us, and we should all help one another because we are all human beings. We should share our wealth or love with them so that these needy people will feel warmth. By helping others, we make them happy and at the same time, we can make ourselves happy too.

As the saying goes, good begets good. By helping others, we are doing a good deed, and in future, when we need help, other people will help us too. When I was 12 years old, I went to an orphanage. At that time, I felt that the orphans were very pitiful because they did not have parents at such a young age. Perhaps because of some negative experiences, some of the children had bad temper or eccentric behaviour, for example, unwilling to talk to people. I feel that it is very unfair to these children as compared to us, who were more fortunate, even though we were of the same ages. At this young age, they should be enjoying their childhood and living a carefree life. They should be cared for and loved by their parents. Instead, they had to live in an orphanage. I felt very sorry for them. Hence, I wish to help these children.

Timetable and Reflections

Time	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
7-8am	Sleep	Wake up	Wake up	Sleep	Wake up	Wake up	Sleep
8-9am	Sleep	School	School	sleep	School	Exercise	Sleep
9-10am	Wake up	School	School	Sleep	School	Breakfast	Sleep
10-11am	School	School	School	Wake up	School	Rest	Wake up
11-12am	School	School	School	School	School	Rest	Breakfast
12-1pm	School	School	School	School	School	Surf net	Tuition
1–2pm	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
2–3pm	School	School	School	School	School	Go out	Surf net
3–4pm	School	School	School	School	School	Go out	Surf net
4–5pm	School	Go home	Go home	School	School	Go out	Go out
5-6pm	Go home	Homework	Homework	Go home	School	Go out	Go out
6–7pm	Dinner	Homework	dinner	Dinner	Go home	Go out	Dinner
7–8pm	Homework	Dinner	Watch TV	Exercise	Dinner	Go home	Go home
8–9pm	PP	PP	PP	Surf net	Rest	Dinner	Homework
9–10pm	PP	PP	PP	PP	PP	Homework	Homework
10–11pm	Read book	Surf net	Rest	PP	PP	Homework	Rest
11–12am	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep	Surf net	Surf net
12–7am	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep	Sleep

Reflections

- I should not sleep so late on weekends as it may affect my health.
- I would like to improve my English by reading more books and going to the library to borrow more books.
- When I surf the net I should go to more English websites and watch english movies instead of other language movies.
- I should spend some time on exercise to make my body healthier.
- I should set aside some time for PP almost everyday so that I can be consistent in my work.
- I will set aside Saturday as my resting day where I can go out with my friends and also relax at home.