Introduction
For my first Apollo project this school year I chose hunger as my topic. I specifically want to learn more about hunger in the Central African Republic since that is the country with the most cases of hunger. I decided to focus on what causes hunger.
History
For the history portion of my project I decided to represent and organize the research I have done about hunger in the Central African Republic by creating a mind map using MindMup. All of the information in my mind map is separated into three sections that each play a part in hunger in the Central African Republic. The first section is the environment. The environment in the Central African Republic hinders farmers from successfully growing their crops because of the heat and the low rainfall. Low rainfall means the crops will not grow in time for the harvesting season and high temperatures will affect the quality of the crops. The second section is agriculture. The farmers in the Central African Republic lack the education to properly grow crops. As a result of this the seeds that the farmers plant to not always successfully grow. There are programs such as the One Acre Farm that are helping to educate farmers about agriculture. The third and final section is infrastructure. Most of the houses in the Central African Republic are made of mud and sticks, which means that they do not have proper sanitation structure or clean water. As a result of this many of the Central African Republic Citizens are more prone to diseases such as malaria. I attached the link to my mind map in the button below.
Language Arts
For the language arts portion of my project I read the book "The Last Hunger Season" by Roger Thurow. The book takes place in Kenya, which is a country in Africa that struggles with hunger. One of the reason why hunger is a problem in Africa is because most of the farmers in don't know or understand how to farm properly. As a result of this most of the crops that they farmers plant do not successfully grow. The book focuses on a program called "The One Acre Fund". This programs educates farmers in poorer countries in hopes that it will increase the amount of crops they have. The book also discusses other challenges farmers in Kenya face such as low rainfall and limited food storage. While I was reading the book I wrote in a reading log. At the end of every chapter I would write a brief summary about the chapter and then write how the other incorporated contextualization into that chapter. If you click the button below you can read my reading log.
Art
For the art portion of my project I looked at the connection between water and hunger. In most Africa countries rainfall is limited and irregular, which causes a lot of problems. For example, without water crops cannot grow. To show the research I did I decided to created a painting that reflects hunger in African and low rainfall. My painting consists of warm colors to represent the dryness of the land. In the center of the painting there is a shape of the Central African Republic. I painted the river map of the Central African Republic overtop of my painting.