5A - Identifying Local Opportunities

I chose the newspaper of my hometown, Columbus, Ohio.  Most of the articles I chose for opportunities are actually more serious problems, but they do affect people everyday.

Local Newspaper:  The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio)

Opportunity #1: “Old House Handyman: Brush with paint sprayer didn’t go as planned”, http://www.dispatch.com/entertainmentlife/20180909/old-house-handyman-brush-with-paint-sprayer-didnt-go-as-planned

In this article, a man and his father were painting a shed and building.  First, they used brushes but they didn’t like how it turned out so they got out an old sprayer because their new sprayers were two hours away at his house.  After having trouble, they tried thinning the paint and cleaning the sprayer, but it ended up being thrown away after 4 long hours of hard work that did not complete their project.  In the end, he said he had so much trouble he planned on just finishing with a brush.

The problem is clearly the inefficiency of using a brush to paint a large area such as a building, but the sprayer also not working to solve that issue.  The problem affects people doing projects on their own at home like in the article and businesses that are opening up new locations or renovating (especially places like apartments who constantly have to fix up their place).

Opportunity #2:  “Baby giraffe born at The Wilds has died”, http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180910/baby-giraffe-born-at-wilds-has-died

In this article, they talk about the tragic death of the new baby giraffe that people nationwide were so happy to see born at the Cincinnati Zoo.  The giraffe was doing well and nursing and without an evident cause of death, so they performed an autopsy.

The problem is that the giraffe passed away and the question becomes: Was it of natural causes or was it because the giraffe was born in captivity?  The zookeepers and whoever funds the zoo (who benefits from the money the zoo takes in for the economy) has this problem.  Giraffes are not in abundance in this world.  This can be consider a day-to-day issue because people go to the Zoo every single day and the Cincinnati Zoo is the third best ranked zoo in the US, while Columbus is the fifth.  This opportunity may require a science background or a lot of research/resources to tackle.

Opportunity #3: “Near East Side residents have a new option for trauma care”, http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180910/near-east-side-residents-have-new-option-for-trauma-care

In this article, they mention how they opened a new trauma center for residents of Near East Side in order to provide services for serious wounds, falls and injuries for people in that area. 

The need for this was extreme because traumatic injuries need to be treated as soon as possible, so if there is not one close to someone when they are critically injured, there is a lower chance of them being saved and recovering.  This center fulfilled this need for this area, but this was only the fifth trauma center in central Ohio, so there is clearly still the same need for other areas.  People who have this need include not only the residents of areas without close trauma centers and people who have the skills to work at a trauma center but are unemployed.  The opportunity would be looking to more areas of central Ohio and Ohio as a whole to see who needs trauma centers.

Opportunity #4: “Documentary screening to kick off renewed suicide-prevention effort”, http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180908/documentary-screening-to-kick-off-renewed-suicide-prevention-effort

           

This article discusses the difficult topic of suicide and introduces the need to talk about it to make the issue known and hopefully prevent it from happening.  The article states that every give hours, someone dies by suicide and last year, 188 people died by Franklin County alone, which is actually the county I live in there.  A documentary was created to start public discussion.

The problem here is losing lives in the communities of Ohio due to mental illness such as depression and addiction.  This creates a need of educating people to hopefully prevent people from taking these drastic measures.  I would say everyone, whether they think it or not, in Ohio has this issue because children will always have a need to be educated and everyone has the potential to be affected themselves by mental illness, or a loved one.  This creates an opportunity to start a project like a documentary to start public discussion about these issues.

Opportunity #5: “Four sexual assaults reported on or near Ohio University campus”, http://www.dispatch.com/special/20180908/four-sexual-assaults-reported-on-or-near-ohio-university-campus

This article talks about a very, very serious issue that happens on college campuses nationwide, but Ohio University is currently facing a growing problem.  The article states that there were 4 different cases of sexual assault on campus, but they are still investigating to see if they are related.  This is a problem because students are scared of their safety on campus.  An event like this would change the students’ lives affected for the rest of their life, and most likely negatively impact their education—which is what they came there for.  This is a problem for not only the students on campus who fear their safety, but for the families of the students, and also the school itself.  An opportunity presents itself for people to come forward to educate others either through movements or starting something in an effort to protect people from tragic events like this.