LienekeD

==Greeting’s children of the natural world. My name is Lieneke (yes, I am half Dutch; no I was not born in Holland.) I am a 17 year old grade 11 student at Woodstock High School. I come from a family of six and have two sisters and one brother. I live in Jacksonville which is just outside of Woodstock.== ==In school my favorite subjects are History, Music, English and Theatre Arts. Math is my enemy and French is that annoying class that leaves me in a state of perpetual boredom. I play the Tuba in the school band and I am involved in the school musicals and Drama groups.== ==I have a rather psychotic cat named Basil, and I possess a great fear of big dogs, spiders and hights. I love all varieties of music, and am heavily involved in all things having to do with theatre and the arts. I read on average 3-4 books a week depending on the length and at any one time you could find me in the middle of 2 or more novels. I love children and work as a counselor at a Bible camp during the summer, and in the church nursery.==

This site has been set up as part of a class I'm taking called "//Confronting Injustice//." Please feel free to have a look around. ALL opinions are welcome here.

 * __//Street Children//__

__Tuesday February 13, 2007__ Friday we had an awesome guest speaker who talked to us about Guatemalan street children. She gave us some common factors that contribute to children turning to the streets including poverty, war, natural disasters and AIDS orphans. Some children have friends living in the street or in gangs. Compared to terrible home conditions the offer of protection and acceptance from a gang may look enticing. Some children come from large families, all living in a small hovel. Begging in the streets may be their families only source of income. Tired of such poor living conditions, the freedome to live by their own rule and terms often lure children to the city streets where an even poorer lifestyle awaits them. These children are often mistreated by the authorities that should be protecting them. Police steal their wares, beat them, sometimes to death, and arrest them without ever being brought to justice. The children are tried and sentenced as criminals, the sole reason being that they are street children. They are seen as being bad for tourism, and since they are not the governments problem, they are easily "disposed of."They are condemmed by society without being given a fighting chance. Their circumstances are heartbreaking, if this were happening in North America the uproar over this injustice would deafen the country. As relatively well off white North Americans living thousands of miles away, it is easy for us to point the finger at the Guatemalan governments lack of action, yet we sit here and do nothing but shake our heads and promptly forget this "sad pity." They may not have the power to change their situation, but we do.

//__Rigoberta Menchu__//

February 14, 2007** = =
 * Dear Rigoberta Menchú,**
 * I am a grade 11 student from New Brunswick, Canada. I read your story as part of a class I am taking called confronting injustice. Coming from a rather privileged culture, I can’t imagine having to live the life you have. In a world where people feed off the atrocities shown on the news each day, it’s wonderful to have a story where one not only works to overcome the hardships that try to hold them back, but to also work to change those obstacles so those that come after you can have a better life.**
 * To have even one member of one’s family tortured, raped or killed would be enough to cause anyone to lose hope, but all this carnage happened to your father, brother and mother, and you managed to rise above it. You used your circumstances to help break the chains of injustice that held your people captive.**
 * I believe your book will help raise awareness of what is happening in your country, and cause people to examine their lives and realize how truly fortunate they are. To continue your work even though death threats have forced you into exile is inspiring.**
 * Thank you for being a beacon of light in a bleak world, and for bringing hope not only to your people, but to the millions of people that have read your story and decided to help take action.**


 * Sincerely,**
 * Lieneke den Otter

__//Latvian Holocoaust//__

Our definition of injustice is: //A situation in which a person or a group of persons is mistreated or denied basic human rights, including life liberty, equality and security for reasons beyond the person’s control.// What happened to the Latvian Jews during world war two defiantly falls under our definition. They went from having their own community, schools, and culture, to being incarcerated in ghettos with few possessions, and terrible living conditions. They lived in constant fear of the Germen mobile killing units who would kill them without thought or conscience. In late 1941, 26 000 Riga Jews were told they were being moved “further east,” in actuality, they were all slaughtered in the Rumbula forest, 5 miles away from Riga. The remaining 4000-5000 were imprisoned in a small section of the Latvian ghetto along with 20 000 German, Austrian, Bohemian and Moravian Jews, who were held captive in a larger part of the ghetto. Most of the German Jews deported to Riga were later killed in the Rumbula Forest. Small groups of Riga Jews managed to escape and join partisans in nearby forests, but in October of 1942, German police discovered a small band of members from Jewish underground. The Germans retaliated by murdering over 100 people from the ghetto and nearly all Jewish policemen. In mid-1943, the Jews were deported to the Kaiserwald concentration camp and its sub-camps, and destroyed the ghetto in December. In 1944, the Germans attempted to obliterate any and all evidence of mass murder. Prisoners were forced to burn the bodies in the mass graves in Rumbula. The prisoners were also later killed. In the summer of 1944, the Germans murdered thousands of Jews being held in Kaiserwald and its subcamps, and sent the survivors to the Stutthof concentration camp in Germany. On October 13, 1944, the Soviet army liberated Riga. Pretty much all of Riga's Jews had been slaughtered by the Nazis.**

=__Bullying In School__=

I work at a children's Bible camp during the summer. One week in one of my interest groups, I had a boy who was being bullied by some other boys in his cabin. One of the boys also bullied him at school, and the teachers “couldn’t do anything to stop him.” Just by switching cabins his confidence level soared and he had a great time for the remainder of the week. Bullying can not only be physically harmful, but emotionally** **destructive as well. I can’t imagine how the person who wrote this must have felt with both students and staff against them.** = =
 * This is an absolute outrage! Not only was this student tormented day after day at school, they were also unjustly accused of bullying her tormentors. This situation was not dealt with properly at all. It seems to me that the teachers were entirely one sided and did not even bother to look into what was rely going on. The student was treated unjustly by the adults that have the professional obligation to treat everyone fairly and to protect students from this same type of treatment that they themselves are doling out. Even if the student had been guilty of harassing other students, she did not deserve to receive “glares” like they were some sort of “criminal” from what should have been good role models.


 * __Homophobic Bullying__**
 * No one deserves to be treated like this. Picking on someone because of their sexuality is like picking on someone because of the colour of their hair. This boy suffered from the lack of action the staff took against the perpetrators of his abuse. No one should be too afraid to go to the bathroom, locker room, or even** **his or her** **own locker for fear of being harassed. And then to also hassle his father, it’s not his fault his son is gay. If you have a beef with someone, at least work it out with that person. Don’t take it out on their family.**
 * Earlier this year I had a friend who was punched out for the sole reason of being gay. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with homosexuality or not, everyone deserves to be treated with respect, regardless of their sexuality.**

__**Religious Bullying**__
 * Since 9/11 every muslim has suddenly become an evil terrorist in the eyes of our nation. Their peers called Rashida and her friend’s terrorists just because they wore headscarfs. Surely Rashida’s classmates know that she is not old enough to fly a plane, let alone crash it into a building. Not every single muslim is waiting to murder the masses. A few radicals have given a peaceful religion a bad name.**
 * I can understand how Rashida must have felt as I have faced persecution for my faith. Although I have never been physically attacked, it is never fun to be called names, have your faith raked over the coals, or be told that you’re a closed minded, lesser individual because of what you believe.**


 * __Cyber Bullying__**
 * My heart breaks for all of these girls, what makes them think it’s okay to threaten another human beings life? Somewhere along the line their thinking got seriously warped. And to the poor student that was receiving the death threats; they must have felt like less than a person, like life is not even worth living because their peers hate them and want them dead. Thank goodness the police and staff are “treating this matter very seriously.” At least those girls are learning how dangerous their words and actions can be, and to the other child, know they know that there are people out there to support them. This situation could have turned out incredibly different; what if the bullied child had felt so unloved and useless that they had committed suicide? Or what if they had felt so worthless that they brought a gun to school to take out their anger, or started to bully someone else and just continued the cycle of hate? People need to think about what they do and say. They may not intentionally try to be cruel, but it may come off that way to others.**


 * __Bullying from the perpetrators point of view__**
 * I wish that this woman knew then what she knows now, it could have saved so much pain and regret for both parties. This woman bullied others as a way of coping with being bullied herself. What if the girl she bullied had decided to continue the cycle of bullying? Brought a gun to school or worse, committed suicide as a result of being bullied?**
 * I wonder if she had known that she would still be living with the guilt of what she had done 20 years later, would she have done it? She bullied this girl because she was everything she wasn’t. She viewed this other girl as inferior, weaker; having something that she could dominate made her feel stronger.**
 * Bullies everywhere, beware! Don’t have your actions come back to haunt you. Remember the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Would you want this to happen to you? Your children?**
 * I have met people my age (17) that have regretted things they’ve done or said, or what they didn’t do or say. We have about 85-90 years to live, who wants to be living another 75 years with that kind of guilt?

Riga, Latvia I don't understand this? How can people be so cruel and hateful towards their fellow human beings? and then to be laughed at and decieved by the police. No wonder there is an endless cycle of hate rampaging through the world. How are we ever to have peace when all we teach our children is hate?

Rape**
 * I felt sick while reading this, I can’t imagine experiencing something so devastating, knowing that there will be no support from family, friends or government. I think that culture is extremely important for any society, but this is disturbing and heartbreaking. We have the money and the means to help these women and to help change the mindset of the men who commit these atrocious acts. Canadian women at least have some support, but the pain is still the same. Some girls have been claiming to have been raped when they haven’t, and because of this, some girls who have been violated are not receiving justice.

Zero Policy Yes the boy shouldn’t have brought something that looks like a gun to school; he should have let the teacher know in advance that he was bringing the Squirt gun in to show the class. But give me a break! The kid is 10 years old for crying out loud! The punishment does not fit this feeble crime. The fact that he was bringing the water gun in for a class project should have been taken into account. This kid was used as an example for others: “Hey this kid brought a realistic looking squirt gun in and has been punished. Beware to anyone who dares to bring a real one in.” This boy had no intention to cause harm or to pretend it was a real gun. I think that this was blown way out of proportion. Maybe next time he will think before he acts.**

It’s great to see youth that don’t have a lot giving so much. They may not have had a choice about the circumstances they were born into, but they do have the power to change their situations. We are so lucky that we have the luxury of safety in our country. It’s easy to forget that there are kids growing up in gangs and violence across the world. It's awesome to hear success stories like this, kids using their talents to improve their surroundings. These people are going to take what they've learned at Iqui Balma and in turn, teach their own children peace instead of war and forgiveness instead of revenge.**
 * Street Theatre-Guatemala