LifeNets

           This past year I had the opportunity to establish an IRS recognized, non-profit governmental organization (NGO). After much deliberation, LifeNets Foundation Inc., was founded. Our main goal is to help prevent, and eventually, eradicate malaria by raising money for insecticide treated malaria nets, which has been proven to be the most efficient way to combat this deadly disease since one net has the potential to protect a family of four. 100% of the money raised goes towards our cause. We actually raised close to $60k this past year and had the opportunity to travel to Malawi, Africa to teach the villagers how to properly use these nets. However, we are unique from other organizations with similar goals is that we not only buy and distribute insecticide treated nets, we personally work with the locals and teach them how to use it. Since they are not as educated as we are, they may use these nets as fishing nets or other ways that would render these nets useless. It is our job to educate them by setting up workshops and demonstrations.


          We're actually hoping to gain more of a campus presence next year by working with IFC and PANHEL, along with various other RPI run clubs. As vice president of LifeNets, I plan on organizing various on campus events to get everyone involved. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at abhi.saxena.200@gmail.com

Community

Ever since the evolution to homo sapiens, humans have been a social species as they always cling to each other for protection and support. This attachment to each other eventually evolved to something much greater than the earliest homo sapiens could have imagined. Soon we started expanding our groups to include more and more people until a community was formed. However, the meaning of the word community has vastly changed since man first stepped foot onto this planet. The meaning of community can have a myriad of meaning depending on the person one asks. To one person it may mean the neighborhood one lives in and the people he interacts with, while the next person may say something along the lines of an organization that I am part of that shares the same interests with me. Even when you delve the internet for possible definitions, the Merrian-Webster Dictionary tells us that community means “a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society “a community of retired persons” while Dictionary.com tells us community means “a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually prec. by the ): the business community; the community of scholars.” We get four radically different definitions from four different resources we researched. So what is the true definition of community? The definition is in fact a combination of all four of the stated definition. A community is a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, interest, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage. Within a community, there usually exists a strict set of social norms and this can be either beneficial or problematic to a certain group within a society. In African tribes, women are considered vastly inferior to men, which means in a third world region, the opportunity women have is miniscule, if anything at all. For example, Most African women, in common with women all over the world, face a variety of legal, economic and social constraints. Indeed some laws still treat them as minors. In Zaire, for instance, a woman must have her husband's consent to open a bank account. Women are known to grow 80 per cent of food produced in Africa, and yet few are allowed to own the land they work. It is often more difficult for women to gain access to information and technology, resources and credit. Agricultural extension and formal financial institutions are biased towards a male clientele' despite women's importance as producers (this has spurred the growth of women's groups and cooperatives which give loans and other help). Women end up working twice as long as men, 15 to 18 hours a day, but often earn only one tenth as much. With such workloads, women often age prematurely. A explorer Harrison correctly observes that: 'Women's burdens - heavy throughout the third world - are enough to break a camel's back in much of Africa. To combat this caste system, Indego Africa, an organization that creates innovative social enterprise and partners with women artisans in Rwanda on a fair trade basis to drive forward a sustainable, long-term solution to systemic poverty in Africa. In the Rawandan community Indego Africa intends on assisting, there is a heavy favoritism towards the male population. Therefore many husbands of the wives in this business would be heavily against this since eighty percent of the women are primarily agricultural workers. The training and success that women go through with this program is a sign that women are gaining power in Africa and, just like in our history, there is going to be a power struggle throughout this process. Women in African communities are customarily the managers of the house since they cook the meals, take care of the house, while maintaining health and nutrition within the residents for the household. Any signs of a women escaping from her “role” would only be greeted by a large objection from the male population. However, the females do have their own small artisan community where they each support each other. The women work and train together to make and sell their products through Indego Africa and after their products are sold to the buyers, they split the money that they made with each other making sure everyone in their “community” procures a even share of their days work. They are a small family and are united by a goal of selling their products and gaining respect within their community.

What is art?

            What is art? From the time we are young to our adulthood our definition of art is morphed. We all start of by finger painting, then slowly transitioning into coloring books, and finally by our teenage years, most of us have a firm understanding on how to draw many everyday objects. Webster's dictionary defines it as "The expression or application of human creative skills and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture,...."I, however, see art as something that cannot be defined with limitations. Art composes of drawings, songs, designing, and even the stuffed animal you may make for your significant other. They may not fit the traditional definition of the word "art", however, all of them compose or create something merely by using their instinct and talent. Creativity is what makes art, art. Each of the listed occupation integrates a great deal of creativity in their everyday profession. 

  Classifying something as "not being art" is a harder task than saying something is art. I feel there cannot be a criteria of what is dubbed art and what is not due to the general vagueness of art. Since art can be classified as something a toddler makes to a painting that gets sold for millions of dollars, it is a pretty flexible and loose definition. However, just because the creator dubs his work as art, does not make it art. If I were to present a rock in class covered in wax. Even though the creator may have intended this to be "art," it was not accepted by anyone else, therefore not making it art. On the same level, notebook drawings, scribbles are not art because no one else accepts it as such. Art is only real if a group, or a person other than the creator, willing accepts it as art.