This is the first of three spotlights on our spring semester 2016 student interns. Learning Life’s interns this spring are focused mostly on building our new Citizen Diplomacy Initiative, which will connect lower-income American families in Washington D.C. with similar families in other parts of the world through live online video-dialogue. Carolyn and our other interns are conducting research and making contacts to grow the Initiative, and we are thankful for their work.
Where were you born and raised?
I was born and raised surrounded by snow in Buffalo, New York.
What is your year and major at what school?
I am a freshman at the George Washington University in D.C., and planning on majoring in International Affairs with a concentration in International Development and double minoring in Business Administration and Spanish.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I like to explore different neighborhoods around D.C., run to the Washington or Lincoln monuments, and go out to eat (love GCDC!) with my friends.
What is the most beautiful place you have seen on Earth, and why is it so beautiful?
Last winter break, I had the opportunity to visit Hawaii with my family. One of the islands we visited was Kauai, otherwise known as the “Garden Island.” We hiked part of the Napali Coast, which is 15 miles of rugged coastline. Most of it is inaccessible because of the sheer cliffs that drop straight down. It was the most incredible and beautiful hike I have ever done.
Is there a particular life experience you have had that has shaped you as a person? If so, what was it, and how has it shaped who you are?
The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I participated in an exchange with a family in Germany. For three weeks, I lived with my host family, traveled around the country, and had the opportunity to experience German culture. This experience has inspired me to travel more and learn more about different people and cultures around the world.
Why did you choose to intern with Learning Life?
I want to help inform and empower more people, and Learning Life is all about that. I chose to intern with Learning Life’s Citizen Diplomacy Initiative because I believe it is important for anyone, no matter their socioeconomic level, to have the same opportunity to engage in diplomacy as anyone else.
What are your career plans?
I plan to work for an NGO (non-governmental organization) focused on international development, particularly for women and communities.
Cell Phones’ Influence on Social Life
Nine out of ten Americans own a cell phone, and more than six out of ten own smartphones, according to the Pew Research Center. Worldwide, cell phone usage is expanding rapidly, with 3+ billion currently subscribed, and an estimated 6.1 billion subscribed by 2020, per the mobile communications company, Ericsson. With this rapid technological diffusion comes social impacts that the following five facts explore.
Thanks to Learning Life intern Samantha MacFarlane for helping to research and draft these facts.
The Mass Phone-Checking Compulsion
Sixty-seven percent of U.S. cell phone owners check their phones even when their phone does not alert them of a new message. Forty-four percent sleep with their phones so as not to miss messages during the night. Twenty-nine percent view their cell phones as “something they can’t imagine living without.”
To Be Young, Part 1: More Texting, Faster Irritation
Younger Americans on average text far more than they call or email, and expect faster response than older Americans 50 and over, who, in contrast, prefer calling and emailing, and don’t get so easily irritated with slower response.
Fifteen percent of young adults report ending a relationship via text message, and 25% report being dumped via text. Older Americans reported fewer text dumps, and those 50 and older reported none whatsoever.
Phones, Class and Performance: The Impact of School Phone Bans
Students in British schools that banned cell phones performed better on high-stakes tests than students in schools that did not ban phones. Moreover, low-achieving students exhibited the best test improvements, while high-achieving students experienced no improvements, suggesting that low-achievers are more likely to be distracted by cell phones.
About 20% of American adults have donated money online, and 9% via text message on their mobile phones. In at least one famous case of “impulse giving” — the January 2010 Haiti earthquake — text donors alone donated an estimated $43 million to relief efforts. Most (89%) of these donors saw the “Text to Haiti” appeal on television, and 50% made their contribution immediately, with another 23% making their donation the same day.
The United States, commonly called the US, declared its independence from the United Kingdom in 1776, and became an independent nation in 1783. Since then, the USA has expanded to become the 4th largest nation in the world by land area, and the third largest by population at 324 million people as of July 2016.
The US is one of the most ethnically and racially diverse countries in the world due to successive waves of immigration. Native American tribes lived in what is now the USA for at least 12,000 years prior to European colonization starting in the late 1500s. The English, French, Spanish and Dutch all made efforts to colonize North America, and they — along with the first African slaves starting in 1619 — constituted the first wave of immigration after the Native Americans.
The second wave in the late 1700s up to the mid 1800s came mostly from northern Europe, especially England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands. Many in the third wave, occurring in the second half of the 1800s through 1945, came from southern and eastern Europe, including Italy, Greece, Poland and Russia. The fourth wave since the end of World War II has come mostly from Latin America and Asia, especially Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, China, Korea, Vietnam, India and Pakistan.
Over the course of these immigration waves, the United States expanded from 13 original colonies on the East Coast to fifty states, including Alaska and Hawaii, as well as territories and possessions in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Arguably the two most traumatic events in the history of the United States were the Civil War (1861-1865), which ended slavery yet claimed the lives of more Americans than any other war in which the U.S. has been involved, and the Great Depression, which started with the stock market crash in 1929 and didn’t end until World War II, more than a decade later. The U.S. emerged from World War II a major superpower with robust economic growth, though sharply rising income and wealth inequality since the 1970s.
Environment
Located in North America, the U.S. shares borders with only two countries: Canada to the north, and Mexico to the South, with a long Pacific coast to the west and a long Atlantic coast to the east. Its land is diverse, with vast plains in the middle, mountains to the west, hills and lower mountains in the east, mountains and river valleys in Alaska, and tropical terrain with volcanoes in Hawaii. Its climate is equally diverse: more temperate in the east, tropical in Hawaii and Florida, arctic in Alaska, drier and more tempestuous in the central plains, and hot and dry in the southwest.
The U.S. has a variety of environmental issues, both natural and man-made. These include active volcanoes (in Hawaii, Alaska and the northwest), earthquakes, droughts, mud slides and forest fires in the west, hurricanes and flooding along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts, and tornadoes in the midwest and southeast.
Economy
The USA is one of the wealthiest and most productive nations in the world, measured by per capita income and gross domestic product (GDP). The US has a diversified economy, but excels in high-technology sectors including computers, medicine, aerospace and military industry. American companies like Walmart, ExxonMobil and Apple are among the largest businesses in the world, and American music, movies, TV shows and food are popular in many countries worldwide. For all its economic strength though, the US also has economic problems, including substantial income and wealth inequality, aging infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, schools, water and sewer systems), fast rising medical and pension costs due in part to an expanding elderly population, and large budget and trade deficits.
Politics
The US is arguably the most powerful nation in the world given not only the size and reach of its military, but also its diplomatic leadership, and cultural and economic influence. The US is composed of fifty states, a federal district (Washington D.C.) plus a number of territories and possessions in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (e.g., Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands).
The US government is composed of legislative, judicial and executive branches, each with its own powers that are supposed to “check and balance” the powers of the other branches. This three-branch form of government also largely carries at the state and local levels. The US government is the oldest living federal republic, and has enjoyed relative peace and stability for most of its history. Nonetheless, American politics currently suffers from growing political polarization among its politicians and most active voters, and the heavy influence of monied individuals and interest groups.
People & Culture
It is estimated that the US will become “majority minority” — meaning Latinos, African Americans, Asians and other minorities will together outnumber Whites — by 2044. Religiously, the US is fairly diverse — 47% identifying as Protestant, 23% Non-Religious, 21% Catholic, 2% Mormon, 2% Jewish, 1% Muslim, 1% Buddhist, and 1% Hindu — with a trend toward more Americans identifying as non-religious.
For all its impressive diversity, the US has long struggled with discrimination against African Americans and immigrants. African Americans have suffered the worst discrimination. The first Africans came to the US as slaves, and African Americans today still endure discrimination in education, employment, housing, criminal justice and other domains despite the bloody Civil War which ended slavery, and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s which ended legal segregation.
The US’s ethnic and racial diversity is reflected in its diversity of music and food. Popular American music genres includes country, rhythm and blues, hip hop, house, funk and rock & roll. Iconic American foods include hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries, pancakes, brownies, apple pie, and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. But Americans also love Mexican, Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese and Indian, among other cuisines. These diverse cuisines have led to ethnic fusions such as Tex-Mex and Korean tacos. Competitive sports are common after-school and weekend activities in many American communities. Among spectator sports, football is the most popular, followed by baseball, basketball and hockey. Americans also spend a lot of time in front of screens, watching movies, TV shows, music videos, and social media feeds from American media companies such as Disney, Time Warner, Facebook, Twitter and Google.
In terms of values which guide thought and behavior, Americans are well known to be more individualistic than collectivistic, yet they nonetheless spend more time and money on associations (athletic, religious, political, professional, educational, charitable, etc.) than many other wealthy, western nations. Americans often stress the importance of hard work, perseverance, and creativity or ingenuity. They tend to be friendly and helpful to strangers, though there are personal and regional variations. They prize freedom above all, and assume equality in everyday social relations but not in economic relations.
About Washington D.C., and Wards 7 & 8
Washington — located in the center of the USA’s east coast, and not to be confused with the state of Washington, or other cities and towns across the nation named after the first U.S. President George Washington — was founded in 1791 and is the capital of the United Stares. It is also known as the District of Columbia, DC, or “The District.” For fifty years, from 1950 to 2000, D.C. lost population, and stagnated economically due, among other factors, to government mismanagement, racial unrest in the 1960s, a crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s, and the flight of wealthier residents into suburbs outside D.C. However, starting in the 2000s, the city has experienced population growth and an economic resurgence. This resurgence has included rapidly rising real estate (e.g., homes, offices and stores) prices, leading to concerns about the ability of D.C.’s poorest residents to remain in their city.
Washington was for many years majority black (some call it “The Chocolate City” for that reason). It is now slightly less than half black, and more and more whites and other races are moving into D.C., taking many of the available jobs. As in the rest of the USA and the world, jobs are substantially segregated by race/ethnicity, with black residents occupying more of the lower-paid, lower-ranked service and administrative jobs.
Washington D.C. is composed of eight districts or “wards.” The Anacostia River divides DC in two, with Wards 1-6 located west of the River, and Wards 7 and 8 on the east side. These two wards east of the Anacostia River are the two poorest wards in an otherwise rich city getting richer. The chart below compares Wards 7 and 8 with Washington D.C. and the entire nation, showing large differences, and underscoring how racially and economically segregated the USA (and cities in general) can be.
Latest U.S. Census demographics (2009-2014)
Category
Type
USA
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. Wards 7 & 8
Race & Ethnicity
White
62%
36%
2.4%
Hispanic
17%
10%
2.3%
Black
13%
49%
95%
Asian
5%
4%
0.4%
Two or more races
3%
3%
NA
Native American or Alaskan
1.2%
0.6%
NA
Foreign Birth & Language
Foreign-Born
13%
14%
3%
Language other than English spoken at home
21%
16%
NA
Education
Persons 25+ years old who are high school graduates
86%
88%
81%
Persons 25+ years old who are college graduates
29%
52%
NA
Economic Factors
% of Americans who own their home
65%
42%
32%
Average number of persons per household
2.6
2.2
NA
Median household income
$53,000
$66,000
$52,000
% of Americans living in poverty (poverty line is now about $25,000/year for a family of 4)
As the capital of the United States, Washington D.C. is a center of national and international affairs yet many D.C. residents are not meaningfully engaged in these affairs. Knowledge about and engagement in national and international affairs is not a luxury poor people can’t afford; it can be crucial to personal advancement and to narrowing stubborn social inequalities in our globalizing world. Starting in 2016, Learning Life is developing an initiative in Washington D.C. to address these disengagement and inequality issues in an innovative way.
Learning Life’s Citizen Diplomacy Initiative will engage selected D.C. children and their parents (or mentors or legal guardians) free of charge in “virtual exchanges” or live, internet, video dialogues with families in other nations worldwide in order to nurture peace and family and youth development. The Initiative will:
1) focus on learning and skill-building through cross-national, youth-driven dialogue and collaboration.
2) be supported by volunteer mentors, project advisors, language interpreters and the youths’ parents.
3) organize the dialogues in participating families’ homes or in local offices with high-speed internet.
Live virtual exchanges present a promising yet still underdeveloped means for meaningfully bridging social, political and geographic divides, and reducing the advantage the wealthiest have in travel and international affairs. In pursuing this initiative, one of Learning Life’s long-term goals is to help democratize diplomacy by increasing the number of ordinary people — but especially those less privileged — engaged in international dialogue and collaboration.
Learning Life is now recruiting the following interested volunteers. In many cases, volunteers can perform more than one of the roles in bold red below (e.g., a dialogue organizer can also be a youth mentor).
(1) Families in metro Washington D.C. and other nations. In metro D.C., highest priority is currently given to D.C. residents east of the Anacostia River, in Wards 7 & 8. Learning Life also seeks to reach families that have fewer educational and travel experiences. Thus, families in the U.S. and abroad should have:
(a) parents with no more than a bachelor’s degree (4 years of university leading to a diploma)
(b) not traveled by plane as a family for vacation outside the USA or their country of residence more than twice
(c) at least one parent and one child age 10-18 willing to participate in at least one dialogue
Grandparents or legal guardians and their children, or mentors and their mentees are also welcome to participate. The same restrictions above apply to them.
(2) Dialogue organizers in metro D.C. and abroad (particularly in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East) . Dialogue organizers are vital because they help find all the other dialogue participants — families, mentors, interpreters/translators and project advisors — in their community. Interested individuals living outside the USA can learn more about becoming a dialogue organizer here.
(3) Responsible youth mentors in metro Washington D.C. and abroad who adopt a participating family, moderating the family’s dialogues, and assisting the children with international projects they may pursue together. Mentors should ideally have at least a bachelor’s degree, or be enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program, though others are welcome to apply.
(4) Fluent Arabic, French, Spanish and Tagalog speakers in metro Washington D.C. and abroad who are willing to occasionally volunteer asdialogue interpreters and/or document translators.
(5) Project advisors in metro Washington D.C. and abroad who advise youth and their parents and mentors to help them carry out their international projects effectively. Advisors should be working or retired professionals with knowledge and skills in their work field, whether in media, arts, food, tourism, education, business, community-building, or else.
To volunteer or learn more, please contact us at email@learninglife.info.
What is your year and major at what school?
Washington was for many years majority black (some call it “The Chocolate City” for that reason). It is now slightly less than half black, and more and more whites and other races are moving into D.C., taking many of the available jobs. As in the rest of the USA and the world, jobs are substantially segregated by race/ethnicity, with black residents occupying more of the lower-paid, lower-ranked service and administrative jobs.
