Special Itinerary March 2016--Women Who Changed the World

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Special Itinerary March 2016--Women Who Changed the World

This month we are focusing on women who have done some remarkable things, inspired us, or shaped the course of history. Using either the Women in History assembly, the Women Who Changed History display in the front Passport Club case or your own research, write a paragraph telling about one woman you find special. In the space below, tell us why she is interesting, important, or inspiring to you or the effect she has had on our world.

Women Who Changed the World text

“I sound like a dreamer, I know. The challenge facing us today is to think like dreamers but act in a pragmatic manner. Let us remember that many of humanity's accomplishments began as a dream.”   —Shirin Ebadi

In 1975, Shirin Ebadi became the first female judge in Iran. In the 1990's she practiced law and began taking human rights cases, founded the Association for Support of Children's Rights in 1995, and the Human Rights Defense Center in 2001. In 2003 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially women's, children’s, and refuge rights. She was the first Iranian ever to receive the prize.

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"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." ~Mother Teresa

Born in 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia and baptized as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the girl who would become Mother Teresa had her own role model, her mother. "My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others," said Drana Bojaxhiu. Even after Agnes's father had become ill and died and their own resources were scarce, Drana invited the city's poor to come and eat with them. "Some of them are our relations, but all of them are our people." Agnes's mother's lessons of compassion, piety and charity made their mark. For Mother Teresa, a life devoted to her faith led to teach in India for 17 years as a missionary before hearing " a call within a call" to devote herself to caring for the sick and poor. Her order established a hospice; centers for the blind, aged, and disabled; and a leper colony. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work. She died in September 1997 and was beatified in October 2003. She was canonized as a saint in 2016 by Pope Francis.

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“In Kenya, running is highly valued and I had to constantly struggle to maintain balance. Finally, my running brought me into contact with the world outside my community and I realized how much we had to do to make a better world for ourselves. Later, as I began to see communities like ours in Darfur, in Mumbai, in Brazil, I realized how important it is for us all to dedicate a part of ourselves to helping others become all they can be." ---Tegla Laroupe

At the age of seven, Tegla Loroupe started to go to school, which involved a barefoot run of ten kilometers (6.23 miles) every morning. Although her father banned her from running, saying it was "unladylike", her talent for running was spotted at school. She was the first African woman to win the New York Marathon and became an important sporting role model. Kenya finally had a female runner to rank alongside its talented male athletes. Along with winning many major marathons around the world, she founded the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation and is an active advocate for peace. She has successfully brought warring tribes together. In 2006, she founded the 10 Kilometer Peace Race, which included 2,000 warriors from 6 different tribes. Her motivation for the race was to use her fame to help bring about greater harmony. That year, she was named a United Nations Ambassador of Sport. Also a member of the Champions for Peace, a group of athletes who use the power of sport to bring about peace, Tegla is a role model for Kenyan woman.

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 Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) was an influential woman in her native Kenya during her lifetime. She was the first woman in Central or East Africa to obtain her doctorate, earning her PhD at the University of Nairobi, where she also taught veterinary studies. She was also the first woman in the region to become chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and an associate professor. In 1976, while serving in the National Council of Women, Professor Maathai began to develop the Green Belt Movement. This organization's main focus is poverty reduction, empowering communities--especially girls and women-- to foster sustainable livelihoods, and environmental conservation through tree planting. Since then, this group has planted over 51 million trees in Kenya. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in 2004, and in 2009, the United Nations Secretary-General named Professor Maathai a UN Messenger of Peace with a focus on the environment and climate change. In her lifetime, the Professor has earned fifteen honorary degrees and nearly fifty prestigious awards for her work.

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 Dorothy Hodgkin

Have you ever gotten sick and taken antibiotics to get well again? You have Dorothy Hodgkin to thank! Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1910, her family moved to England. Growing up, Dorothy became interested in chemistry and crystals. On her sixteenth birthday, she received a book by William Henry Bragg (a Nobelist in physics) about using x-rays to analyze crystals. This book would inspire her life's work.  Graduating from Oxford in 1932, she found a position in an x-ray crystallography* lab studying biological crystals. This technique helped scientists discover the structure of molecules. Though she suffered from arthritis, she became one of the most skilled crystallographers of her time. She became known at Cambridge, and later at Oxford, for choosing projects that no one else thought were possible. For four years she worked to discover the complex structure of penicillin; this discovery meant that synthetic antibiotics could be developed. After another 10 years of work, she announced the structure of Vitamin B-12. In 1964, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Years later, she would unlock the mysteries of the molecular structure of insulin. Such tenacity, hard work, and dedication-- and belief in her vision--has had an amazing and long-lasting impact on us all.

* The science dealing with crystallization and the forms, properties, and structure of crystals.

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“It is rare that a government will deliver out of the goodness of its heart, but history has shown that a genuine people’s movement can move more than governments. It can move mountains.” – Faith Bandler

Faith Bandler was born into her life's work. When her father was 12, he was kidnapped from his home island in the Vanuatu chain in the South Seas and brought to Australia to work as a slave in the Queensland cane fields. Growing up on a farm in New South Wales, Australia, Faith and her sister served in the Australian Women's Land Army, working on fruit farms. Noticing that she, her sister, and other Indigenous women (Aborigines) were being paid less than white women, she began to campaign for equal pay for Aboriginal and other Indigenous workers. During the 1950s, she became involved in the Peace movement. In 1956 she was a key figure in the Australian Aboriginal Fellowship, which removed discriminatory laws from the Constitution of Australia. Aboriginal peoples were now to be counted and protected by the same laws and political representation as white Australians.  This also gave Aborigines the right to vote. Before then, Aborigines were not allowed to vote in some states and then, only conditionally. In 1974, Faith founded the National Commission for Australian South Sea Islanders in order to help her own people, the 16,000 descendants of South Sea Islanders. Although Faith Bandler died in 2015, her efforts paved the way for others to continue her work in ensuring better access to government services, education for the Islanders, as well as the acceptance of the South Sea Islanders as their own ethnic group with its own culture and history. 

February Special Itinerary

Just a note: I'm unsure how to remove the highlighting from this document, but it is not significant to the content, so please ignore.

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Special Itinerary Project for February-- Going to School

How do you get to school? Do you walk, bike, scooter, or go by car?
Do you walk with a friend, your dog, your parents or brother or sister?

This month, tell us how you get to school.

Using a separate sheet of paper, draw a map of your usual route to school. Be sure to include the following:

·         A symbol/compass rose to help orient your map ( North, South, East, West)

·         Major streets (examples: Cesar Y Chavez Boulevard, Glisan Street, Burnside, 41st Avenue, Royal Court)

·         Marked crosswalks and major intersections (examples: Coe Circle, 47th Avenue and Glisan, 41st and Burnside)

·         Other interesting features or landmarks you might use to describe your path. (Coffee shops or restaurants, churches/special buildings, the hospital, favorite swings, little libraries, businesses)

If you choose to use symbols to label interesting things, be sure to create a legend to tell us what your symbols mean.