Over the last couple of decades the fires in the Western US have continued to escalate. Compared to the 1980s and 90s, the amount of area burned has more than doubled. Data before the early 1980s agrees with this upward trend, but it is important to note that regulatory agencies have deemed this data incomplete and of poor quality. With the excepti...

Looking back at 2019 there are some reasons for optimism, but the issue our precious planet is facing has not changed. The biggest ever climate change demonstrations and strikes happened in 2019. This shows us that young people are worried about their future; they are ready to act, but they still don’t have a real model to follow. More and more cou...

Arguably the biggest refugee crisis in the world right now, the diaspora created by the Syrian civil war is numbering in the millions. A constant flow of people are seeking asylum daily in neighboring countries like Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and many European nations. The war played a significant role as a source of instability in the Middle East, an...

A recurring theme of the 2020 pandemic seems to be highlighting existing issues that have been exacerbated by the way our world screeched to a halt. Changes in how we purchase, consume, and move about the world have illuminated difficulties in our environment, economy, and entertainment industries. Food waste is a global problem, with estimates of ...

Studying the environment is difficult because we often can’t isolate the world from all of the factors that make it up. For example, it’s difficult to measure the effects of air quality on populations of the world because conditions are so varied. Many underdeveloped countries have poor air quality, but also have populations for which smoking is a ...

Yemen, being the poorest Arab nation, is suffering the world’s worst humanitarian, man-made crisis with more than 24 million people - an astounding 80% of the population - in need of humanitarian assistance due to famine, disease and war, including 12 million children. The background to the crisis in Yemen began from the Arab Spring of 2011, when a...

Seven billion human beings live on planet Earth. But despite of our vast collective knowledge, the oceans remain a largely unknown territory even though they take up three fourth of our planet. We as humanity rely on the oceans for our very survival. All life started in the ocean. We come from the ocean – 4 billions years ago from the colony of liv...

At some point in the last few weeks a picture likely flitted across your screen of hundreds of fuzzy brown heads with the words “Duck Army.” The BCC reported that China had proposed to send 100,000 ducks to Pakistan to combat their locust problem. Locust swarms have been a problem for years in Africa and the Middle East. In fact, in 2019, a swarm t...

In the midst of Covid-19, we are witnessing another devastating pandemic, resulting from the perpetuation of systemic racism and white supremacy. This also occurs worldwide, across international borders and affects large numbers of people. Covid-19 has resulted in many people being confined to their homes, with limited physical social contact; whic...

British Commerce and the Triangular Trade According to Adam Smith, the discovery of America and the Cape route to India are “the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind”. The importance of the discovery of America lay not in the precious metals it provided but in the new and inexhaustible market it afforded for Eur...

This chapter gives a loose definition of globalization and sheds light on the history of how England fought for free markets, how the gap between rich and poor peaked in the years before World War 1, how World Wars, the Russian Revolution and the crisis of the 1930s reduced the gap between the classes, and how the era of globalization after 1980 ha...

The concept of intelligence is used to describe how well the brain of a person works. It is important for a child to fully develop its intelligence and for anyone to keep developing the intelligence until old age. You may extend the concept to include different intelligences, and we will here describe four plus one intelligence. Logical intelligenc...

By Jomo Thomas, St. Vincent. Frustration always overcomes me when people, who are for the most part sensible, logical and rational, get taken for a ride by the establishment media. In fact, the current 'snow job' being done on Venezuela by the mass media reminded me of the wise saying by Malcolm X 'if you are not extremely careful, the media will c...

Every Monday and Friday we have what we call morning class. Everyone, teachers, students, guest speaker are welcome to prepare a presentation about any topic that is of interest to them and share their passion about it. This morning a guest speaker that we love inviting for his passionate talks, came to tell us more about the relatio...

Plain Talk, Nov. 1 2017 With increasing frequency, the Caribbean has been experiencing heavy rainfall, devastating floods, monster hurricanes, very hot days and nights as well as prolonged periods of droughts. So far this year, the region has witnessed two category 5 hurricanes that wreaked havoc in Dominica, Tortola, St Croix, BVI, Turks and Caico...

During the week we have 2-3 classes all together covering topics from compost toilets, health benefits of moringa to the exploitation of Haiti.   As a Climate Activist and Development Instructor it is important to get a better understanding about the world. In the Fighting with The Poor Program there are several studies such as reaso...

In 1800 only about 2 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas. That was a small wonder: Until a century ago, urban areas were some of the unhealthiest places for people to live. According to The Department of Economic and Social Affairs , half of the global population already lives in cities, and by 2050 two-thirds of the world's peop...

By Andrea During the 18 months Fighting with The Poor Programs, students have the opportunity to learn about world history, the world of  today and also looking into future tendencies. One of the books recommended to read is Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" Shock is a word of French origin that means a collision. It refers to a violent event...

The world we live in is a beautiful place, full of marvels and opportunities for all of us to live and thrive in peace. And yet, for some, it is a daunting space, plagued by horrors. The vast majority of these horrors are caused by man and all of them can either be eradicated or alleviated by us. So, never before has mankind had such a big opportun...

Photo Credit: Wikipedia If you’re like us, you have given volunteer work a good, long thought . You have considered the volunteering options available to you in near and remote places. Also, you have mapped out the monetary expenses, the duration of the volunteering program you will engage in, the benefits of volunteering, plane tickets and so on a...