Youth homelessness in Kingston is a growing problem, where 1 in 3 people facing homelessness are youth. Over 50% of the youth facing homelessness are female, and over a third are part of marginalized communities.

Fast Fashion. We all know that it is harmful to the environment. Billions of tons of water go into making the clothes we impulse buy in Forever 21 or H&M, Lululemon or Aritzia. Oil is used to make the majority of fabrics, polyesters, requiring mass amounts of fossil fuels to create the clothes we’re wearing.

Last week, QPID hosted a forum on Voluntourism: the cross being volunteering and travelling. Voluntourism is often through a company that offers volunteer experiences abroad. These might include building, teaching, practicing medicine, or working with children or animals and often also a good number of “fun” tourist experiences (beach days, ziplining, etc.).

Just in time for the election, QPID hosted representatives from each party to tell us about their stance on the issues we want to know about most: Student debt, Indigenous Reconciliation, Healthcare, Foreign Aid, and Climate Change.

Forum began with a bit of background information regarding sexual assault and harassment on campus and in the workplace.

For this week’s action item we encouraged attendees to consider getting involved with Queen’s Student for Literacy (QSL), a campus-based chapter of Frontier college. QSL is an organization concerned with improving literacy skills and literacy awareness.

This week we asked forum attendees to visit globalcitizen.org and read an article titled “This Is the Public Health Crisis – and Cost – of Gun Violence in America”.

To kick off forum this week we discussed the many different way growth can be defined for example; population growth, economic growth, and growth in the Human Development Index.

This week Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Izatt from the Canadian Armed Forces Disaster Assistance Relief Team (DART) gave a presentation on what DART does and how the armed forces approaches Disaster relief.

This week we asked forum attendees to go on globalcitizen.org and read the article Mobile Health Messages are Helping Parents and Saving Lives.

The action item this week was some light reading on the correlation between investment and development.

This week we asked forum attendees to log onto globalcitizen.org and sign the She Decides Manifesto. She Decides is a global movement to ensure every girl and woman can decide what to do with her body, with her life, and with her future.

Each week at the beginning of forum we will be posting a related action item to help educate, engage, and encourage you to take an active approach to development.

Let the following series of run-on sentences guide you through scattered thoughts detailing how my non-development background assisted me in the quest that is understanding development on my international development internship. Phew.

I remember watching City of God in my grade 12 Economics class before the 2016 Summer Olympics. Categorized as a gangster film, City of God is shot with handheld cameras, providing viewers with a raw depiction of life in the favela (slum within urban areas of Rio de Janeiro).

I am Julie Foster, and my sister has worked in development for the past three years following her completion of a business degree at McGill University. To provide you all with a glimpse at her experience I conducted the brief interview that follows. Enjoy!

The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has been at the front of the planet’s collective mind since it was officially announced.

If you’re like me, you won’t know what to expect from your upcoming internship at VIDYA in Gurgaon, India.