Hello all, my name is Naftali and I recently wrote a Top Story on yspacesmc.org.  The Top Story I wrote talked about my garden and many other food-related issues the garden has lead me to.  One of the things my garden lead me to was a great place called Pie Ranch.  Over time, I have become more involved in Pie Ranch and have attended multiple conferences with them as a youth representative so to speak.  At one of the conferences I went to, I saw a truly inspiring presentation by a woman named Lily Yeh. 

Lily Yeh is the founder of an organization called Barefoot Artists.  Her organization’s goal is to work with poor people in communities around the world to help to make a better future for themselves and the world as a whole.  The organization does this by working with members of the community to produce artwork that transforms once rundown places into beautiful spaces for the community to enjoy.  One of their most recent projects was called the Rwanda Healing project. The project got the community members up, active and moving as they transformed their community one step at a time through art. 

Along with providing the community with beautiful art, the project allowed some of the emotional wounds brought about by the Rwandan genocide to be healed.  Many people often overlook the importance of emotional health but the project allowed many community members to overcome the emotional trauma of the experience.  Numerous studies have shown that it is much easier to obtain a higher level of physical health if you have good emotional health.  Likewise, art is often associated with improving emotional health and well being.  This project inspired me because it used art as a way to emotionally heal a community that has faced such immense hardship in the past.

Hi, Will here again to tell you about riding your bike to school.  I’m not in school anymore (I’m a class of ’07 graduate) but it hasn’t been too long since I was there. 

As a sophomore, I would ride my bicycle to school and had lots of fun doing it.  What I didn’t like, though, was that every now and then, I heard rumors about people’s bicycles getting stolen!  But if you use a lock properly, there is little to no chance that your bike will get stolen.  Also, sometimes there were not enough spaces to leave my bike in a rack. 

During my senior year, I changed schools and made an effort to ride my bike to school more often than before.  What encouraged me to bike to school was the fact that there were enough bike racks to park my vehicle safely without having to worry that it would get stolen or vandalized.  What I also liked about riding my bicycle to school was that the school encouraged the students to bike by giving stuff away to riders.  This one time, I won a movie ticket and another time I got some candy.  By riding my bicycle to school, I lost some weight and increased my stamina.  I became healthier than I had ever been. 

If your school is safe enough for you to ride a bicycle to, why not try it?  From my personal experience, I can assure you that it will be fun to bike.  If you don’t feel comfortable riding by yourself, try getting your friends to bike with you.  The more people that bike with you, the merrier.