This story was a group project from 3rd grade students in New York, who were challenged to create a fictitious story based on the commonalities of their own experiences from our “Leadership and Global Impact” prompt through The Sharability Project.

It was peaceful all over the world, until… it all started, the bullying. Everybody was seeing bullying at schools. This was no ordinary bullying because it was the worse you could imagine. It was so bad because it was happening everywhere at the same time in every school all over the word. It was happening in China, California, Jamaica, Mexico, America, Los Angeles, Newburgh, Las Vegas, Hollywood Brazil, and New Mexico! In Washington D.C there was a principal who didn’t want anyone’s feelings to be hurt because he cared a lot. His name was Principal Obama. He heard that the bullying had gotten worse so he wanted to end the bulling. Even though it was too much work, he called all the principals all over the world because he cared about the students, and he wants to communicate and talk out their problems. So late that night he gathered all the principals from all over the world and went to dinner in Mexico to have a meeting.  They decided to work things out with the kids who bullied. The principals went back to their schools and they started reasoning with the bullies. The bullies told the principals that they bully because they want to do whatever they want and they want to feel power. They also said they want to avoid being bullied themselves.  The principals decided to show them kindness and not suspend them if they stopped bullying. They gave the bullies a second chance. They promised to not let them down after they were given their second chance. The bullies finally stopped bullying. The principals had worked it out thanks to principal Obama’s ability to share, listen to everyone, and realize that punishment was not the answer. When everyone worked together, the kids, the bullies and the principals, then the bullying stops.  Kids don’t feel scared anymore and they feel confident to go back to school.  When there is no bullying we can all be friends.

This story was a group project from 9th grade students in New York, who were challenged to create a fictitious story based on the commonalities of their own experiences from our “Leadership and Global Impact” prompt through The Sharability Project.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Adom who dreamed of becoming a leader.  He was the son of Superman.  He was a good son and he loved his father.  One day his father left him, and their home planet Superior, to save another planet.  Adom was only 8 years old when his dad left to go save the other planet named planet X.   While his father was gone, an evil planet launched a nuclear bomb and destroyed planet Superior.

Adom was the only survivor do to the powers he obtained from his pops.   Adom felt abandoned, angry, stressed, sad, and frustrated.   Although he wanted to be a leader, now he wanted be an evil one.  He wanted to be controlling, violent, didn’t want to respect anyone, and didn’t follow rules.   He wanted to avenge his planet and decided to move to Earth and he became ruler of this planet.   His dad (superman) came to earth and tried to stop him from destroying it.  He was destroying people’s homes, cars, and possessions.  He had plans to blast the entire planet with everyone on it.   He tried to turn people against each other, to start war, so it wouldn’t look like he was trying to destroy the planet for no reason in the eyes of his father.

Superman flew down to earth looking for his son, realized the destruction, and everyone fighting each other.  He found his son sitting upon a throne in New York City—Superman showed a mirror to his son.  Adom looked into the mirror and he realized who he was, and he began turning good again.  Adom began fixing everything around him. He asked everyone to begin to talk about the problems. He talked to his father about his anger. He asked the citizens to talk about the economy, their country and city, and the rules of law.  Adom realized the solution to war was to talk and learn about people, use kind words and to say you are sorry.  Adom realized he needed to clean up his actions. Superman realized he needed to apologize to his son and also clean up his actions.  Adom learned that by cleaning up your actions and taking responsibility for yourself and anger, you can make peace.

This story was a group project from 4th grade students in Taiwan, who were challenged to create a fictitious story based on the commonalities of their own experiences from our “Leadership and Global Impact” prompt through The Sharability Project.

One day in Africa, two friends named Zimbawe and Bonga decided to go on an adventure through the safari.  They often liked to see the elephants grazing in the grasslands.  They like to sneak up quietly and watch them for hours.  However, today, they were in for an unexpected experience.  As they approached their usual hiding place they saw two poachers preparing to kill a helpless elephant.

“What are they doing?” Zimbawe asked.

“Poaching,” whispered Bonga.

“What’s that?”

“It’s when people hunt, kill and capture protected animals.  Poaching is illegal in most countries; however, here in Africa, there aren’t any laws against it, which makes it very popular for people to do.  Unfortunately, this means many animals; especially elephants and rhinos are becoming endangered.  Some species have even become extinct already.”

“Oh, why do they want to do that?”

“The main reason people poach is because they are greedy and they want to make a lot of money.  Poachers sell the animals and animal parts, for example, tusks, horns and skins to people so they can get a lot of money quickly.  Some items, such as ivory, can cost up to thousands of dollars.  Animals are also killed for food, clothes, wool, make up and jewelry.”

“What should we do now?”

Suddenly they noticed some rocks on the ground.

“Let’s throw these rocks to scare the elephant and make him run away.”

Zimbawe and Bonga pick up the rocks and throw them towards the elephants.  Their plan worked and the elephants began to stampede out of the poacher’s way.  In the dust, the boys were able to escape safely.  They quickly ran to the police department to tell them what they saw.

The police men, Sanchez and Carlos, were interested to know what they saw.  There were two poachers they had been after for quite a while.  They had been seen poaching many different rare animals around the world and they wanted to capture them.  After the boys told them everything they made a plan.

The next day they met at the police department and climbed into the jeep to go back to where they saw the poachers before.  Fortunately, since the poachers didn’t get the elephant the day before, they had camped over night hoping the elephants would come back.  After several hours of waiting they finally saw the elephants approaching and the poachers get ready to shoot one again.

Carlos and Sanchez jumped up and shouted, “Put your hands up, you’re under arrest!”

The poachers jumped back startled and dropped their gun.  Carlos and Sanchez arrested the evil poachers and took them to jail.  They thanked the boys for their help in catching the poachers and everyone went home happy.

Extra facts about endangered animals:

1. Some people in Asia buy tiger skin to get fashion rugs.

2. People also buy medicine made with rhino horns to cure diseases.

3. Different countries trade elephant tusks for ivory to make trinkets and other accessories.

This story was a group project from 4th grade students in Taiwan, who were challenged to create a fictitious story based on the commonalities of their own experiences from our “Leadership and Global Impact” prompt through The Sharability Project.

Once upon a time there were kids from an elementary school walking to school.  Then they saw smoke coming out of the factories and chimneys in the neighborhood.  They put their hands over their nose and mouth because the smoke could make them very sick.  Suddenly, two teenagers named Tiffany who is very helpful and Chelsea who is very fair and caring walked by the factories and saw what was happening.

Tiffany said, “Air pollution can result from both human and natural causes.”

Chelsea said, “that the long tubes called chimneys that stood high into the air were polluting the air with the smoke and fumes that were coming out of them.

“We need to do something to help future kids not have to breath such bad air” said Tiffany.

The girls decided to talk to the factory owner about using more natural resources that created less pollution in the air.  At first the owner was not happy but after several discussions he finally agreed.

The next day Tiffany and Chelsea went to the lake where they used to go fishing.  However, when they arrived they saw dead fish floating around and trash all around the lake.

“This is terrible!”, exclaimed Chelsea.  “People throw trash in the water and garbage trucks sometimes even throw trash into lakes, ponds and even oceans.  Sometimes boats spread oil and trash all around the ocean.  The fish and ducks are dying because of it.”

They decided to organize a public clean up and invited everyone in the neighborhood to help.  The news came to cover the story which inspired other people to clean their neighborhoods too.

Jack, Max and Steven were Tiffany and Chelsea’s friends.  After they saw the lake clean up on the news they decided to see what they could do about the logging going on in the forest.  They decided to go on a hike.

“Did you know that recycling a ton of paper saves 17 trees and recycling half the world’s paper would save 20 million acres of forest land?”  Suddenly they heard the sound of saws chopping down the trees nearby.  They ran to the location and shouted, “Stop what you’re doing over there!”  But it was too noisy.

Jack told Max and Steven, “We need to tell the government because this is a big problem that needs to be addressed in order to be fair to the people and nature in the area.  The government decided to decrease the amount of trees that could be chopped down in the area each year.  Jack, Max and Steven decided to plant saplings in area where the loggers had chopped down the trees.  They hoped the next generation of trees would survive against the loggers.

Extra facts about polluting:

Air pollution

1  Cars and heavy duty trucks, trains, shipping vessels and airplanes all burn lots of  fossil fuels to work.This is a major cause of pollution,and one that is difficult to manage.

2   Air pollution affects kids more than adults because, for their body size, kids breathe more air and spend more time playing outside.

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Preschoolers in Vietnam share about the festive decorations they made for Vietnamese New Year, February 9, 2013.

It's the year of the Snake!

Money in red envelopes is considered lucky

Happy New Year in multiple languages

Lucky Decorations for the New Year

Vietnamese yellow apricot flower; Hoa Mai.

More Hoa Mai

Hoa Mai and Watermelon are good luck

Watermelons are considered good luck

Year of the Snake

Vietnamese Fire Crackers

12th grade art students from Ontario, Canada and 2nd grade art students from Osaka, Japan shared visual representations of their local architecture.

The Journal Swap for Peace is a project designed to create cultural awareness, empathy among peers and to promote communication and literacy.  This project emphasizes self-awareness and organizational writing skills through journaling about daily life. Through the exploration and documentation of our individual occurrences and then the sharing/swapping of these journals, students understand ways in which their lives compare and contrast to peers in other countries. 

Maddie

Maddie, from Australia, shares a story about her family.

Caitlin

Caitlin, from Australia, shares a story about her first pet.

Derrick

Derrick, from Taiwan, gets a closeup with a friend he met in the wild.

Peace

Joanne

Joanne, from Taiwan, gives a presentation to her classmates and their parents

Alex

Alex, from Taiwan, proudly presents his certificate for participating in his class' 2012 American Presidential vote

Ian

Ian from New York, shows off his love of Basketball and his town.

Jaslyn

Jaslyn, from New York, shows her love of her after-school program with her new friends.

Mexico

One of our participants from Mexico describes a peaceful Tuesday with their mother.

Mexico

One of our Mexican students shares a buys day in their life.

Zion

Zion, an elementary student from New York shares a story about his family and their Thanksgiving celebration.

Ian

Ian, an elementary student from New York tells a short story about a visit to his grandmother.

Sue

Sue, a student from Taiwan, describes a peaceful day in her week. She loves spending time with her family.

Alex

Alex, a student from Taiwan, shares his first time 'voting' in a mock-up of the 2012 American presidential election.

Liam

Liam is an elementary student from Australia. He describes his first experience as a pet owner and his favorite hobby; Video gaming

Lachlan

Lachlan is a student from Australia. He lends some insight about his personal journey in his blog. He talks about his story and how it has helped him grow.

• The students journaled for 7 days.

• The students methods of journaling included; Blog posts, PowerPoint and Web pages

• Students corresponded via email for 2 weeks to reflect and share. 

If your organization is interested in participating in this project,

contact us at: Know My World

Enjoy! 

A young boy’s journey to meet the big world around him.  Check it out, and get to know your world!

Two friends, Scott and Jamiles, pay it forward and participate in The Sharbility Project through music.

Scott

Since I was in elementary school, I have been a swimmer both competitively, and for recreational purposes.  I use the term competitively lightly also.  One of the only reasons I stayed on our summer swim team… Read more

Jamiles

Between 2008 and 2012 I overcame my own laziness and dismissive judgments to embrace a lifestyle of fitness and wellness.  As someone who grew up without being particularly athletic…Read more

Since I was in elementary school, I have been a swimmer both competitively, and for recreational purposes. I use the term competitively lightly also. One of the only reasons I stayed on our summer swim team was for the promised Lego set from my mom each summer. The workout was both physically and mentally demanding and the idea of wearing skin tight bathing suits usually turned me off from the sport. Middle school was socially challenging enough, without having my fellow classmates see me at the pool in a speedo.

In my freshmen year of high school, I was approached by a couple of upperclassmen who wanted me to join the varsity swim team. It was definitely something I was not planning on continuing to do. One of the main reasons I decided to join was more so for the people who were involved. I knew a few of, and there were only a few others, the guys on the team and the coach was also my middle school health teacher. I still worried about what others in my own class would think though.

As the season got started, my peers began to see me hanging out with the swimmers more and the rest of my classmates found out that I was apart of the team. The initial reaction was mixed. The team was small so no one really knew much about us except for the fact that swimmers wear speedos. There was some teasing and name calling that went along with it but I had my close friends, teammates and coach to help me through the initial stages.

That team turned out to be a very successful team, placing much hire than any previous years and numbers began to grow rapidly. My first year’s team had maybe 12 swimmers at the most. By my senior year the team had grown to around 25. Not only did we help to make a name for swimmers in new paltz, but it led me to a much healthier active style of life. The move to go against what was the high school “social norm” taught me that you’ll never know what rewards might come from something unless you give it a try.

Since my high school years, I have life guarded at numerous pools, a certifications would have never been able to obtain without my swimming skills. I have taught countless swim lessons and coached swim teams. I have also become an avid swimmer, runner and cyclist for personal exercise. Without this experience, I truly feel that I would have lived a much different life.