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Name: Kelbey Rodgers

krodgers@puxico.k12.mo.us

Grade: 11

Chapter: Puxico R-8

Adviser: Samantha Hood

shood@puxico.k12.mo.us

The Why- Capstone Project

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Statistics say that 41% of women and 26% of men have experienced sexual or physical

violence. Violence is something that we see everyday, all around us. It has become a part of

everyday life, people have lowered the standard of what they consider to be violent. While

some instances are not as extreme as others, no form of violence should be overlooked. My

inspiration for this project is the violence that I see around me. I want the world to be a place

where we don’t have to be in constant fear. My personal goal with this project is to influence

others to stand up for those experiencing violence and to send a message to those who are

being violent. My passion for this project comes from seeing the good in people when they are

treated with kindness.

So, who is affected by violence? At some point, everyone will be affected by a form

violence. These experiences can lead to physical and psychological complications and

hardships. The age group that experiences the most violence is women ages 18-24, following

ages 11-17. The effects on people from violence can be many different things. Most people

will suffer from mental destruction and will develop trust issues. They’ll have problems

trusting that others will not treat them the same as others who have treated them violently.

Aside from this, they may also experience physical trauma, depending how harsh the violence

was.

While interviewing people about their experiences and thoughts about violence, there

was one thing that really stuck out to me. One man quoted, “An eye for an eye will only make

the whole world blind.”. This is a quote by Mahatma Gandhi, and this quote has a lot of

meaning. I interviewed ten different people within my community, and one thing they all had

in common was their familiarity with violence. All of them had experienced a form of violence

and had seen acts of violence occur. In a community, such as my own, that is very small, these
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things are easy to see. Now, imagine your big cities, New York, Chicago, and LA, these

places have thousands of people living in them. The violence rates are going to go up. The

people that live in these cities see the same thing, day in, day out. It would be nothing out of

the ordinary for these people to see someone getting robbed or beaten. Not many people are

going to stop and help that person, they probably won’t think a thing about it, because it's a

normal thing that they see all the time. They’ve become blind to the act of violence. My

empathy map has a note that states, “They hope to see everyone treated with kindness and wish

that people would take a minute to be kind.”. If this is true, then we will open our eyes to the

violence around us and not seek revenge on others.

In conclusion, we’re all users of violence, whether we are experiencing it or witnessing

it. We need kindness and awareness of the violence that is in the world. We also need a

common goal of minimizing violence and knowing that we can change the violence that others

experience daily.
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Additional Sources:

(“Fast Facts: Preventing Intimate Partner Violence |Violence Prevention|Injury Center”)

“Violence Quotes (1980 Quotes).” Goodreads, Goodreads,

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/violence.