Parkour Teach-In

This is my first and final action project for my Global Peace class. This unit was about the different kinds of violence we see in the world and how we as a community can stop it. For this action project I first I chose a topic about violence that I could fight. Then I created a Parkour presentation and made a slideshow of me presenting Parkour in order to help involve kids in a new hobby. My favorite part of making this project was editing the slideshow because it’s always fun for me to see myself doing Parkour. For example I don’t normally get to see what I’m doing from a 3rd person perspective. Even though I had fun, the biggest problem I had while making this project was the weather on the day I had to present my Parkour class. I ended up having to do it without anyone being there because the weather was too cold for anyone to want to come.

One of the worst things anyone can do is be unproductive. Being unproductive can lead to growing up and not graduating high school or college. One of the worst things it can lead to is juveniles joining gangs. Around 40% of the gang members in the United States are Juveniles (under 18), while the other 60% are over 18. In other words this means that around over 400,000 teenagers are in gangs and 600,000 are adults. This is the product of not being productive. If we could get every child and teen to find a hobby that gives them something to do then this could substantially lower the amount of juveniles in gangs.

The issue that I am addressing is children who don’t have any hobbies. While it may seem like it is a small issue, I believe that is at the root of many other issues in the world and leads to to constant violence that can hurt their lives as well as those around them. The type of violence I’m trying to address is both cultural and structural. This violence is cultural because once teenagers see that they aren’t being productive then they see that a large amount of people in American culture are in gangs. It is also structural violence because the way the US has been built prevents certain people from being productive.

I used the Tree Model of Conflict Analysis to diagram the causes and effects of not having a hobby. Not having a hobby is terrible because the effects can lead you into a terrible life. The causes are not good either since a lot of them revolve around lack of self worth. For example, some of the causes include not thinking you’re good at anything, being lazy, and a lack of confidence.This conflict is happening because some children are being manipulated into not having a hobby.

The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago is fighting the same problem as me while also helping clean up the earth. What they do is gather kids in both middle school and high school, and take them to a place in Chicago and work on removing invasive plant species, pick up trash, etc. After that, they do something fun like Ice Skating, Rock Climbing, etc.

One of the nonviolent actions I chose to use as a tool to intervene with my conflict was a teach in. I decided to teach people how to do Parkour as a hobby. Parkour is a sport where you use different movement styles to get from one point to another. Normally, Parkour includes gymnastics, but it can also include martial arts and dancing. The reason I wanted to use Parkour as an intervention was because I think I’m pretty good at making Parkour something that people want to do. It also gets people in shape while given them something to brag about.

There are four principles that Gandhi used to promote world peace. The principle I used for my action project was Swadeshi. The meaning of Swadeshi is “local economy”.My intervention relates to Swadeshi because I was able to use the local economy in order to promote a peaceful way to get kids to find a hobby. I was also able to use Sarvodoya (meaning “rising of all”) because I was able to get a group of people who didn’t have a hobby to start looking.

Works Cited 

Ojotriste, Jimmy. "Gang Statistics Last Update 2012 - New Update in Progress." Helpinggangyouth.com. Arturo Hernandez, 2015. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.

"Shedd Stewards." Shedd Stewards | Shedd Aquarium. Shedd Aquarium, 2016. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.