Category Archives: International

In Defense of Dirt: Rewilding Our Children

In Defense of Dirt: Rewilding Our Children
Before their Bodies Forget

 From Finnish forest floors to Michigan creek beds, the science is clear:
real dirt is medicine, memory, and the immune system’s original teacher

By Thom Hartmann, author, speaker, activist, and educator

I grew up on the edge of Lansing, Michigan, with a stream just down the road and woods that felt like a secret frontier. We all did: the neighborhood kids, barefoot in the damp grass after rain, boots mucked up with creek-silt, hands scrubbed raw from climbing fallen logs and digging in the undergrowth. Getting in the dirt was part of childhood. We didn’t ask permission from microbes.

So when I read the recent report in The Guardian about Finnish nursery experiments transforming children’s health by simply letting them play in real soil, sand, leaves and forest-floor, I felt the past crash into the present and I knew again that the story of our species and our health lies in that innocent, messy contact.

In Finland, at a daycare center in Lahti (north of Helsinki), the researchers from the Natural Resources Institute of Finland adopted a radical experiment: rip out the asphalt, dig into the soil, roll out a live carpet of forest-floor moss and blueberry bushes, build compost heaps for children to feed, invite the kids to play, dig, muddle, get their hands in it.

The result, in a two-year study of three- to five-year-olds, was striking: children in the “rewilded” yards had fewer disease-causing skin bacteria (like Streptococcus) and showed stronger immune regulation (increased T-regulatory cells) within weeks. Gut microbiomes were healthier, inflammatory-associated Clostridium levels dropped.

This is the antithesis of today’s “modern” societal perspective on childhood and nature.

On the one hand, we have the modern obsession with pristine, sanitized lives: rubber-surfaced playgrounds, plastic mats, antibacterial everything. On the other, there’s the simple fact that our inner biology, our immune systems, our gut and skin microbiomes, were forged in the wild: the wild of forest floors, streams, soils, plants, bugs.

As I argued in my earlier essay “It’s All One Thing – The Story of the Worms” here in Wisdom School, our estrangement from that substrate is the seed of auto-immune disorders, of chronic inflammation, and a body that’s forgotten it’s actually part of nature.

In Michigan I was lucky: the woods and stream were mine for the exploring. I remember fingers crawling over moist logs, the smell of leaves turning, the damp cold run-off water slipping under my boots. I didn’t know at the time that those experiences were more than play: they were calibration.

They were training my immune system, teaching my skin and gut to know what nature looked like and smelled like and felt like. To know that dirt is not an enemy. And those childhood experiences are probably why I’ve never been troubled by autoimmune disorders or asthma.

So let’s call this what it is: a radical restoration. Not of some exotic wilderness, but of our lost contact with the natural microbial terrains that co-evolved with our species. The Finnish results are more than a Kindergarten trend; they’re a signal of what our children—and we all—are missing.

Here are some of the stakes:

  • When kids play in dirt rich with soil microbes, their immune system steps into a healthier balance: fewer disease-causing bacteria on the skin surface, greater regulation of internal immune responses.

  • The “outer layer” of biodiversity—soil, plants, forest floor—directly influences the “inner layer” of biodiversity in our bodies, our skin, gut, and airways. This is co-evolved, not incidental.

  • The modern shift away from exposure—to “sterile” play surfaces, indoor confinement, sanitized surfaces—may appear benign, but it’s been quietly shaping the epidemic rise of allergies, auto-immune disorders, and inflammatory diseases that both disturb the quality of life and can shorten lifespan itself.

  • This is not just personal wellness: it’s ecological and societal. The health of children, the immune burdens we carry, the resilience of future generations: all of this ties back to whether we let the next generation touch the living earth.

  • In the Finnish classroom yard they said: “We’re moving the action from inside to outside. We want to show the children nature so they learn about it.”

That sentence is packed. Show the children nature. Let them learn through contact, through play, through mess. Not as a museum piece, not as a “nature corridor” behind a fence, but as the ground they run on, dig in, climb across, whose bugs and fungus mix with theirs.

So, I want to issue a personal call to you—if you have children, nieces, nephews—or if you’re planning for grandchildren—or if you’re simply human, who used to feel the dirt under your fingernails and the creek cold on your shins—do this: Let the next generation get messy.

Plant a compost heap. Bring real soil into the sandbox. Create a border of moss and stones. Let the rain puddle, let the bugs crawl, let the children burrow. Let the forest floor not be exotic but ordinary.

I remember that stream down the road from the house I grew up in, the woods on the edge of Lansing, the sticky Michigan clay, the little fish, frogs, and crawdads under rocks, the mud mixing into water. I remember coming home with smudged socks, grass stains and a face kissed by sap.

I didn’t know at the time that I was feeding my immune system. I simply knew I was alive and it was a thrill.

We’ve forgotten that aliveness. Our culture has prized immaculateness, separation from the “dirty” wild, the exclusion of microbes like we exclude strangers. Yet the wildness is in us. The soil is in us. We’re made of the same living matrix as the tree roots and the beetles and the moss. Broken contact with that matrix isn’t harmless: it’s a literal loss.

In the wise old words I referenced in “It’s All One Thing”: “When we remove ourselves from that web of life, we do so at our own peril.”

The Finnish story is not just cute or scientific: it’s urgent. Rebuild our contact with the living earth. Let children scoop sand and soil, let them bury their hands, let them build mud-cakes like Aurora in Finland’s day-care. Laugh as they smear soil on their faces. It’s not chaos: it’s calibration.

Yes, modernization has brought us many gifts. Clean water. Sanitation. Vaccines. But modernization taken too far, with too much separation from our biological roots, leaves us with immune systems that misfire, bodies that mistake harmless soil microbes for threats, children who never taste actual dirt. The Finnish experiment is clear: get back to the soil, get back to the forest floor, get back to the messy, ordinary earth.

And the earth—our living earth—benefits too. More forest-floor carpets. More compost heaps. More kids playing outside, fewer rubber mats, fewer sterile boxes. We begin to treat biodiversity as not just glamorous (rainforests, coral reefs) but local (yard patches, old tree stumps, rain puddles). We begin to remember that our health is tied to the health of that biodiversity.

So my invitation to you: On your next weekend, find a patch of ground the kids (or you!) can mess with. Dig into it. Feel the soil. Let a leaf rot into the compost. Let worms do their work. Let the world pull you back. Because we’re not apart from nature: we are nature. And when we pretend otherwise, we hurt ourselves and the world around us.

It’s time to stop treating microbes as abstract threats or invisible villains. They are—and have always been—our companions, our allies, our ancestral family. The Finnish children’s laughter in the sandy forest-floor yard is our ancient laughter too.

Let’s dig in.

—Thom Hartmann, educator and commentator, is the author of many respected books. Reprinted with permission. To receive new Wisdom School posts you can become a free or paid subscriber of this reader-supported digital publication, The Wisdom School: What It Means To Be Human. All Wisdom School articles are free and available to everyone. Copyright by Thom Hartmann, 2025.

Hong Yen Chang

Hong Yen Chang: The First Chinese Lawyer in the U.S.

By Fanny Wong, New York

In 1872, thirteen-year-old Hong Yen Chang was sad and excited when he boarded a ship on a twenty-five days journey to the United States. Born in either 1859 or 1860, he had seldom left his village in Heungshan in South China.

He was an exceptional student and was chosen to be one of the first of 30 boys to study in the United States. The plan of the Chinese government was to educate 120 young Chinese boys, all expenses paid, to acquire technical knowledge from the West. They were known as the Chinese Educational Mission students.

When Hong Yen Chang arrived in bustling San Francisco, he marveled at the six-storied buildings. Heat came out of radiators in the hotel that was not made of mud with paper windows. Water came out of the faucet. Riding the elevator up and down was fun.

Yen Chang noted that the men in San Francisco wore tight pants and form-fitting jackets. He wore maroon robes with blue silk coats and round, small hats. His footwear was a plain padded slipper, whereas the western footwear was laced shoes.

He and the other boys were amazed at the hundreds of people in and out of the San Francisco train depot. They called the trains “fire-cars.” They would eventually ride a train from Sacramento, California, all the way across America, to New England.

The Chinese Education Mission found foster families for the boys, and made arrangements with schools. The curiosity of the town citizens was not always comfortable for Yen Cheng. At first, he laughed it off, but then he was chased by American kids/youth. And the ogling by adults made him conscious of his queue.

The Mission moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where the Chinese had a supportive community. Foster families made great efforts in teaching the youngsters language and customs. The Mission allowed the boys to wear Western clothes, and to tuck their queues beneath their jackets. (During the Qing Dynasty from 1644 to 1911, by decree Chinese men grew their hair long and braided it into a queue.) In their new outfits, the boys looked less like foreigners.

Yen Chang picked up English at a fast pace. He soon learned that speed, strength and dexterity were desirable in America, whereas these qualities were deemed inappropriate for scholars in China.   

Exercise, and a rich diet of protein and carbohydrates did wonders for the boys’ health. (In China, most of them ate mainly rice, with an occasional piece of chicken, if they were lucky). Soon, they were strong enough to play team sports with American youth. They had uniforms and tucked their queues underneath their caps when they played baseball. They took to football as well.

Studying hard was the boys’ primary duty. Yen Chang, like the others, ranked at the top of his classes. Although he was encouraged to fit in, the Mission was against Americanization of the boys. He was required to study Chinese for at least an hour each day. Every three months, the boys spent two weeks at the Mission’s headquarters to receive instruction in their native language and literature.

The boys adjusted socially as well. They attended dances and receptions and were sought out by girls to be their dancing partner. But they were constantly reminded they were to be standard bearers of a new China. Their purpose in life was to bring technical skills to their country.

Meanwhile, there was concern in the Chinese Royal Court that these boys were susceptible to foreign influences, and were immersed in the Western culture. So the mission was closed even when there were over 60 Chinese students still enrolled at Yale, M.I.T, Columbia, Harvard and other technical schools. Of these, only two received their degrees before the Mission was recalled. The others were just beginning their technical training.

In August 1881, Yen Chang was among the first group of 22 boys to leave Hartford. A train took them to San Francisco, and he boarded a ship back to China. He was now 22 years old, and he was determined that he’d return to America as soon as possible to resume his studies.  

Upon his return to China, after a brief reunion with his mother, the government enrolled him in the naval school in Tientsin. He was not happy with the monotony of the school. He was used to Western training and attitude and he found the old style of the officers stifling. He obtained a release and was free to plan his future.

His brother was a merchant in Honolulu, Hawaii. With his small savings and the help of friends, he departed from the port city of Shanghai for Hawaii in 1882. There, he worked in a law office for a year. But his ambition was to become better educated in law.

In 1883, he managed to enroll at the Columbia Law School and received a law degree three years later at the age of 27. A newspaper reported that his “abilities in legal investigation” were among the finest in his class. By then had cut off his queue, having decided that he’d not be going back to China. 

The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act dashed his ambition and hope of being admitted to the New York Bar along with his classmates. Citizenship was required, and he was not a citizen. So, in 1887, he reapplied to the bar after a New York judge issued him a naturalization certificate that granted him citizenship. He became the only Chinese lawyer in the United States.  

Still, he faced more barriers when he applied for admission to the bar in California. He presented his New York law license along with his certificate of naturalization to the California State Bar. But it rejected his application based on the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, a law passed by Congress that prohibited the naturalization of Chinese persons. The California Constitutional Convention in 1879, in the midst of anti-Chinese sentiment, had further restricted the rights of Chinese residents.

Chang Hon Yen. Photo by unknown.       Ah Tye Family Website, Retrieved on 2012-02-21, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org

With diligence and persistence, Yen Chang decided against appealing the decision and went on to become an advisor at the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco and later became a banker. He married Charlotte Ah Tye in 1897. 

He eventually served as the Chinese consul in Vancouver and first secretary at the Chinese Delegation in Washington. His last position, before his death from a heart attack in 1926, was the director of Chinese naval students in Berkeley, California.

The denial of admission to Yen Chang remained as a published opinion of the California Supreme Court. But notable changes have been made since then. In 1972, it held that exclusion of non-citizens violated the equal protection clauses of the state and federal constitutions. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court followed suit.

In 2015, the California Supreme Court, posthumously and unanimously, granted Yen Chang as an attorney and counselor at law in all courts in the state of California. It also acknowledged that the discriminatory exclusion Yen Chang suffered was wrongful. 

       When Yen Chang left China at age thirteen, he could not have foreseen that he’d become a pioneer for a more inclusive legal profession in the United States.

Author’s Note:
I learned about the boys who went to Yale from the book, “My Life in China and America” by Yung Wing, one of the Yale boys. Further research found the book, “Bury My Bones in America” by Lani Ah Tye Parkas. I read an excerpt about Yen Chang and saw the historical photos of his. I have always been fascinated by faces and I found his face as a young and middle-aged man impressive. A calm face exuding intelligence and competence. I would like to know him as a friend.

Art by Makayla Liu, age 12, Vancouver, Canada. She adds: “I’ve loved drawing since I was a child, and in the future I hope to work in a field related to drawing or character design.”

Scrambled Lessons

Scrambled Lessons

By Yimeng (Nicole) Wang Yu, age 17, P. R. China

I have an estranged relationship with eggs. We aren’t completely cut off from each other—we still cross paths on occasion—but our encounters are awkward, fleeting, and never quite right. At most, I’m allowed to see them once every couple of weeks, and when I do, they always insist on showing up in some strange outfit. Sometimes they’re draped in a heavy coat of soy sauce, other times they’re wrapped in a knitted avocado-green sweater of their own making, smugly nestled against toast. But bare? Never. On the rare occasions they appear unadorned, it feels less like a gift and more like a threat. My stomach churns, my throat tightens, and my face knots itself into lines I don’t consciously form. I try to be polite, because it isn’t every day I get to share a meal with eggs, but honestly—they make me deeply uncomfortable.

And yet, as repulsed as I am now, I’ve probably consumed entire dynasties of chickens in the form of eggs over the past sixteen years. I grew up in a household where protein was fuel, and eggs were regarded as the most reliable gas station. My parents, convinced that my athleticism required a steady supply of scrambled yellow, believed they were doing me a favor. So, for sixteen years, they placed eggs before me every morning. Scrambled, boiled, fried, buried in fried rice, floating in soup—eggs became the guest at all of my meals. 

For years, I wished this unwelcome visitor would finally excuse itself from my breakfasts. I told my parents that eggs made my stomach feel as if it were gnawing on itself from within. My complaints, however, were dismissed as excuses and childish exaggerations. “You’ll get used to it,” my mom would say. “It’s good for you,” my dad would add. And so I swallowed my objections along with the eggs, because, after all, parents must know best. Didn’t they always?

Until last year.

After a lifetime of groans, gags, and grimaces, my mom finally relented and scheduled a food intolerance test. We waited one long week. When the results arrived, it felt as though the SAT scores of my digestive system had been released. My mom and I huddled around the phone, tense with anticipation. Then the screen flashed with numbers, and chaos erupted. There was screaming, crying (mostly mine), leaping, refreshing the page again and again as if the result might shift if stared long enough. The report confirmed what my body had been insisting all along: I was intolerant to eggs. Not just mildly intolerant, either—I had obliterated the intolerance scale. The threshold for high sensitivity was 200. I scored 900. Four and a half times the limit. Eggs and I weren’t simply mismatched; we were sworn enemies, cosmically opposed.

In that moment, years of swallowed frustration finally poured out of me. My intuition had been right, and science had finally corroborated it. Turns out I wasn’t a dramatic complainer. At last, my mom believed me. I was vindicated.

But looking back, I realize those mornings of forced eggs were not acts of cruelty but of love—misguided, perhaps, but love nonetheless. My parents weren’t trying to torture me; they were trying to keep me healthy in the way they knew best. Only now, with hindsight, can I see how much care went into those breakfasts. At the time, I couldn’t imagine it. I just assumed that because my parents insisted, they must be right, and because I was a child, I must be wrong.

It reminds me of the way I thought about growing up in general. As a child, I carried this foreign but persistent belief that everything would improve as I got older. I thought the world itself would change with me—that kindness and fairness were waiting just beyond the next birthday. My greatest problem then was the cafeteria bully, and even that seemed temporary, destined to dissolve once we were all old enough to know better. In my imagination, adulthood was a yet-to-be-discovered place where everyone made good decisions, where people were kinder, wiser, gentler—because they were grown.

Of course, the reality was never that simple. Growing older didn’t fix the world; it merely sharpened my vision to see it more clearly. Eggs did not suddenly stop making me sick when I turned sixteen—it took years of paying attention to myself, of insisting on what I felt, before anyone else would listen. Adulthood did not sanctify those around me—it simply gave me the ability to recognize their complexity, their contradictions, and, sometimes, their well-intentioned mistakes.

In that sense, perhaps I was not entirely wrong as a child. The world did get better—not because it grew kinder, but because I learned how to navigate it. I learned to trust my body when it screamed at me. I learned that being believed is not automatic, even by those who love you most, but that persistence matters. And I learned that the very things that cause you pain can, years later, soften into strangely tender memories.

So yes, eggs and I remain estranged. I avoid them, and I live a happier life because of it. But I can’t quite bring myself to hate eggs. They’re a part of my story, a relic of mornings at the kitchen table with my parents, who—despite their misplaced faith in scrambled yolks—were only ever trying to love me in the way they knew how. And maybe that’s what growing up really is: not escaping discomfort, but learning to hold it alongside love, until the bitterness—or the grossness—tastes almost sweet.

—Yimeng (Nicole) Wang Yu is a 17-year-old junior at Shanghai American School, P.R. China. She grew up in Spain and now lives in China, and she speaks, reads, and writes in English, Chinese, Spanish, and French. When she isn’t writing, she can be found on the basketball court, blasting music through her AirPods, or noticing the small, everyday details that might inspire her next piece—sometimes all at once.

The Little Princess and the Colorful Butterflies

The Little Princess and the Colorful Butterflies

By Diponkar Chanda, Ontario, Canada

No one remembered the name of the kingdom anymore, but it did exist, a long ago!

Far, far away, nestled close to a forest, there was a tiny village, and it was the seat of this kingdom. There was a palace as well; but not like the ones in our big cities.

This palace was very different. Its walls were made of straw and clay, it had a thatched roof, and it stood gently beneath the sky, like a well-kept secret.

In this palace lived a little princess with her ancient grandmother.

One sunny morning in spring, when a sweet breeze was blowing, birds were chirping joyfully, and flowers bloomed in every corner of the yard, the little princess woke up.

She rubbed her eyes, looked out the window, and noticed something—their little walls didn’t seem as colorful as the world outside.

The trees wore fresh green dresses. The flowers in the meadows sparkled with red, yellow, pink, and purple. Even the butterflies danced in colors—too bright and too many to name them here!

Pale Swallowtail Butterfly. Photo by Herb Everett, Oregon.

Monarch Butterfly. Photo by Ted Rose, Indiana.

The princess longed to bring those colors into their home, their palace.

And she knew, like everyone else in the kingdom, that the true owners of all the colors were those beautiful butterflies.

So, the little princess wanted to catch one. But she was far too little.

Art by Makayla Liu, age 12, Vancouver, Canada.

No one else was home, so she turned to her granny. Now, her granny was like eighty or a hundred years old, or maybe even more. Nobody really knew how old she was. She was the oldest person in the whole kingdom. And, she was certainly far too old to run after those butterflies!

What could they do?

The old woman thought for a moment. Then she searched the hut carefully—every corner, every pouch, every pot.

Finally, she found something she was searching for, a little fistful of sunflower seeds. She smiled.

Granny stepped outside into the wide, sleepy yard. With her slow, gentle feet, she planted the seeds in tidy rows and began to care for them. She watered them every day, with all the love in her heart.

Days passed. Little by little, green shoots appeared. Then leaves. Then came tall, strong stems.

And then one morning, a thousand sunflowers bloomed across the yard—each one like a small sun, shining with golden joy.

Granny didn’t need to chase butterflies anymore.

The butterflies came to them—fluttering, dancing, and painting the air with their beautiful colors.

And you know what?

They shared their colors generously. And from then, true beauty arouse on the boundless canvas of nature—born from careful sharing.

And the little palace also sparkled with butterfly colors—reds, oranges, blues, and purples that no brush could ever copy.

Not just the tiny palace, but also the little princess herself sparkled with those attractive colors.

Her smile shone with every color of the butterflies.

And from that day on, little princess learned that true beauty grows many-fold when we share it with everyone, with profound care.

Diponkar Chanda is an emerging writer based in greater Toronto area of Canada. Originally from Bangladesh, he writes stories and poetry that bridge cultures, languages, and imagination. English is not his first language, and he brings the rhythm and depth of his native Bangla (also known as the Bengali) language into his storytelling.

Art by Makayla Liu, age 12, Vancouver, Canada. She adds: “I’ve loved drawing since I was a child, and in the future I hope to work in a field related to drawing or character design.”

Stuffed

Stuffed

By Claire Chen, age 11, New Jersey.

Stuffed, stuffed, the house is stuffed
With stuffed toys that need to be thrown out
A waste of space
I am told to get rid of them!

But when I look around
Memories abound
First, the dozens of stuffed Pokemon
Evoke memories of family trips to Japan
I cradle an Eevee, a treasured prize won
With bated breath at a claw machine in Tokyo
I squeeze Lapras, the comforting pillow I hugged
On the 18-hour flight to visit family
I can almost still hear my brother’s high-pitched shrieks
During our made-up game of Pokemon Dodgeball
Can I let them go?

Next, the stuffed shaved ice from Singapore
Its name—Ice Kachang* —reminds me
Of Singlish and its foreign yet endearing sounds
English, Mandarin, Hokkien**, and Malay smashed
Into one bizarre hodgepodge
Intelligible only to insiders
Like Singlish, I am a mash
Of American and Asian
Do others understand me?

Then, a stuffed chocolate bar
A souvenir from Hershey
During my grandmother’s first and last visit
Before the chemotherapy failed
The only stuffed toy she ever bought for me
Mum says Grandma never bought her stuffed toys
But that time, she got one for me
Isn’t it a souvenir of her?

Stuffed, stuffed, my mind is stuffed
Stuffed with memories I want to keep in
Precious treasures
That only I hold in my heart

Notes:
*Kachang is the Malay word for nuts
**Hokkien is a Southern Chinese dialect

By Claire Chen, age 11, New Jersey. She adds: “My parents were born in Singapore but I was born in America. My family visits Singapore or Japan nearly every year because we have family in those countries. I speak and write both English and Mandarin, but it takes a lot of time and effort to learn Mandarin in America and I find it very difficult. My mother wanted me to learn Mandarin so I could understand her culture better. However, when we visit Singapore, they do not often speak Mandarin. They speak a version of English that they call “Singlish.” It is a mixture of several local languages, mainly Mandarin, Hokkien (a Southern Chinese dialect), Malay, and English. Singlish can be quite confusing for me—something I mention in my poem.”
“I was inspired to write this poem, titled Stuffed, because I have a lot of stuffed toys and my mum often talks about getting rid of them to reduce clutter in the house. But these items all have histories and meaning to me.”

The 2025 Weather Photographers of the Year

The 2025 Weather Photographers of the Year Winners

The Royal Meteorological Society (of the United Kingdom) has announced the winners of this year’s Standard Chartered Weather Photographer of the Year Competition. In their tenth year of the competition, they received over 4,000 images from both amateur and professional photographers in 84 countries. You can view details by clicking the Winners’ Galleries on Royal Meteorological Society website.

The Main Category
Winner: Geshuang Chen and Shuchang Dong, for their photo: “The Gorgeous Ring” on Lugu Lake, Yunnan Province, P. R. China.

Runner Up:  Jadwiga Piasecka, from the UK, for her photo: “Eunice III,” an image from a sheltered place out of reach of the storm in Newhaven, on the south coast of the U. K., where winds were gusting at over 80 miles per hour. The photographer wrote: “From my vantage point, I watched enormous waves battling against the sea wall, sending dramatic sprays of water high into the air…highlighting just how immense the storm’s fury truly was.”

The Mobile Category
Winner: Kyaw Zay Yar Lin, from Myanmar. Photo: “Fishing in the Raining Season.” The photo captures the urgent feeling of being caught in a sudden downpour. The motion blur of both the fishermen and the rain make the viewer feel part of the action, caught in the sudden intensity of a tropical storm.
Runner Up: Tamás Kusza, from Slovakia, Photo: “Path to the Heart of the Storm”

The Young Category
Winner: Adrian Cruz, from the US, Photo: “Eruption of the Sky,” captured from a passenger plane flying between Washington DC, and Orlando, Florida. The photo reveals a spectacular view of a thunderstorm cloud glowing pink against a deepening blue sky.
Runner up: Ellen Ross, from the US, Photo: “Clear Skies Ahead.”

The Climate Category
New to this year’s competition was the Climate Category, created to underscore the connection between weather patterns and the broader impacts of climate change, illustrating how these global shifts impact businesses, people and communities.
Winner: Jonah Lange, from the US. Photo: “West Texas Special.”
Climate change is amplifying extremes, turning open landscapes into arenas for even more volatile and destructive weather. Drought conditions in West Texas are becoming more frequent and severe, drying out the soil and increasing the availability of loose dust.
Runner Up: Maria del Pilar Trigo Bonnin, of the Philippines, for: “Heading Home.” Typhoon Rai (locally named Odette) tore across Siargao Island, Philippines, in December 2021. Maria took this photo from the back of another motorbike as they made their way through the devastation.

You can visit the Winners’ Galleries on the Royal Meteorological Society’s website.

No Phone, No Problem

No Phone, No Problem

By Nasiruddin Hamid, Qadian, Punjab, India.

We all love playing video games, watching funny shorts, and making movies on our smartphones. However, some of us use the cellphones much more than others.

I live in Northern India with my family. After school, my father gives me his cellphone for ten minutes to play games and enjoy SnapChat and YouTube, etc. When those ten minutes turn into 20 or 30 minutes, and then into an hour, I don’t even realize it—but my father does.

Last year, I started avoiding playing outdoors and spending time with my friends. I was using the phone more and more without telling my parents. But my parents never stopped keeping an eye on me.

One day, my father told me when he was a kid, he used to play many outdoor games like Pakadam Pakdai, Baraf Pani, Pitthu Gram, and Addi (see the end note below for a short explanation of these games children play in India). He said, “We didn’t have phones, but we’d read comics and novels in Urdu and English for our pasttime.”

Thinking of those outdoor games and thoughts of reading comics and novels really got me interested. So I made a deal with my dad that he and I would play outside and read books together. He bought me a new bicycle, and now I go riding; he runs beside me while I ride my bicycle, which is quite fun! He also bought me new comics and a few novels, and he reads them with me.

I really like reading the tales of Akbar and Birbal, as well as the stories of Mullah Nasruddin. They are full of humor and wisdom. I must say, I find reading books or riding a bicycle outdoors much more interesting than playing video games or watching YouTube shorts.

Yes, I know cellphones have their own benefits, but as my father says, “They are more useful after a certain age.” We should limit our phone usage. I have read that too much smartphone use can damage our brain cells, affect eyesight, and even our emotional health.

I believe my parents when they tell me that there can be many unforeseen negative impacts of these devices. I always trust them with any issues that come up.

As school age kids, we should use cellphones only for short duration, and under parental supervision and guidance.

By Nasiruddin Hamid, Qadian, Punjab, India.

Notes:

Akbar and Birbal Stories: Akbar was a Mughal emperor who ruled a large region in South Asia that includes modern-day Northern and Central India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan during the 16th century. Birbal was a close advisor and wise minister in the court of Akbar for some 30 years. The Akbar and Birbal stories are not only entertaining but also witty and are widely-read favorites of Indian kids.

Mullah Nasruddin (aka Nasreddin Hodja) appears in countless stories—mostly witty or wise—where he is shown as a (holy) fool that teaches great wisdom to the world. He is considered a Sufi (Islamic) character and he may have actually lived in the 13th century in present day Turkey and may have traveled to many lands as his stories are widely known.

A Short Explanation of the Games:

Pakdam Pakdai: Run and catch game One kid tries to catch others who try to run away.
Baraf Pani: When caught, you freeze like “Baraf” (Hindi word for ice) until someone frees you by saying “Pani” (Hindi word for water)
Pitthu Gram: Players break a stack of seven stones with a ball and then try to rebuild it before getting tagged by the fielders.
Addi: is played with two teams of 5/5 players. One team starts in a circle and tries to reach the end of the field line while the other team chases and blocks the players from reaching it.

 

Fighting Antisemitism , Fighting Injustice

Fighting Antisemitism, Fighting Injustice

By Donna Nevel, Florida

When I think about how to end antisemitism, I feel grounded in principles I learned from my parents. They taught me to be proud of who I was as a Jewish person but never to think I was better than any other person, group, or community. They showed me by example that caring about antisemitism meant caring about anti-Black racism and all forms of injustice. They lived by these principles always, which inspired my love of being Jewish as well as my desire to participate in movements challenging injustice and for collective liberation.

Antisemitism is generally understood as discrimination against Jews, violence against Jews, or targeting Jews simply because they are Jewish. Sometimes antisemitism is expressed through stereotypes and generalizations about Jews.

Jews come from many different experiences and histories. There are white Jews, Jews of color, and Jews from different parts of the world (my family migrated to the United States from Eastern Europe). Antisemitism does not always look the same for each of these communities and groups; there are differences based on geographies, class and race, intersections with other political identities, and more. 

Some examples of antisemitic violence in recent years in the US include the 2018 massacre of eleven congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Jewish cemeteries being destroyed; and people who are visibly Jewish (wearing a skull cap or another Jewish symbol, for example) being attacked.  

The most well-known example of antisemitic violence is the Nazi murder of six million Jews (the Holocaust). In 1933, there were nine million Jews in Europe. By 1945, the Nazis had exterminated approximately two thirds of European Jewry in death camps and through mass murders. The Nazis also targeted and murdered other groups and communities on a racial and political basis, including Roma, Poles, and other Slavic peoples, queer people, those with disabilities, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and communists and members of political opposition groups.

Today, white nationalist violence–which, in many different, harmful ways, targets and denigrates Black people and other communities of color, trans and queer people, immigrants, Muslims, and Jews—is increasingly on the rise in many spheres of our society. White nationalist tactics include the use of conspiracy theories, among other manifestations. Antisemitic conspiracy theories promote notions of Jewish power and control and of Jews as untrustworthy and sinister. 

Ending antisemitism also means understanding what is not antisemitism. False accusations of antisemitism are too often directed at those who criticize the State of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian population. It is important to know that Palestinians had been living in Palestine for centuries before Israel was established. In that process, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or dispossessed from their lands and homes. (See more on Israel’s establishment/Zionism and the Nakba in note below.)

Antisemitism is directed at Jews as Jews. Criticism of Israel and/or its ideology is directed at a nation-state. Criticisms of Israel’s ongoing violence against the Palestinian people and the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and homes reflect a commitment to human rights and equal rights—and to what is just. Palestinians, Jews (such as members of Jewish Voice for Peace), and many others are committed to those principles. That is the furthest thing from antisemitism, and it is deeply harmful to suggest otherwise. 

So, how can we participate in ending antisemitism? Antisemitism has its own distinct characteristics—as do other types of discrimination—and is also connected to other forms of racism and injustice that different communities experience. Therefore, thinking about ending antisemitism also means thinking about how to end all types of injustice. We know that fighting injustice against one group while being silent or supporting it against another group will bring justice for no one.

This is what it means to have a commitment to collective liberation—the belief that we all are entitled to live lives with justice and dignity. Collective liberation also means that we have each other’s backs and can count on one another to speak out when anyone or any group faces an injustice.

People of all ages can participate and take action in different ways although we know it is much harder in these repressive times. For students, that might include holding educational workshops (maybe at a community space or in a friend’s home) on pressing topics of interest or encouraging your schools to open up spaces for participation in social justice actions and discussion of issues of social concern (including the ways that false accusations of antisemitism have been used to shut down student protests in support of Palestine).

Throughout history and until now, Jewish people have been part of many movements devoted to their own safety and the safety of all people. Jews have joined together with others who care about the well-being of all our communities to fight against any form of racism and discrimination. For example, Jewish civil rights activists and labor activists joined together with all those committed to civil and human rights and economic justice. The fight against antisemitism is part of that larger struggle for justice.

A Note on Israel’s establishment/Zionism and the Nakba:
Zionism is the primary ideology that drove the establishment of a Jewish-majority nation-state in the land of historic Palestine. As nationalism rose in Europe in the late 19th Century and as antisemitism intensified, Jews responded in a number of different ways. Some Jews, notably Theodor Herzl, considered the father of modern Zionism, thought the solution to antisemitism was Zionism: the establishment of a nation state for Jews in Palestine. During the years leading to 1948, as part of the Zionist movement’s process of colonizing Palestine and establishing Israel, 750,000 Indigenous Palestinians living in Palestine were expelled from their land and homes.  The “Palestinian Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic) refers to the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians during the establishment of Israel as a Jewish majority country on land that had a two-thirds majority Palestinian Arab population. The Nakba is present-tense; the displacement of Palestinians and the destruction of Palestinian life has been ongoing for over a century.”    —www.project48.com 

Donna Nevel, a community psychologist and educator, is co-director, with Nina Mehta, of PARCEO, a resource and education center that partners with community groups and institutions seeking to deepen their organizing and educational work for justice. PARCEO has co-created and facilitates workshops on Antisemitism from a framework of collective liberation, from which this piece is drawn.

2025 Civil Rights Art Contest Winners

Hindus for Human Rights Has Announced the

2025 Civil Rights Art Contest Winners!

HIGH SCHOOL DIVISION (Grades 9–12)

Contest Theme: For centuries, people in South Asia have used art—like folk paintings, music, and dance—to speak out against injustice. These art forms have helped communities resist colonial rule, caste discrimination, gender inequality, and government oppression. How do you see that same spirit alive today?

First Place Winner: 

 “Chardi Kala: Resilience in Action” by Tara Kodial, grade 12, New York.

2nd Place Joint Winners: 

“Roses and Thorns: A Bengali Woman’s Journey in Film” by Grace Saji, gr. 12, California.

“Dance Captured Through a Screen” by Eshita Lahiry, grade 12, Louisiana.

3rd Place Joint Winners:

“Dancer Breaking Free” by Aditi Karthik, grade 9, Georgia.

“Financial Freedom Teachings through Mehendi” by Zainab Habeeb, gr. 12, California.

Boy in the Back

By Michael Steel, age 14, grade 9, B.C., Canada

I was always the boy in the back
Letting time slip through my fingers
Watching the cluster and the chatter
Watching and never doing

A silent ghost, never real and never seen
Floating in the cosmos behind my eyes
Breathing in the synthetic suns
And polyester skies
Starry moons of the finest gleaming plastic
Twenty years in the blink of an eye

I saw the other side of the world
From the back of our classroom
The clay people danced before my eyes
Only I could see them move

Watching the constellations of LEDs
Soar brightly over my head
The things I never saw,
But I always believed

I was the boy in the back
Living a thousand ceramic lives
In a thousand spun-glass galaxies
But I was never here at home

—Michael Steel, age 14, is a high school student and published author currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia. He lives with his parents, brothers and ridiculously fluffy cat, Taco. His hobbies include creating arts, reading, writing, and playing Block Blast.