1. Animal Rights How can protecting animals also help people? Livelihoods: About 1 billion of the world’s poorest people rely on animals for their income. The welfare of these animals is essential to supporting human livelihoods – animal health improves productivity and creates stability, leading to sustainable development and protecting livelihoods. Environmental protection: Responsible animal management has positive impacts on land use, climate change, pollution, water supplies, habitat conservation and biodiversity. Health: Good animal care reduces the risk of food poisoning and of diseases that are transmissible from animals to humans. Healthy animals also secure food supplies, helping protect people from malnutrition and hunger. Companionship: All around the world, millions of people look to animals for companionship; the human-animal bond has proven therapeutic benefits.

2. Deforestation Deforestation is clearing Earth's forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but the world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation. Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families. The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock.

3. Education Over 2 billion people are living in absolute poverty in the world and have little or no access to education. Over 125 million children do not have any access to schooling and of this, 70% are girls. Additionally, 2/3rds of the world’s countries have no equality between boys and girls in terms of primary and secondary education.

4. Global Hunger More than one billion people — one sixth of the world's population — suffer from chronic hunger. Without enough food, adults struggle to work and children struggle to learn. Global food supplies must increase by an estimated 50 percent to meet expected demand in the next 20 years. Advancing sustainable agricultural-led growth increases the availability of food, keeps food affordable, and raises the incomes of the poor.

5. Global Pollution Pollution is the addition of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or any form of energy (such as heat, sound, or radioactivity) to the environment at a rate faster than it can be dispersed, diluted, decomposed, recycled, or stored in some harmless form. The major kinds of pollution are air pollution, water pollution, and land pollution. Modern society is also concerned about specific types of pollutants, such as noise pollution, light pollution, and even plastic pollution.

6. Global Water Rights Today’s water crisis is not an issue of scarcity, but of access. More people in the world own cell phones than have access to a toilet. And as cities and slums grow at increasing rates, the situation worsens. Every day, lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills thousands, leaving others with reduced quality of life.

7. Health and Disease What are some of the worst diseases out there and how should we handle them? If a disease is localized to a certain region, should other countries intervene? In the 21st century, health is a shared responsibility, involving equitable access to essential care and collective defense against transnational threats. The World Health Organization is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting standards, finding evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.

8. Leadership What makes a successful/unsuccessful leader? Why is it that some countries have constantly successful leaders while others do not? How does this impact the people? Are some countries/continents prone to corrupt leaders than others? With this topic, the student should compare & contrast two different leaders and present why one was successful and the other was not. The student should provide an overview of their characters life/background while also providing evidence to justify their point of a good or bad leader. Be prepared to convince/defend your argument to your classmates.

9. Population Displacement The displacement of people refers to the forced movement of people from their locality or environment and occupational activities. It is a form of social change caused by a number of factors, the most common being armed conflict. Natural disasters, famine, development and economic changes may also be a cause of displacement. The term refugee refers to any person forced to move outside of an international border.

10. Sweat Shoppes A sweatshop is characterized by the systematic violation of one or more fundamental workers' rights that have been codified in international and U.S. law. These rights include the prohibition of child labor, forced or compulsory labor and discrimination in employment based on any personal characteristic other than the ability to do the job; the right to a safe and healthy work environment that does not expose workers to degrading or dangerous working conditions: freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively. A sweatshop is also characterized by wages that do not permit workers to feed, clothe and shelter themselves and their families, and hours of work so long that education and a decent family life are out of reach.

11. Topics in Review Choose your top five 1.Animal Rights 2.Sweat Shops 3.Population Displacement 4.Leadership 5.Health & Disease 6. Education 7. Deforestation 8. Global Hunger 9. Water Rights 10.Global Pollution