ESSAY TOPIC 6 : If you could change one important thing about your hometown, what would you change? Use reasons and specific examples to support your answer.

In my opinion everything needs to be changed and improved frequently in my hometown. Starting from the dirty streets, which make the country look even more not developed and ending up with cracked and useless buildings, which are not being rebuilt for no specific reason. My hometown needs lots of improvements, as it has lots of flaws. But there is one thing that bothers me the most about my hometown - the beggars. Here are some examples why beggars are important to be eliminated.

Firstly, we’re a developing country and if in a developing country some people don’t have homes and are begging for money that country is never going to develop. People don’t have homes, they live in the streets, they sleep on the bench, on rocks, I’ve even seen someone sleeping on the tree, I thought he was going to fall down from the tree and injure himself as the tree was really very high, luckily or unluckily he didn’t.

Secondly, homeless people tell a lot about the country and when someone visits the country for the first time the impression about the country is going to lower and be really sad if he sees beggar on every street of the city.  Last year my aunt and her family was going to visit my hometown for the first time in 8 years. I was really excited about that, then for a minute I got scared, because I used to tell lots of good things about the city, how beautiful it is, how friendly people are in here, and I was literally scared if they were going to get disappointed by seeing homeless people around the city. Luckily, no one begged for a money from us when they were here and I was not ashamed.

Last but not least, they get on people’s nerves, they keep on begging money for bread, for food, but in reality they go and buy drinks or cigarettes. I’ve seen it by my own eyes. A man was begging money from me because he told me that he was starving from hunger, then the next minute I saw him buying a drink. That’s not fair. Or even worse, they lie. Sometimes in reality they have homes, they have money, they just lie to people to get more money. Maybe they don't have an education or are just too lazy to get a job and begging money from people is so easy, they don’t need to work hard. So, being a beggar has become a job for them. Some of them are even experts in that. Once, I saw a shocking video on internet, how one pretty girl was dressed like an old lady and was begging money saying that she needs to buy medicine, because she’s really unhealthy and needs to be cured. Then some people followed her and even recorded a video how she was changing her cloths in the car, getting dressed, becoming a young girl and spending the money that she got from people as an old lady.

To summarize, my city is not flawless as all the other cities in the planet. It has lots of disadvantages, it’s dirty, it doesn’t have lots of beautiful buildings, no interesting places to visit, etc. But the most important flaw above all is the homeless people for me. As they have a great influence on the city. And they make the beauty of the city less valuable. Tourists pay attention to everything and maybe change their opinion about the city because the homeless people. Then, they sometimes lie to people. In my opinion they can just earn money, they can always find a job and get money for the work that they do, not just from begging it from strangers.

(Written by Mariam Mirzoyan)