There will be different themes in every round of English Literacy essentials. This round ’s theme is “Social Justice”. Social Justice is a concept that is related to the different types of justice between individual and society such as wealth, rank, etc. For the first few weeks, we focused on the topic of “Pollution”. We did some research about how pollution disproportionately affects people who are poor and members of racial and ethnic minorities and how members of ethnic minorities got affected by pollution than others. We also have words of the week which are:
An environment is very important not only for me but also for society. We did the writing about pollution in our community as well. I wrote about pollution in my province which is Kampong Cham province. It is located in the center of Cambodia. Here’s what I wrote about my community:
Pollution and Environmental Justice in Kampong Cham
Kampong Cham has a very beautiful city that everyone always think about, but people ignore one crucial problem about this province. Most of the provinces in Cambodia produce a lot of pollution, including Kampong Cham. The source of pollution mostly comes from human activities and they might not be getting enough education about the serious effect of pollution. The town and rural areas are covered with trash that only has been thrown, but not picked. Nothing will be fine if people keep repeating what they are doing right now.
Pollution in Kampong Cham mostly spreads over rural areas around districts. The city in this province might have less pollution than the rural area because there are a lot of factories surrounding the rural area. As I knew before in the province, there’s no landfill or damp, in fact, a few people started the idea of throwing the trash near Sala Chen market which causes others to throw at this place too. One of the big problems is throwing the garbage that concentrated near the station where they sell food, which leads the pollution from the garbage spread to the food. Therefore, it could affect people’s health through the food that they ate and it could lead to a serious health problem. This is one of the pollution sources that have been spread to the whole city.
In addition, there is a factory that located in Cherng Prey district. The workers produced more and more pollution through the air to the neighborhood. Obviously, there is an air pollution that produced from the smoke of the factory. Sometimes, I think it is kind of unfair when people who stay close to the factory got affected. I haven’t heard any solution for this yet, but I hope there will be one.
Moreover, Mekong River is also a source where pollution existed. There are a lot of people selling their products near riverside especially Food Selling. After they ate, people leave their trashes all over the river bank. Not only this, people who live close to Mekong River also threw their huge amount of garbages into the river. The pollution from the trashes spread to the freshwater species and it also affects the fisherman(s) as they’re going to eat those species. No one realizes these situations that had happened into the province and country.
Nothing surprise saying that transportation is one of the pollution sources that existed in this crowded city. As I visit my community, a lot of pollution of smoke from cars and motorbikes spread to the city population. There are a lot of wealthy people that use cars and motorbikes, which is so rare that they use bikes in this generation. Air pollution is all over, it really needs solution!
Both city and rural area are affected by pollution. In the city, the main sources of pollution are the Mekong river, Sala Chen market, and transportation. In rural areas, the main sources of pollution are from the factories. People wouldn’t think it is a very important problem that needs a solution. In my opinion, this situation is unjust for people who live close to those places. For some reason, people who throw the garbages, just because they weren’t the one who gets affected if they’re not living near that places. I would say some of them are rich as well.
Finally, the growth of this province is starting. Everyone starting to have a campaign where they’re trying to reduce the trash. I think the provincial office is also trying to create a secure environmental justice for Kampong Cham. I’m glad that students putting their effort once a week to pick the trash from their community area, which helps Kampong Cham a lot.
The week after, we did some argumentative writing of the topic that’s we’re passionate about that related to our exploration (project-based learning) or the topic that related to SDGs. First of all, we were taught how to write a thesis statement. So What is a Thesis Statement?
Starting the introduction with thesis statement would be very helpful for the reader to understand our main point. Writing an argumentative would be very fun and an important experience for me. I’m looking forward to seeing my argumentative essay done!
