My name is Jaeda Joelle Wanjiru Kihara, and I just recently turned 15. I live in Coquitlam, British Colombia and I am a sophmore at École Charles Best Secondary. My favorite subject at the moment, is science because I really enjoy learning about how the world around me works.
I’m ethnically Kenyan, both my parents were born and raised in Kenya, while I was born in Canada and I have lived here my whole life. An interesting facet of Kenyan culture that might be interesting to people that aren’t familiar is just how community-oriented we are. Everyone in the community thinks of each other as one big family. Neighbours reprimand other neighbours children, community members come together to help those who are struggling, elders pass down stories and wisdom along to the younger generation in the neighbourhood. In western countries, I find the focus is more on individuality and career-advancement, so it’s refreshing to remeber there are places that put a great value on community and family. Something about me that somewhat surprises others is that I used to be fluent in Sign Language when I was five years old. When I was born, my parents were in a Sign Language congregation, so I grew up around the language and I was constantly interacting with those that spoke the language. By the time we moved congregations when I was about six, I was very competent in ASL and could sign conversationally extremely well. Now, since I haven’t signed in a long time, I have lost most of the language, but I do wish to re-learn Sign Language eventually.
If I could solve any global problem right now, I would probably solve the general income inequality in the world. I think it’s absolutely unbelieveable some people have net worths in the billions, even close to a trillion dollars, and there are other humans in the world that are working day and night, struggling to support their families. There is an ongoing argument with philosophers on whether ethical billionaires can exist; if being deemed an ‘ethical billionaire’ is based on what phillanthropic acts you do with your money, or whether in effect being a billionaire means there also has to be poor exploited people in the socety. If there was a way to give everybody in the world a perfect net worth, a magical number that would let everyone live comfortably and happily. Sadly, that is not how our present day economy works, but if I could, I would solve all income inequality.
I am currently planning on doing an Inquiry for my semester 1 social responsibility, perhaps with a focus on parents influences in their childrens lives and nepotism. I really enjoy Inquiry projects because they let my freely research a topic of my choosing, wile also giving me enough structure to keep on track.
I am so excited to be doing another Inquiry project, and I can’t wait to read about other’s endeavours.
