World Perspectives

     The world perspectives conference was definitely worthwhile. While we were there we were able to see quite a few speakers and listen to different topics. The first couple of seminars were about poverty and world perspectives. We had the option of which one to go to and I decided I would go to the World Perspectives seminar because most of our group went to the Poverty seminar.

     The World Perspectives seminar was extremely interesting. They had four different women sit together in front of the group and speak to all of us in there. Before they began they told us that two of the speakers were experts on the topic of world perspectives while the other two were not, and just had their own outlooks and opinions on the topic. All of the women had 10 minutes to speak about the topic and then afterwards there was an open question and answer. As I am writing I can't recall the name of the last speaker, but I believe it was something like MaryAnn. She is the vice president of an international chain of hotels located out of San Francisco. The issue that she pressed on the most was homelessness. Majority of the population of San Francisco is homeless, and if you've ever been there you can easily agree that the city has an extremely high poverty level. She compared the way America handles poverty to the way Asian countries handle poverty and homelessness. She found that poverty in other countries was simply just not accepted. In America we find ourselves trying to help so much that it almost hurts the people more in the long run. It is as if the homeless people in America are babied to the point of no return. They become dependent on shelters and people giving out money nearly every day, while they could be working to find a job or get clean to help improve their own living. Don't get me wrong...I'm a believer in helping the less fortunate, but when comparing it to the way Asian countries handle homelessness it just makes so much more sense. In essence they don't even allow people to become homeless because families are not willing to let someone from their family fall. I think that is the reason why the percent of the homeless Asian population is far less than Americas. The speaker had said that in Japan the population is 13 times the population of San Francisco, but they only have 5000 homeless people. All while San Francisco alone has about twice as many homeless.

     The numbers and the things that the speakers had to say were astonishing. I realize I have only told you about one topic that one woman spoke about, but it was the thing that stood out the most to me. When you open up your eyes to the real problems in the world you find yourself taking an entirely new outlook on life.

     During the Peter Corolla presentation we watched a documentary that was incredible if you ask me! It gives you a taste of something happening right here in America every day. You never really realize all the things going on around you until you hear about it firsthand. It was a memorable experience!