To change society, first change minds

After arriving in Senegal in 1972 Molly Melching lived in a small village near Thiès for three years. It was here that she realized a lack of basic, life-saving information was causing so much unnecessary illness, tragedy and death. It was also here that she began to understand why development projects have often failed and why they have even disempowered people at the community level. She partnered with the Senegalese villagers to design and implement a education program in African languages, and in 1991, she set up a nonprofit organization called Tostan, to continue that work. Today, her and her volunteers run a three-year comprehensive nonformal education program in eight countries in Africa and in 22 national languages. She uses four key elements in her programs. The first one is human rights and to empower people to claim their rights to health and well-being. The second is to start where people are, have respect while you learn to understand their history, their language and culture. The third is do not try to force change, lay the groundwork for dialogue, introduce people to new ideas, identify shared values and allow them to decide what the change will be. The fourth and most important is remember the solutions already exist within the communities with which you work.

Krokodil

In the article that I read a there is vicious drug has made its way to America that is a synthetic drug that is injected with a needle, it is a mixture between codeine and gasoline and whatever else the addict wants to put in. The name of this new drug is Krokodil. Krokodil causes serious damage to the veins and soft tissue infections, soon followed by gangrene and necrosis.The soft tissue damage happens around the injection site. The drug also clumps in the veins as it fails to dissolve completely in the blood. The clumps make their way to distant places in the body and start to damage tissue. Krokodil in short eats your body from the inside out. There have been a lot of confirmed cases of Krokodil usage in Russia and in the Ukraine. An estimated 100,000 people in Russia and around 20,000 people in the Ukraine are estimated to have injected the drug in 2011. Krokodil is also cheaper than heroin and can be cooked up in someone's home like meth. People making Krokodil combine codeine with other available chemicals. They can use iodine and strong alkalies such as Mr. Muscle, any kitchen and bathroom cleaner, hydrochloric acid, red phosphorous which is used in matches, and organic solvents such as gasoline and paint thinner. Highs on the drug last over several days. During the high, a user can show irrational behavior and sleep deprivation and exhaustion, memory loss and speech problems.

In the article I read a non profit organizatio0n called Defense Distributed, came out with  program for 3D printers that allowed you to print you own hand gun. The gun they made called "The Liberator" is made from a durable plastic is able to shoot up to five bullet before it starts to fragment. soon after the program came out it was forced to be taken down by the U.S. but not after there were over 100,000 downloads.