Procter and Gamble Culture and Diversity in Decision Making

A Brief Description of the Organization Procter and Gamble is a consumer goods corporation in America. It produces pet food, personal care products, as well as cleaning agents. Procter and Gamble are known for producing foods and beverages, but the latter sold that production line to Kellogg Company. It has received many ratings including being the fifth most admired company in the world. It is known for the best leadership development in the United States of America.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Procter and Gamble: Culture and Diversity in Decision Making specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The Culture of Procter and Gamble The culture of a company establishes its success or failure. Scholars have defined organizational culture as the behavior of persons that are associated with a given organization. It also includes the meaning that individuals in an organization attach to their dealings. Flamholtz and Randle (2011) avow that, organizational culture incorporates norms, values, vision, beliefs, working language and habits. Organizational culture impinges on the way people and groups interrelate internally with customers and stakeholders. Procter and Gamble is an organization that believes in upholding culture for success in business. The company has diversified across the world at an alarming rate. Ever day, Procter and Gamble continue to expand in diversified fields. This makes it vital for the organization to have a unifying way of doing things. Organizational culture is key to providing uniformity in any organization (Flamholtz Randle, 2011). The organization believes in innovativeness, aggressiveness, teamwork, risk-taking, and people orientation. Ways in Which Procter and Gamble Shows This Culture Aggressiveness Aggressiveness is a key dimension in Procter and Gamble. Aggressiveness is the degree to which employees are insistent and competitive in an organization rather than coopera tive (Martin Frost, 2011). Procter uses aggressiveness in taking over companies that are fleeing out of business and then advertising them under their name brand. All the eleven managers of Procter insist on aggressiveness on employees’ part to ensure success in business. Aggressiveness ensures the smooth running of operations in an organization where workers are self-motivated other than being dragged along by the leaders. Consequently, aggressiveness guarantees high levels of production. This is because time is well managed since nobody needs to be told what to do and when. Every person in an organization that upholds aggressiveness sees the success of the company as their success, hence motivation. People Orientation People orientation is a scale to which executive decisions take into consideration the organizations impacts on people (Flamholtz Randle, 2011). Procter’s apprehension on people orientation culture is illustrated in that; managers emphasize that peopl e are the firm’s biggest assets.Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More To design a means for workers to bond, the organization would put up celebrations for the employees. Events of this nature allow employees to build associations with each other outside the work setting. The company holds on to the belief that people can do amazingly great things if given an opportunity. In all the companies under Procter Gamble, employees are seen as the source of success that each organization can achieve. Innovativeness Procter Gamble is both an innovative and peril captivating organization. Managers in this company inspire employees to be innovative and creative rather than just wait to follow orders from their leaders. This motivates employees to contribute towards production in the company as well as increase the overall efficiency of the company. As a result, employees in this o rganization become more competitive due to the freshness and creativity of the operations they undertake (Martin Frost, 2011). Risk Taking Procter Gamble is an entrepreneurial organization. The business management consists of eleven members, who are entrepreneurs in their way. This enables the organization to venture into opportunities that very few businesses would risk operating. Among the characteristics of entrepreneurial business is the capacity to take risks. Employees across organizations operating under and with Procter Gamble are expected to be risk takers. This is because of the organization ventures in new business every day. Additionally, novelty and risk-taking are aspects that go together (Martin Frost, 2011). Suitable Leader and Response to Decline in Demand The best leader for Procter Gamble is a person who possesses a democratic leadership style. This is because the company is an organization that has a strong belief in people’s ability. Therefore, it re quires a leader who can justly receive other people’s contributions concerning any development in the organization as well as put significance in what other members of the organization have to say. According to Dereli (2010), democratic leaders persuade economic development through the creation of new firms, which profit economic development by generating unrelenting productivity augments through innovation-driven growth in advanced economies. In case of a decrease in the demand of product(s) or services supplied by Procter Gamble, innovativeness is the change in its culture that would require being carried out in reaction to this condition. Also, the innovative nature of Procter Gamble Company demands that managers have some sense of democracy when it comes to leadership.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Procter and Gamble: Culture and Diversity in Decision Making specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Refer ences Dereli, M. (2010). Leadership Styles A Survey Research of Leadership Styles of Elementary School Principals. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. Flamholtz, E. Randle, Y. (2011). Corporate culture the ultimate strategic asset. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Business Books. Martin, J., Frost, P. (2011). The organizational culture war games. Sociology of Organizations: Structures and Relationships, 1(1), 315. This report on Procter and Gamble: Culture and Diversity in Decision Making was written and submitted by user Cam1la to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

mexicos new leader essays

mexicos new leader essays As a new president prepares to take power in Mexico, the biggest economic news is what's not happening. The peso is not plummeting, investors are not panicking, and people are not suddenly paying more for their tortillas or televisions. Given recent history, this is a small miracle: every presidential transition in the last two decades has been scarred by an economic crisis. Instead of fears, there are great hopes, all raised by the next president, Vicente Fox Quesada. Mr. Fox now must institutionalize the stability he has inherited. He has pledged sweeping tax and fiscal reforms, annual economic growth rates of up to 7 percent, millions of new jobs, a stable economic architecture for foreign capital, private investment in the state-run oil industry and competition in telecommunications. He also promises budget austerity, increased social spending, the rise of the rule of law, and an end to ingrained political corruption. Mexico is still very much a developing nation. Reliable electric power and potable water are sometimes hard to find. In the capital, one of the world's most populous and polluted cities, the elite live behind barricades, protected from the impoverished by armed guards. Middle-class Mexicans have less buying power than they did 20 years ago, and some of the biggest banks are shaky from a legacy of bad loans. Many small businesses are threatened by imports, credit is difficult to obtain, and millions of people scrape by on less than $2 a day. The departing president, Ernesto Zedillo, never addressed the huge structural problems of the state-run energy industries, which are inefficient and suppress competition, or of the justice system, which cannot control crime - a serious worry for foreign companies considering operations here even if they are optimistic about Mr. Fox. "He's going to have his hands full," said Peter E. Weber, vice president of Latin American operations for the FMC Corporation, a Chicago- base...

Module Title- Online Journalism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Module Title- Online Journalism - Essay Example 1996; Al Jazeera Sports, a popular Arabic-language sports channel launched in 2003; Al Jazeera Mobasher, also known as Al Jazeera Live, a live politics and public interest channel which broadcasts conferences in real time without editing or commentary, launched in 2005; Al Jazeera Childrens Channel, also known as JCC, a childrens interest channel launched in 2005; Al Jazeera English, a global English-language 24-hour news channel launched in 2006; and Al Jazeera Documentary Channel, an Arabic language documentary channel launched in 2007 (Wiki-Al Jazeera, 2008). Al Jazeera English is the 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel of the Al Jazeera media group. It is the first global English language news channel that is headquartered in the Middle East, which the group believes is a unique position that will shape its destiny of becoming the English-language channel of reference for Middle Eastern events. With reference to Al Jazeera Arabic, its mother company and the historically significant broadcast of Osama bin Laden’s statements after September 11, 2001, Al Jazeera English aims to give voice to untold stories, promote debate, and challenge established perceptions. (Corp Profile, 2008). The internet website of Al Jazeera English is located at http://english.aljazeera.net/. This paper critically reviews the Al Jazeera English website in terms of content, design, functionality and navigation, as well as proposes technical and journalistic improvements to the site and its contents. Like most news websites, Al Jazeera English presents its headline news on its front page. But being an Islam-oriented site, the headline news consists of Islamic country/people-related news items. Also on the front page are quick links to world news; sports; programmes; focus features, analysis and comments; Al Jazeera English TV schedule; and featured videos. The front page also contains quick links to jobs with Al Jazeera, emails related to published articles, a

Analysis of Robotic Technology Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Analysis of Robotic Technology - Research Paper Example However, it is seen that a broad and strict quantitative study for Robot Technology has not been carried out in the past. The basic objective of this paper is to prove the positive or negative impacts of Robot Technology on young students that are studying in different schools. The sample of the research not only contains students studying at different schools but also their teachers and parents. The data are collected using both primary and secondary tools, and results are derived using t-tests to compare means of responses collected from different schools. Performance related, dependent variables are selected, and the use of Robot Technology is taken as an independent variable. The impact of each variable is checked independently, and the results are based on the values of the t-tests. The result of this research indicated that Robot technology had a positive effect on the studies of young students, and their grades showed improvement from the past. The results also show that the m echanism used to assess the result of the study was valid, which conforms to the findings of Barker and Ansorge who studied a similar research topic in 2007. A Roadmap for US Robotics: From Internet to Robotics, vol. 21, 2009. Georgia Institute of Technology. http://www.us-robotics.us/reports/CCC%20Report.pdf Abstract A program by the name Robot Diaries was carried to determine how technology influences the learning of middle school girls. This study is quite relevant to the topic of discussion because it draws on the topic of this report. The robot diaries project was designed to research on the interactions between children and electronic devices that are integrated during their learning processes. Robotics is considered as a vital pipeline for literacy based on technology because of its ability to pull in and inspire students who are often not in accord with the conventional classroom curricula. Apart from the Robot diaries project, other human-robot interactions (HRI) have been carried based on well researched and vigorous scrutiny of developments in the technology field. Vesgos (2008) notes that robots have been successful in setting a common ground in project-based foreign language teaching of children and students, as compared to conventional media (Barker & Ansorge 345). This has been proved by the robotic technologies that have been developed in South Korea that backed by its development in information technology, has in place the world’s electronic learning robot that can be used at home by students and other users.  Ã‚  

Native Americans in the United States and African Americans Essay Example for Free

Native Americans in the United States and African Americans Essay Introduction Joel Spring’s Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality examines the educational policies in the United States that have resulted in intentional patterns of oppression by Protestant, European Americans against racial and ethnic groups. The historical context of the European American oppressor is helpful in understanding how the dominant group has manipulated the minority groups. These minority groups include Americans who are Native, African, Latin/Hispanic, and Asian. Techniques for deculturalization were applied in attempts to erase the oppressed groups’ previous identities and to assimilate them into society at a level where they could be of use to the oppressors. Techniques include isolation from family, replacement of language, denial of education, inclusion of dominant group world view, and provision of inferior teachers and poor facilities. Relationships between educational policy and instances of racism and patterns of oppression are explored in the following. A section will also compare my prior education to the one presented in Spring’s book. Formatting Understanding how European Americans have been able to perceive themselves as superior in psychological, spiritual, racial, and cultural terms is integral to seeing how cultural genocide has occurred in the United States. The basic program is taken from the Roman Imperium which delegates the authority to civilize others by erasing their laws and culture and simultaneously or subsequently installing new laws and mores from the dominant group into the minority group. This plan has been applied by U. S. educators and politicians in an attempt to carry out a perceived upgrade from an inferior cultural program to the superior Anglo-Saxon mixed with Protestantism point of view. This civilized versus uncivilized and Christian versus Pagan viewpoints reveal themselves throughout the history of U. S. education. Native Americans In the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Native Americans were granted citizenship by the descendants of European immigrants who invaded their territory over 400 years ago. In the years before and after 1924, Native Americans have experienced cultural genocide, deculturalization, and denial of education (Spring, 2010, pp. 8-9). For example, the Naturalization Act of 1790 excluded Native Americans from citizenship, thus preventing them from having a political voice in their rapidly changing world. In 1867, the Indian Peace Commission made 2 requirements for U. S. citizenship: 1) rejection of native religions and 2) acceptance of middle-class American Christianity. The bases of a philosophy that uses superiority and inferiority include racial, linguistic and cultural differences. For European American educators, the â€Å"civilizing† of Native Americans included the installing of a work ethic, the creation of desire to accumulate property; the repression of pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure; the establishment of a nuclear family structure with the father in control; the implementation of authoritarian child-rearing practices; and conversion to Christianity (p. 14). The U. S. government’s program of Native American deculturalization was developed in part because it was less costly than fighting and killing them. Thomas Jefferson’s civilization program called for government agents to establish schools to teach women to spin and sew and men farming and husbandry (p. 18). Educational policies such as this set the stage for purchasing land and avoiding costly wars. In 1830, the Indian Removal Act authorized the President to set aside lands west of the Mississippi for exchange of Indian Land east of the Mississippi (p. 28). Cultural-ecological theory puts Native Americans in the category of involuntary minorities. They were conquered and forced into European American customs and beliefs. Replacing the use of native languages with English, destroying Indian customs and teaching allegiance to the U. S. government became major educational policies of the U. S. government toward Indians in the latter part of the 19th century. An important part of these educational policies was the boarding school designed to remove children from their families at an early age and thereby isolate them from the language and customs of their parents and tribes (p. 32). The Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, PA became the first boarding school for Native American children in 1879. Here deculturalization methods were employed. From this methodology and perspective, the patronizing term cultural deprivation has come to imply that a group is without culture altogether (Nieto and Bode, 2008, p. 176). One of the perceived deficiencies of Native Americans was their propensity to share which caused the European Americans to label them as socialists which was anathema to the dominant group’s philosophy. Richard Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle School, sought to instill individualism and self responsibility in order to break Indians from a socialist style of sharing. All boarding and reservation schools taught in English with exceptions including some Choctaw and Cherokee schools that utilized bilingual education. In 1928, the Meriam Report reversed the philosophy that isolation of children was required. The new view was that education should occur in one’s family and community. Several decades later, from 1968 to 1990, a number of legislative acts addressed the mistakes of deculturalization. It was not until 1974 that Indian students were granted freedom of religion and culture by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Later, in 1978, Congress granted all Native Americans religious freedom. The Native American Languages Act of 1990 commits the U. S. government to reverse its historic position which was to erase and replace Native American culture. However, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 reverses attempts to preserve usage of minority languages (Spring, 2010, p. 135). The destruction of cultural self determination for Native American Indians is saddening. By breaking their connection to their native culture through reeducation camps, European Americans justified a world view that saw color of skin and dogma as beacons of superiority. African Americans. Historically, Africans have been involuntary immigrants who were brought to the U. S. to be slaves. They have faced numerous forms of educational oppression based upon perceived racial differences. For example, from 1800 to 1835, education of enslaved Africans was banned. Spring notes that plantation owners were in constant fear of slave revolts and consequently denied their workers any form of education (p. 43). Furthermore, because of the need for children as farm laborers, planters resisted most attempts to expand educational opportunities for black children (p. 57). Schools for African Americans were underfunded after the Civil War (Nieto and Bode, 2008, p. 44). Segregation of blacks and whites was the order of the day for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This resulted in a racial divide, unequal school funding, and inferior facilities. An exception to segregated schooling occurred in 1855 in Massachusetts when it became a requirement to integrate schools. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment included a clause that appeared to disallow segregation. However this clause has been used to implement segregation in schools also. African Americans from northern states helped those in the transition from slavery to freedom. However there was a division between the philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Washington negotiated for segregated schools while Du Bois, in 1909, formed the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) which worked for desegregation (Spring, 2010, p. 52). Washington established the Tuskegee Institute in 1881 after attending the Hampton Institute which was founded by General Samuel Armstrong. The Hampton Institute was an educational model designed to keep blacks subordinate. The primary purpose of the Tuskegee Institute was to prepare freed slaves to be teachers who could instill work values in other freed slaves (p. 33). The Tuskegee Institute received support from Industrialist Andrew Carnegie who saw the apartheid model in South Africa as a format for educating black southerners. Conversely, Du Bois and the NAACP fought against the status quo of a permanent African American underclass in education and the economy (p. 62). It was not until 1954 that the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. The court ruled that separate but equal has no place in education. The separate but equal legislation was from the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, established the precedent for using disbursement of government money as a means of controlling educational policies (p. 117). Additionally, much credit is given to Martin Luther King Jr. for helping move forward civil rights legislation of 1964. The Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, in the 1950s and 1960s respectively, gave African Americans political equality as well as the right to vote. African Americans have made significant gains in the past 100 years; however, the pace of change has been painfully slow. The election of a part African American President is a strong indication that we as a country have come a long way. Hispanic/Latino Americans After the conquest of Mexican and Puerto Rican lands, the U. S. government instituted deculturalization programs to ensure that these new populations would not rise up against their new government (p. 84). As with other groups, the Naturalization Act of 1790 blocked them from attaining citizenship because they were not white. Despite the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 1948, Mexican Americans were not given actual citizenship. Citizenship rights were abridged throughout the Southwest through limitations placed on voting rights and segregation in public accommodations and schooling (p. 89). Moreover, in many instances, U. S. farmers did not want the children of Mexicans to go to school, because they wanted them to work longer hours. Mexican students were forced to speak English in schools. In the last half of the nineteenth century, Mexican Americans tried to escape the anti-Mexican attitudes by attending Catholic schools. Here linguistic diversity was respected. Puerto Rico became a colony of the United States in 1898. Again, as with Native American Indians, government policy concluded that it was less costly to instill and replace culture in Puerto Rican schools than it was to employ force with the military. Teachers who only spoke English came from the U. S. to teach students who mainly spoke Spanish. U. S. educational policy in Puerto Rico attempted to replace Spanish with English as the majority language and to introduce children to the dominant U. S. culture (p. 100). Examples of deculturalization methods included U. S. flag ceremonies and studies focusing on the traditions of the dominant white culture of the United States. In 1912, the Puerto Rican Teachers Association resisted the educational policies of the U. S. and defended the use of Spanish in school. One’s native language is the foundation for future learning (Nieto and Bode, 2008, p. 235). In 1951, after 50 years of struggle, Puerto Rico became a commonwealth. Subsequently, Spanish was once again used in the schools without the dogma of English only laws. Additionally, in 1968, the Bilingual Education Act was passed. It was not until 1974 that the Equal Educational Opportunities Act gave protection to the language rights of students for whom English is not their native language (p. 243). Presently, there are many voluntary immigrants from Latin America. These students are often faced with an assimilation policy which is aimed at Americanizing them. Frequently hybridity is the order of the day for these students. Only blind arrogance could make a dominant group believe that they could go to an island of Spanish-speaking people and teach them a new culture in a new language. As with other groups, the denial of schooling or segregation was maintained in order to continue subordinating the minority. Asian Americans Asian Americans, many of whom were voluntary immigrants, include persons from China, Philippines, Japan, Korea, India, Viet Nam, Laos, Thailand and other counties. The combination of racism and economic exploitation resulted in educational policies designed to deny Asians schooling or to provide segregated schools (Spring, 2010, p. 68). In 1872 the California school code provided no public education for Asian Americans while in 1906, the San Francisco School Board created segregated schools for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean students. Finally, in 1974, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Chinese American parents in Lau v. Nichols. The decision required public schools to provide special assistance to non-English-speaking students to learn English so that they could equally participate in the educational process (p. 124). Each group of minority Americans has pushed for improvements in the educational system. By persevering, they have been able to move toward a more equitable educational system. However, there is still the dominant European American paradigm in place. As the percentage of minority Americans rises in the coming decades, I believe we will see a movement toward a more multicultural paradigm. Personal Comparisons My early education took place in an environment of white teachers and students. The furthest my exposure to different cultures went was going to school and growing up with my Catholic and Jewish neighbors. My elementary school and middle school were 100% white and my high school had 2 Hispanic students. For me, this was normal; I knew little of other cultures. When I reflect on my American History and Social Studies classes, I recall a sanitized story presented with many stories about honorable white men. Although I finished my high school education in 1977, I do not believe that Martin Luther King Jr. or Civil Rights was mentioned once. Moreover, a great deal of social upheaval obviously was occurring; however, the only topic related to the turmoil of the era that made it to my awareness was the war in Viet Nam. After high school, I attended a small private college in Pennsylvania where approximately 30 African Americans and 10 Hispanic students attended. I was acquainted with one of the Hispanic students who had a poster of Che Guevara in his room. All of my professors were apparently European Americans and I continued to study mostly dominant culture stories. Recognizing my own lack of personal direction, I dropped out of school and entered into my own version of home schooling. I purchased a bus ticket for Tucson, Arizona; however, I first stopped in Washington D. C. to visit my Aunt. She took me to a book store where I bought some philosophy books. I explored different philosophies and literature. I travelled, worked, read and explored my values and beliefs. I returned to my home town, Lancaster, PA, and decided to return to formal University life at Millersville State University. From 1984-1987, I again had European American professors. In 1991, I reentered Millersville University to take some graduate courses. I looked into getting a graduate assistantship and found an opening in a program called Upward Bound. I interviewed with the director, whom I knew from earlier years, and with a Filipino and African American student. I got the position and subsequently was working in a multicultural enterprise. I prepared lessons for high school children from multiple ethnic groups. The reason Spring’s history of minority Americans was not part of my education was because I was raised in a racially homogenous region. I think that I could have driven east 20 miles, south 15 miles or north 5 miles and everybody would have been white. Going west 2 miles would take me into the middle of Lancaster city where many African Americans and Puerto Rican Americans live. However, I lived a provincial life and did not interact much with people from other cultures in my youth. Furthermore, it was standard policy at that time to teach from a Eurocentric point of views. The effect on White Americans of an Anglocentric and Eurocentric perspective, which does not include minority Americans, is an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of self and world. The effects on minority Americans also leads to an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of self and world include, as well as increased dropout rates and resistance to education. Additionally, cultural discontinuities may contribute to negative academic outcomes (Nieto and Bode, 2008, pp 181-182). Another effect on minority Americans is clearly a net feeling of not being included in the past and possibly being excluded from present and future events. Exclusion’s result is well described in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. In this book, the narrator is unable to be seen or recognized because he is black. From Spring’s book I learned about the many minority groups that were mistreated and intentionally harmed at personal and cultural levels. Furthermore, I was ignorant about the attempts at deculturalization of Puerto Ricans. Additionally, I knew little about the detailed history of denying education to Asian and Mexican Americans. While I knew about reeducation and denial of education of Native and African Americans, I did not know the extent to which political, economic, and social forces combined to prevent these groups from experiencing their historical culture or from participating in the dominant, European American culture. Conclusion European Americans have quashed cultures in the United States through education. Native American, African, Hispanic, and Asian minorities have witnessed a persistent attack on their beliefs, values, and languages by those who either 1) thought that they were better or 2) wanted to deprive others of their pursuit of happiness in order to support economic and political position. Consistent deculturalization efforts were made toward Native Americans by government agents establishing schools for Native Americans and by boarding schools. By controlling the content and context in which education took place, U. S. educators suffocated Native American Culture and resuscitated it with the European mores. The multiple cultures of Americans from African descent were hollowed through denial of education, physical intimidation, segregation, and inferior facilities. Persistent attempts to correct the status quo by the NAACP, Martin Luther King Jr. , and several other organizations and individuals have moved the U. S. government to redress some inequities in the educational system. Mexican Americans were also placed in English-only schools or no school at all. During the twentieth century, Puerto Rican students faced the same threats of deculturalization as did Asian Americans in nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Legislation in the latter part of the twentieth century has also redressed some inequities in educational opportunities for these groups while, the No Child Left Behind Act has reduced some of the multicultural gains in education which disappoints many in the teaching profession. References Nieto, Sonia and Bode, Patty (2008). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education. Boston. Pearson Education Inc. Spring, Joel (2010). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality. New York. McGraw-Hill.

Personal Narrative- My Love of Reading and Writing Essay -- Personal N

Personal Narrative- My Love of Reading and Writing Reading and writing has always played a vital part in my life. From toddler to adult, pre-elementary to college, I’ve managed to sharpen both skills to my liking. However, even though it significantly helped, schooling was not what influenced me to continue developing those skills into talent. Many different things shaped and influenced my learning, and now reading and writing have become the safety net of my life. I know that even if I have nothing else in the future, I’ll still have my talent and knowledge. To ensure my success, I hope to further develop those skills so that I may fulfill my wishes. I was always a creative child; it was something I just could not not be. Back then I didn’t know how to be ‘normal.’ While the other children wrote their essays about their mothers and pets or their best friends, I wrote about becoming birds or about ducks building robots. Truly. I suppose I could blame it on my parents – my father for trying to teach me how to read when I was too young and my mother for reading The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein to me as my bedtime story – but I know, truthfully, that it wasn’t their fault. It is no one’s fault, for I do not see my strange imagination as a terrible, abnormal thing. I do know that no one in particular influenced my creativity when I was younger, but I remember being obsessive about certain stories. I remember when I got my first computer – a 16-color piece of, well, garbage that barely ran. But even though it was so old and primitive, it opened new doors for my imagination, and I spe nt my childhood either playing games about knights and dragons or running around outside and acting out my own unscripted scenari... ...from high school with high hopes that college would add the finishing touches to my writing skills – I knew I still had flaws in my style, and I didn’t know how to fix them. And now here I am, aiming to become a successful novelist or screenwriter of some sort (as long as it allows my imagination to run wild). I suppose it’s a good thing that many things shaped my literacy skills. A dozen heads are better than one, after all (and to think out my ideas, sometimes I need those extra brains, but that’s what friends are for). I’m confident that I will succeed in the writing field, wherever it may be – literature, movies, gaming – and I’m forever thankful for my talents, for I know that so many others have not had the encouragement or will to read and write as I have. So, here’s to the future of my writing, and hopefully it will be just as creative as my past was.

A Position Paper on the Philippines and the Road to Millennium Development Goals

In February 2012, President Aquino has reiterated the Philippines’ commitment to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in 2015, and vowed to work double time in order to fulfill the different targets under the MDGs with only 4 years left (â€Å"Aquino:PHL†¦ †, 2012). The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, is an effort launched by the United Nations in order to improve the living conditions in different nations, by seeking to battle different social and economic problems such as hunger, poverty, violence, and other deprivations.Signed upon by all 193 UN member states in September 2000, the Millennium Development Goals comprise eight (8) development goals that each member-constituent must fulfill in 15 years, which is in 2015. The goals are: (1) eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, (2) achieving universal primary education, (3) promoting gender equality and empowering women, (4) reducing child mortality, (5) improving maternal health, (6) combatting HIV/AID S, malaria and other diseases, (7) ensuring environmental sustainability, (8) developing a global partnership for development. UNDP website, retrieved August 2012. ) Aside from the perennial problems of battling poverty and eradicating different epidemics, the 5th goal, improving maternal health, remains an underlooked but equally pressing concern in the country. In a 2011 report by the Department of Health (â€Å"Philippines ranks 48†¦ †, 2010) , not only has the Philippines failed to improve the maternal mortality ratio (MMR), but the figure of mothers dying during childbirth has even ballooned, from 162 deaths in 100,000 live births in 2009, to 221 deaths in 100,000 live births in 2011.The statistics is definitely alarming, especially when compared to the figures of other nations such as 110 in Thailand, 62 in Malaysia and 14 in Singapore, all in 100,000 live births. The target that we have to reach is 55-60 deaths per 100,000 live births, which is a far cry from wher e the Philippines stands now. According to the report from the United Nations, the causes of maternal death in the country are hemorrhage, sepsis, obstructed labour, hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, and complications of unsafe abortion, most of which are preventable with proper diagnosis and intervention (â€Å"Philippines†¦ , 2010). Department of Health Secretary Enrique Ona expressed the same sentiment when he explained that maternal deaths could be easily prevented with â€Å"effective family planning services, antenatal care, and access to health facilities capable of handling complications† (â€Å"RH Bill key to attaining MDG – Sec Ona†, 2012). These figures should definitely be a cause for alarm. More women actually die of complications each year, which not only stalls our progress in lowering the MMR in the country, but ultimately makes any hopes of fulfilling it much bleaker.The worsening state of maternal care in the Philippines is very tellin g of our healthcare system, and how ill-equipped it is to address a long-standing problem. The call for improvement in maternal health is not an arbitrary cause. In fact, the achievement of this goal is essential in order to fufill the other targets such as poverty reduction, hunger, and promoting gender equality. Ameliorating the plight of maternal health does not only mean improving the quality of life of newborns and their respective families, but by also giving mothers informed choices.Maternal care, after all, does not begin and end with pregnancy and childbirth; it also includes taking into account the responsibility of conceiving life. Hence, as it has always been established, efficient and effective family planning is the main solution. As reiterated earlier, it is also important to note that family planning also entails the power of allowing women to make informed choices. Empowering women to decide whether or not to reproduce based on given facts would help a large deal in keeping them at bay from potential health risks, as well as rearing of children whom they are not able to provide their needs for.The ability for health facilities to care for those mothers with complications, as well as the widespread training of more midwives to better assist in childbirth is something that the government is lagging behind to deliver. In order to impose an urgency to provide better facilities and more skilled professionals, a carefully-structured and comprehensive legislative framework is in order to be able to more effectively address the reproductive health services the Filipinos need.The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act Bill, or House Bill 4244 is an example of an effort to bring RH services to the Filipino people. One of the bill’s mandates is to centralize the local government units to provide easy access to care and treatment for reproductive health, and make family planning supplies available for regular purchase at drugstores and hospitals. Moreover, the bill would also allow the deployment of more midwives in different regions in order to attend to more deliveries.Especially important is the access to information for couples and individuals alike to adopt family planning, and the education on reproductive health. (HB 4244, 2011). Responsible parenthood and informed choices are key in the house bill. The bill would also spearhead a maternal death review, in order to better understand past trends in maternal mortality and to determine how to improve these conditions. Ensuring the passing of the bill is the best effort that the country can hope for in order to create significant progress in the improvement of maternal health.However, given the time we have left, it is still unlikely that we would reach the actual target specified in the MDGs. Still, the enactment of the RH bill can promise significant change in the predicament of maternal care. Unless the government would concentrat e on concrete legislative solution such as HB 4244, the 2015 goal for maternal health remains hopeless and the future of of mothers, uncertain. Sources: The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health, and Population and Development Act of 2011, H. B. 4244, 15th Cong. 1st Sess. (2011). Ng, Jennifer. (2012, February 12). ‘Aquino: PHL to achieve MDGs in 4 years’. Business Mirror. Retrieved from http://businessmirror. com. ph/home/top-news/23195-aquino-phl-to-achieve-mdgs-in-4-years? tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&page= Philippine Obstetrical and Gynecological Society. (n. d. ) Philippines ranks #48 in Maternal Mortality. Retrieved from http://www. pogsinc. org/v2/index. php/component/content/article/10/58-philippines-ranks–48-in-maternal-mortality Alave, Kristine. (2012, June 18).