In November, three days after the presidential election, African-American students at the University of Pennsylvania received racist texts through the messaging app GroupMe, including insults like “dumb slave,” a Nazi-inflected “Heil Trump” and a calendar event for a daily lynching. The New York Times ran a single sentence about the incident, buried in an article on A21; The Wall Street Journal gave it two. Online, at The Washington Post, quotes from administrators and UPenn College Republicans dominated the story.
Compare that to the way Blavity, a digital media company run by and for black millennials, handled it. They published a 1,473-word op-ed by Brian Peterson, the director of Makuu: Penn’s Black Cultural Center, about taking the hateful words as a call to action. Unlike the version so many national outlets ran, if they covered the news at all, Blavity centered the harassment on a black person’s experience.
With only 13 percent minority representation in newsrooms, headlines about African-Americans tend to skew toward extremes: Rihanna’s latest album on one end of the spectrum, gun violence in inner cities on the other. Blavity aims to provide a less sensational middle ground, depicting the multiplicity of ways to be black today. Headquartered in Los Angeles, the site reaches about 7 million unique visitors a month. And their core demographic, young people of color in America’s major cities, seem to like what they’re seeing: 38 percent of users make repeat visits.
“How does it feel to be stereotyped [in the media]? Sometimes, it feels bad. More often, it just feels false,” says Aaron Samuels, a poet and one of Blavity’s co-founders. “Watching news about black people that’s mass-marketed to non-black people, the facts are weird or the names are pronounced wrong. Or maybe the facts and names are right, but the story’s incomplete, and we’re not getting the entire perspective. That rings as inauthentic, and it makes people want to check out.”
A portmanteau of “black” and “gravity,” Blavity takes its name from a gathering spot for African-American students at Washington University in St. Louis, where the site’s four co-founders all earned their undergraduate degrees. Because black students are underrepresented at the institution, a table in the student center became the spot where they gravitated, says Jonathan Jackson, Blavity’s head of corporate brand. “We have to navigate spaces that we don’t own. When we find each other, we stick with each other,” he adds. As one of the few locations on campus where African-American students weren’t in the minority, the roundtable became a community nexus and a site for discussion.
Blavity, which launched in 2014, works much the same way, offering a chance to interact with writers and readers from similar backgrounds. “It looks like me, feels like me. I don’t have to bend who I am to be a part of it,” says Jackson.
Once there, surrounded by like-minded peers, readers’ identities deepen and grow more complex, according to the site’s co-founders. Blavity is not about bridging the divide between black and white, but rather exploring more nuanced differences between, say, a first-generation Ghanaian immigrant and someone with deep roots in Atlanta, between comic book–reading “blerds” (black nerds) and hip-hop fans.
“People assume that black folks don’t care about exploring this nuance, but the complexities are just as important as the similarities,” Jackson explains. “It gives a voice to people that we pretend don’t exist. ‘I’m a gamer but you don’t think I am, because you think gamers don’t look like me.’ This is not a subculture: We are the culture.”
To capture those diverse narratives, Blavity employs a team of 16 full-time writers. In addition, the company accepts op-eds and commissions freelance pieces from across the country. Their primary qualifications for contributors: “a quick pulse on what’s going on” and an ability to “translate that into meaningful conversation,” says Jackson.
Their stories delve into topics that receive little mainstream coverage, like black masculinity or the stigmas against mental healthcare. That’s not to say Blavity doesn’t cover the day’s dominant headlines, too: They devote plenty of space to Black Lives Matter and police brutality. But even there, the tech company has a different approach than most news organizations in that they refuse to share body-cam footage of officer-involved shootings, which they believe causes unnecessary psychological trauma.
To widen their reach, Blavity’s stable of reporters produces content on nearly every platform, whether it’s moderating a Twitter discussion on interracial dating, Instagramming the best black designers on Etsy or Snapchatting a tour of the African-American History Museum.
As America’s first black president leaves the White House, there’s much at stake for the black community. After his election, Barack Obama gave his first interview to Ebony, an African-American-owned publication. This past summer, the magazine, whose covers over its 71-year-history had been graced by the likes of Muhammad Ali and Aretha Franklin, was sold to a private equity firm — a sign, to observers, that black-owned media’s influence was slipping. Blavity’s recent success suggests the decline might simply have been generational. They prove there’s still a market and, more than ever, a need for news written by black writers for black audiences.
“We’ve been making and building things for a long time, but the ownership has not been ours in a meaningful way. Blavity is a medium to communicate our value,” says Jackson. “There’s never been a more critical time to have that than right now.”
Tag: entrepreneurs
This Anti-Poverty Initiative Was Born in a Hospital Waiting Room
Dr. Michael Hole, a senior resident in pediatrics at Boston Medical Center (BMC), was used to hearing unusual questions from patients, but this mother’s was truly a first: “Can the clinic help me get my taxes done?”
Lacking an accountant’s expertise, Hole referred her to a free tax preparer. But when she returned for her newborn’s next appointment, the mom told Hole she’d taken two buses and a train across town, only to find the place closed. She tried once more the following week, but this time, she didn’t bring the right documents. Fed up, she forked over $400 to a local H&R Block — a huge chunk of her negligible four-digit annual earnings.
The woman’s experience wasn’t an aberration either, says Dr. Lucy Marcil, another BMC pediatric resident. “There were 27 free tax sites in Boston at the time, but they were rarely accessible to families. It might be in a church basement or be open from only 4 to 7 p.m. on a Tuesday. Others have a five-hour-long line of people,” she says.
Frustrated by the situation low-income families confront, Hole and Marcil cofounded StreetCred in 2015 to help working parents complete their annual tax filing. Their unique solution? Set up free prep stations at a place where parents show up regularly: In their case, the waiting room. While the doctor’s doing a check-up, a volunteer is using a W-2 and other records to fill out the parents’ Form 1040. (Often, the volunteers are employees elsewhere in the hospital, like a pharmacist or IT staff member, who receive tax-prep training from local partners.) Last year, StreetCred’s service returned more than $400,000 to approximately 200 Boston families.
Most of those savings come from applying the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the federal government’s largest and arguably most effective anti-poverty initiative. Started by a Republican president in 1975 and given its current shape by Bill Clinton in 1993, the EITC is one of the few programs in Washington to enjoy bipartisan support. Essentially, working families making less than $53,500 can file a “negative tax return,” drawing a check from the IRS worth up to $6,242.
Unlike other entitlements that limit what a recipient can buy (think: WIC and SNAP’s restrictions to certain food items), the EITC’s payback is up to parents’ discretion. “A lot of what they spend money on is major expenses hanging over their head: credit card debt, a roof falling in or a car repair,” Marcil says. “Conceptually, the idea is that you take away financial insecurity and poverty and instability. Those things take up a ton of mental space, and removing some of that frees them up to be more actively engaged: reading to their kids or providing consistent schedules, rather than having to run off to a third job.” With what’s left over, Marcil adds, “they can buy fruits and vegetables for the baby, a winter coat or a high chair — all the things that we think of as necessities to raise a child that are really luxuries to them.”
There’s just one problem: One in five eligible low-income Americans isn’t actually taking the credit. By situating the refund in a medical context, StreetCred has the chance to significantly boost participation rates. For one, 92.4 percent of kids see a pediatrician at least once a year, giving the doctor — a professional that commands parental trust — a chance to ask whether they know about the credit, just like they ask about guns, swimming pools and low windows. (Not that the EITC isn’t within their purview too: It’s been shown to improve maternal and infant health by, for instance, upping birth weight and decreasing maternal smoking.)
Next tax season, which runs from January 23 through April 18, StreetCred will test out their model at three new locations: Boston Children’s Hospital, South End Community Health Center and a homeless shelter. They’ll be looking to see how many families they can reach, the error rates on returns, the refund’s impact on the family and, finally, the way the service changes the family’s relationship with their healthcare provider. And they’ll be piloting another set of services: With their tax form filled out, the volunteer can check whether the family qualifies for other social services they might be missing out on, like Medicaid or a Section 8 housing voucher.
Beginning with Boston, doctors’ checkups are getting much more comprehensive, and families are clearly benefiting from it.
Homepage photo of Lucy Marcil by Matthew Morris/Boston Medical Center
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Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that StreetCred helps parents fill out their Form 1099; they actually assist with filling out Form 1040. NationSwell regrets the error.
This Millennial Is on a Mission to Unleash the Next Generation of Techies
In the next four years, economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics predict that the country will add more than 1.4 million new technology jobs. Yet, based on current graduation rates, there will be only 400,000 computer science majors to fill those jobs. NationSwell Council member Jessica Santana sees that gap as an opportunity for the 1 million children who attend public school in New York City. At the nonprofit she co-founded, New York on Tech (NYOT), students from more than high schools (and counting) learn the digital skills employers desire. NationSwell spoke with Santana, herself a product of the city’s public-school system who has worked in the tech industry, about how the next generation can diversify tech’s booming business.
What’s on New York on Tech’s curriculum?
From September through June, the program provides about 152 hours of training, which consists of markup and programming languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python. But we also realize that not every student wants to be an engineer, so they learn about project management, quality assurance, digital media — all these different career opportunities. Afterward, our students get the opportunity to do paid internships over the summer with some of our corporate partners; this year, those included The Bank of New York Mellon and Warby Parker. They get to apply their new skills in a way that’s professional, in a way that gives them the social capital to keep on getting internships after the experience.
About 85 percent of the tech workforce is white or Asian, and 74 percent are male. Do the students you meet express that they don’t see role models in tech?
At the beginning of our program, we survey how many students know somebody in the industry or participate in a technology extracurricular program. Last year, about 90 percent said that New York on Tech was the first time they ever did anything technology-related as an extracurricular program. For many, they’re the first [in their family] to go to college. There’s a huge disconnect in where they can access career advice. So while they don’t formally say they lack mentors, the information we collect shows they do.
On the other hand, it’s also important to know that some students in our program don’t realize they are the only African-Americans and Latinos in technology. We intentionally place mentors of color from diverse backgrounds into their lives, so they won’t feel alone in their journey. If we come from the school of thought that they can’t be what they can’t see, then it’s our job to make sure that we recruit mentors intentionally.
Only 1 percent of New York City students are receiving computer science education. How should public schools be teaching the material?
There’s an opportunity for schools to explore how they teach 21st-century skills outside the actual computer science curriculum. To be a real technologist, what’s currently being offered [in computer science classes] in under-resourced schools is insufficient to move the needle on diversity in the tech workforce. Schools need to ask themselves whether their lessons are industry-aligned, that they’re actually going to prepare students for jobs, as opposed to just meeting educational standards.
Tech is so often associated with Silicon Valley. How does New York’s scene, on the other coast, differ?
The biggest difference between the valley and here is that New York City has diversity. Over there, it’s very homogenous. But here, there are so many pockets of diverse talent that can be employed. Most of the engineering departments stay in Silicon Valley, so you’ll notice there are a lot of opportunities in New York in sales, media and business development, a lot of non-technical jobs, too. It’s not the biggest industry yet in New York. Do I think it has the potential to get there? I’m not sure, to be honest. FinTech (or financial technology) is huge here, and we’re seeing a move toward tech in fashion and food as well.
How did you personally get involved in this work?
I’ve always been a technologist. I got a MacBook in eighth grade through PowerMyLearning, which was founded by fellow NationSwell Council member Elisabeth Stock. My parents were very strict. When my friends couldn’t come over, it was me and my computer. Having access to that first computer ignited a curiosity in me that wouldn’t have been possible for my friends, who didn’t have machines of their own.
I was a first-generation college student. As soon as I graduated with a master’s in information technology and started working in the industry, I was making four times my parents’ household income. When I realized that, in one year, I was going to make what my parents were making combined in four years, I asked myself, “How did I get here?” That question quickly became, “How do I get others here?” Because going into a technical program was an avenue out of poverty for me. I see how transformative it is for students, who came from communities like mine, to have these skills.
Was it tough for you to break into the tech industry?
When I was still working in the industry proper, as a technology consultant, I learned that the things that made me different made me powerful. It took me a long time to get comfortable with that. Oftentimes, I was the only woman, the only person of color, the only woman of color. As I matured, I started owning that difference: the fact that I was a Latina with curly hair and an accent who wouldn’t let those things stand in my way.
What are you most proud of having accomplished?
To this day, the greatest thing I’ve accomplished, honestly, is graduating from high school. Then being able to go to a four-year college completely transformed the way I saw opportunity, the way I set goals, the way I thought about business and the way I saw myself as a global citizen.
This Chef Has Been Putting Food Sustainability on the Table for Decades
Back in 2007, there were only two farmers’ markets in the country that offered a special deal for poor families: one in New York City and another in Columbia Heights, Md. That’s before Michel Nischan, a James Beard Award-winning chef long associated with the sustainable food movement, got involved. His grassroots organization, the nonprofit Wholesome Wave, helped persuade Congress to provide low-income families with extra bucks if they bought healthy, local fare. NationSwell spoke to Nischan by phone about his efforts to end food insecurity.
Wholesome Wave aspires to make healthy, local food more affordable to low-income shoppers. How have you accomplished that goal?
The target of our activity is federal dollars. The average person’s benefit through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) is about $4.20 a day — and that’s to spend on breakfast, lunch and dinner. When that’s all you have to spend on food, you’re really forced to make choices that you might not want to make.
The 2014 Farm Bill included the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive Program, with $100 million dollars in federal funding that has to be matched in full from the private sector to double SNAP dollars spent on fruits and vegetables. We wanted to level the playing field between healthy food and artificially inexpensive foods, like instant rice and noodles or snack chips, which are cheaper because of agriculture policies, tax breaks for large manufacturing facilities and transportation subsidies that scaled system enjoys. We raised private money to double SNAP and started with fruits and vegetables at farmers’ markets. The message to the consumer was “Spend your SNAP on anything you want, but if you come over here [to the farmers’ market], you double your money.”
Why do fruits and vegetables often cost more than less healthy foods?
The major reason some foods are so incredibly inexpensive is the public support for soy, corn, rice and wheat. Cereal companies often pay a price that is below the cost of production. After world wars I and II, these crops were favored as the future, and we produced a lot of them, because whichever country or ally bloc had the most food for its marching armies would be the one to win a war. When we learned how to process food to make it last 10 years, how to make it lighter so it’s cheaper to transport, how to put nitrogen and phosphorous and potassium in the ground so things would miraculously grow, we felt secure. And we also thought we could end starvation and feed the world. In that compelling moment, it was really easy to get the American public and Congress on board. It wasn’t to give one sector an unfair advantage, but those systems are still in place. It’s kind of a false economy; it’s not a true free market. [The question now is], how do we create a case to shift all of that public money that goes to funding these artificially inexpensive foods, which we now know are not good for us and the environment, to the types of foods that are good?
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What has building this grassroots organization taught you about leadership?
We need people to understand what they can align on. What I’ve learned over the years — and I think this is endemic in our society — is that we only want to work with people who think just like we do. Whether it’s in business or nonprofits, you’d much prefer working with someone who shares your core values. People ask us, “Is Wholesome Wave anti-GMO?” Why are you asking us that question? We’re about affordable access. Let’s align on that. If the thing you deeply, personally believe in is migrant farm-worker rights, equitable access to land or a ban on GMOs, work on those things. But there are other ways, while we’re doing our work, to come together on food justice.
What can the rest of us do to help further this movement?
I think food is one of the most powerful lenses to evaluate the quality of a lawmaker when we’re going to the polls. What’s their stance on abortion or marriage equality? All of those are important things and informed by deeply held religious beliefs. But if you’re going to take a meal a day off the table of a child by eliminating nutrition in schools, or you say that you don’t see the point of paying for healthcare in schools, you’re probably a jerk. How they vote on food and hunger is a great lens into their soul. Personally, I want an honorable, good person in office making decisions on my behalf. When you show up to vote, make sure you know what these folks do with food votes. You can go on Food Policy Action, put in your zip code and get a score for your representatives based on how they vote on food issues.
What books would you recommend to read up on the current system?
I’d recommend Michael Pollan’s “Botany of Desire,” Wendell Berry’s “The Unsettling of America,” Mas Masumoto’s “Wisdom of the Last Farmer,” and “Fair Food” by Oran B. Hesterman. Still, none of those really touches on the potential power of changing the decision you make at the grocery store. Food has the amazing potential to fix human health, the environment, our economy and our society, and people need to be inspired.
What other innovations are you excited about right now?
With the advent of the Affordable Care Act, we see an opportunity in the way Medicare and Medicaid dollars are spent, now that we’re shifting to more of a prevention culture rather than a fee-for-service model. We could potentially see billions of dollars put toward creating a fruit-and-vegetable prescription program. [In 2011, Wholesome Wave launched the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program to encourage healthcare providers to prescribe fresh produce to patients.] Doctors, nutritionists and nurse practitioners can work together to diagnose an at-risk patient, work to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables, and then measure that for health outcomes.
It’s actually less expensive to feed a family of four fruits and vegetables for 20 years than it is to have one person go on dialysis for four years. Dialysis from diabetes and kidney failure is the most expensive line-item in Medicare and Medicaid. And if we could get certain healthy food item SKUs coded as reimbursable for prevention, that would unlock billions of dollars and affordability for the country’s 66 million food-insecure people who are having difficulty making the lifestyle changes to prevent diseases that cost us over half a trillion dollars a year.
Rose Broome of HandUp
The seed for HandUp, a crowdfunding site that solicits donations to help the homeless, was planted in early 2012 when Rose Broome passed a shivering woman huddling in the doorway of a real estate office in San Francisco. “On a cold night, I was walking down the street and saw a woman sleeping on the sidewalk,” recalls Broome. “She didn’t have a jacket, she didn’t have a sweater — just a thin blanket protecting her from the cold ground.” That night, Broome says, “I made a commitment to myself to do one thing to make a difference, and that one thing turned into HandUp.”
The platform for HandUp allows those battling homelessness to appeal directly to donors to fund their particular needs. Since 2013, more than 2,000 people have raised nearly $1.6 million. By sharing their stories on the site, those in need are able to fundraise for housing assistance — security deposits, moving costs, help paying back rent, and so on — as well as for food, education, medical care and technological access. “Having a phone, the Internet, the ability to text is extremely important for everyone, especially for the most vulnerable people,” says Broome, who, besides cofounding HandUp, acts as its CEO.
The need for funding is enormous. Nationwide, 3.5 million people struggle with homelessness every year, and 50 million people live below the poverty line. But there’s a misconception about what being homeless looks like, says Broome, pointing out that the image of a person sleeping on the street, wrestling with mental health issues or drug addictions (or both), tends to capture the public’s imagination. In reality, however, 30 percent of those who are homeless are part of families. As Broome puts it, “You could walk right past 80 percent of people experiencing homelessness and not know any different.”
HandUp works by partnering with organizations that serve homeless populations. These organizations help their clients sign up and create profiles on the site (to date, they’ve launched more than 5,800 campaigns in 29 cities). When donors give, the money goes to the organization, which will pay for the items requested. Donors get an email update when their money has been put to use. HandUp also helps homeless people create donation request cards, which they can hand out to people they meet on the street, and donors in San Francisco can buy HandUp gift cards in $25 increments and distribute them when they meet someone in need (the cards can be used for groceries, clothes and other goods at HandUp’s nonprofit partners).
Join the cause! Help those experiencing poverty or homelessness. Read their stories, then post a message or make a donation here.
Broome and her cofounder, Sammie Rayner, are passionate about using technology to solve problems and create change. “It’s surprising, but right now, only 8 percent of charitable giving happens online,” Broome says. And unfortunately, the nonprofit sector tends to lag far behind the private sector in adopting new technologies. “So often, nonprofits are the last to get some of the best technology to do their work,” adds Rayner.
For the nonprofits that work with HandUp, the platform allows them to fund needs that wouldn’t otherwise be met, filling in the gaps left by restrictive government and foundation grant funding. SF Cares, a collaborative project of several Lutheran churches working to serve low-income and homeless individuals in San Francisco, has used HandUp to raise $18,000 for the needy they work with, plus another $20,000 toward their general operating costs. “They’re funds our organization never would have gotten before,” says the Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer, the executive director of SF Cares and pastor at Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church. And the people doing the giving through HandUp are new donors that SF Cares might not have reached on its own, she adds.
Rohrer says she loves the way HandUp lets people combatting homelessness “speak in their own voice.” And she likes that the site lets people decide for themselves what they need to improve their lives. “Plus,” she says, “any time that I don’t have to spend fundraising means I get to eat with the homeless, and I get to sing songs with them too.”
Creating human connections is as much a part of HandUp’s purpose as developing innovative technological solutions. “On HandUp, you can read the stories of thousands of people who need help with very specific goals,” Rayner says. “As soon as people read the human story and have that connection through our platform, it’s harder to have the same stereotypes, and it’s harder to judge.” When donors give on HandUp, they can also post words of encouragement. The people who receive money through the site often say those kind words mean more than the donation, adds Broome. “A lot of people who are homeless feel invisible,” she says. HandUp helps them feel seen.
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The 2016 AllStars program is produced in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal and celebrates social entrepreneurs who are powering solutions with innovative technology. Visit NationSwell.com/AllStars from November 1 to 15 to vote for your favorite AllStar. The winner will receive the AllStar Award, a $10,000 grant to help further his or her work advocating for change.
Billy Parish of Mosaic
Billy Parish studied climate change as a student at Yale, but it wasn’t until a summer trip to India after his sophomore year that the reality of the problem hit home. It was 2002 when Parish traveled to the source of the Ganges River, in the Himalayas, and met with scientists who were studying a glacier there. “They told me that the glacier had melted and was much further upriver than it was the year before, and that it was melting faster than anyone had been predicting,” he says. “The source of water for millions of people was at risk.” The experience had a huge impact on Parish. “Seeing the glacier was the first time I saw climate change face-to-face,” he says. “That for me was the moment of no turning back, when I said, ‘I need to do something about this.’”
That urge to do something eventually led Parish to create Mosaic, a company that provides financing for homeowners who want to go solar, in 2011. It’s a Certified B Corporation, meaning that in addition to turning a profit, Mosaic aims to have a positive impact on the world. Today, it’s the largest residential solar lender in the country. Mosaic works with roughly 250 solar installers, equipping them with software and financing products that they can offer to their customers. “There are now over 50,000 people who are prospering from clean energy through Mosaic,” Parish says, including not just those who own homes, but salespeople and installation crews too.
The typical Mosaic customer is a homeowner who wants to save money while doing something positive for the environment. Larry Allen and Heather Crelling, for example, recently had solar panels installed on their home in Cortlandt Manor, New York. They expect to save $100 a month initially, and twice that once they’ve paid off their loan. The installer they worked with, Sungevity, also guarantees them a minimum amount of savings; if they don’t realize those savings, they’ll get a check for the difference. “It’s very straightforward,” says Parish. “Our borrowers save money from day one.”
Mosaic is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the growing interest in solar technology. “There was a time where most analysts thought wind was going to be the dominant renewable energy,” notes Parish. But since 2009, the cost of solar panels has fallen 80 percent, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency, and the price is expected to continue to drop. Solar is also readily accessible to most everyone, leading Parish to predict that it “will be the dominant renewable energy technology of the future.”
Join the cause! Help the environment by signing up for renewable energy with your local provider. Need convincing? See 5 advantages of solar energy here.
The business opportunities in clean energy are enormous. Ultimately, Mosaic aims to move beyond providing loans for just solar panels. “Our plan for the coming years is to help homeowners finance everything they need to take their home to 100 percent clean energy,” says Parish. That could include updating HVAC systems; replacing windows, doors, and lighting; and purchasing a home automation system that helps conserve energy. For Parish, Mosaic is a unique opportunity to make a career out of making a difference. “What I love about coming to work every day is that I get to do something that overlaps completely with my personal mission, and do something that represents a big business opportunity,” he says.
That profit motive isn’t incidental. Getting people invested, literally, in the transition to clean energy is a key piece of Mosaic’s mission. “We started Mosaic because we believe that the more people who are participating in and benefiting from the transition to clean energy, the faster that transition will occur,” Parish says. People care about climate change, he notes, but it can be tough motivating them to make big changes. “We needed to tap into people’s interests in making money and saving money, and use that power to help drive this transition faster.”
Allen and Crelling agree that the financial benefits are partly why they decided to go solar. They expect to not only save money right away but add to the value of their home. They’re also excited about reducing their carbon footprint and doing something to help the environment. “It’s one of the motivating factors we had for doing this,” Crelling says. “It’s a big lesson we’re teaching our kids.” The couple have also noticed more and more homeowners in their area installing the panels. “I definitely feel like it’s a trend, at least in our area,” says Allen.
The solar movement is gaining momentum in a lot of communities around the country and around the globe. “The transition to clean energy will happen faster than people think,” predicts Parish. “I believe we can get to 100 percent clean energy by 2050.” The statistics are encouraging: Today, the solar-energy industry in California employs more people than does all of the state’s electric utilities, he says, and nationally, more people work in solar than in coal, oil and gas exploration, and mining combined. “The clean-energy forces are growing stronger, we are accelerating this transition, and I’m focused on getting us there faster by getting more people involved.”
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The 2016 AllStars program is produced in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal and celebrates social entrepreneurs who are powering solutions with innovative technology. Visit NationSwell.com/AllStars from November 1 to 15 to vote for your favorite AllStar. The winner will receive the AllStar Award, a $10,000 grant to help further his or her work advocating for change.
Elisabeth Stock of PowerMyLearning
Elisabeth Stock has always been driven to work toward a more just world. It was what led her to volunteer as a teacher for the Peace Corps in West Africa in her early 20s, and it’s what ultimately motivated her to found PowerMyLearning, an educational technology nonprofit, in 1999. “I wanted to join the Peace Corps because I felt like there was this deep unfairness in society,” she says. “Is it just and fair that where you are born predicts whether you can reach your human potential?”
The key to providing equal opportunity for everyone, says Stock, is through education. To that end, PowerMyLearning uses technology to improve the relationships that are crucial to the learning process — namely, the impact that teachers and parents have on a student’s promise to excel. “What we’re really about is empowering all of them — the kids and the adults — to learn together,” she says. That empowerment is translating to real, measurable results. There is at least one teacher, parent or student registered with PowerMyLearning in 40 percent of the nation’s schools, and since 2012, partner schools have seen an impressive 6.9 percent increase in math proficiency.
Technology is a crucial part of this process, but the company approaches it in a decidedly different way than most ed-tech outfits do. A lot of people in the field try to essentially replace educators with fancy apps and platforms, says Stock. “They think, ‘Oh my goodness, I can build the most amazing code to do what the teacher does!’ But we’ve realized that that’s a mistake, that what you really need to do with technology is focus on the learning relationships.”
PowerMyLearning uses a combination of services and tools to reach everyone involved in a child’s education. The organization’s online platform, called PowerMyLearning Connect, curates the best available videos, interactive games and other online resources to help students master complex topics. PowerMyLearning also provides coaching to teachers, especially those who are early in their careers, and conducts workshops where families can learn about what their kids are doing.
Join the cause! Speak up for family engagement across the country.
Teachers rely on PowerMyLearning Connect for its “playlists” of materials to use in the classroom. They can also customize these playlists for different groups of students or even for just one student at a time. “Imagine that you’re a teacher and you are in a classroom, and you have a couple of students who are really behind,” Stock says. “How do you help them practice without their peers noticing that they’re so far behind, and teasing them?” But if a student is playing a fun game that enables him to catch up at the same time, his classmates will focus on the game, not the fact that the student might have a deficit of knowledge.
The platform is also used to engage families in the learning process and will soon roll out a texting feature that lets parents know what their kids are learning. After a student works through a particular playlist, they’ll be prompted to teach the material to an adult family member. The adult can then text back to the teacher to share how well the child understands the concepts. “So many families want to be helping their students and continuing to improve their learning, but a lot of people just don’t know where to begin,” Stock says. “PowerMyLearning Connect really gives them that starting point.” The platform, along with the workshops, further collaborative relationships between students, teachers and parents.
Azlynn Cornish, a special education math teacher at South Bronx Preparatory school in New York City, uses the platform in her classroom, and she has also received coaching. “Self-motivation is a huge thing with PowerMyLearning Connect,” Cornish says. “It brings students so much choice, and they’re able to really create their own learning environment, both inside and outside of the classroom.” Involving families also helps give kids the feeling that they’re in control of their own education, she adds. “It just creates that kind of cycle of learning that continues daily, and creates genuine lifelong learners.”
For parents, PowerMyLearning provides a window into what their kids are up to at school. Lisnel Rivera, a parent from The Young Women’s Leadership School of the Bronx, recently attended a Saturday workshop to learn more about the program. “I think it’s very important for schools to include parents in their child’s education, because while they go to school to learn, the majority of their time is spent at home,” Rivera says. “If I’m up to date on the assignments, and the essence of what my daughter is learning at school, I can help her at home.” It’s facilitating those learning relationships that is exactly what Elisabeth Stock — and PowerMyLearning — has been about from the beginning.
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The 2016 AllStars program is produced in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal and celebrates social entrepreneurs who are powering solutions with innovative technology. Visit NationSwell.com/AllStars from November 1 to 15 to vote for your favorite AllStar. The winner will receive the AllStar Award, a $10,000 grant to help further his or her work advocating for change.
Is This the Ed-Tech App That Will Change the Way Teachers, Students and Parents Communicate?
At Roy Waldron Elementary School in La Vergne, Tenn., a fourth-grade girl wasn’t where she was supposed to be. A teacher caught her joking around with classmates, and then instructed her twice: Head back to class. A few hours later, when the student returned home, she had excuses at the ready.
“You know I can see the reason why,” Diane Portillo told her daughter.
“Yes, Mami,” the girl replied, cornered. “I’m never going to do it again.”
Portillo found out about disciplinary incident through ClassDojo, an app that allows parents to follow their child’s conduct, classwork and grades in real time. Throughout the day, educators dole out points: They might award them for solving a tough question at the board or sharing art supplies; alternatively, they can deduct points for things like distracting other students. As soon as the behavior, good or bad, occurs, parents can opt to receive a push notification to find out why.
ClassDojo’s creators believe the platform can better shape the learning environment. An unruly classroom not only makes it hard for students to focus, it can also be emotionally draining for teachers. ClassDojo corrects for that by putting Pavlovian reinforcement onto teachers’ smartphones. That’s the baseline benefit: Educators regain control of the classroom as behaving oneself becomes a game. But what’s perhaps just as important to academic success is how the app keeps parents in the loop, allowing them to track points, view schoolwork (in slideshows like a Snapchat Story) and message directly with teachers.
Amid the deluge of other digital learning tools being tested in American classrooms, ClassDojo might not be as familiar a name. But chances are that someone in your school district has already downloaded the app. In 95,000 schools (roughly two-thirds of the nation’s public, charter and private academies), at least one teacher is currently using ClassDojo, according to Lindsay McKinley, a spokeswoman.
ClassDojo was designed specifically with teachers in mind, says Sam Chaudhary, one of ClassDojo’s two co-founders. “For 40 or 50 years, we’ve had a lot of people trying to do things in education from the top down. When there’s a new policy at the district level, it’s pushed down into schools and classrooms. That hasn’t, by and large, been very effective,” he says. “We started the opposite way: from the ground up.”
A former teacher in the British secondary school system, Chaudhary met his eventual co-founder Liam Don, a game developer, at a weekend hackathon at Cambridge. The two traveled to the Bay Area on a 90-day tourist visa, where they approached teachers and asked to hear about their experiences. “We had this amazing freedom, in a way, because we had never lived or worked in America. We didn’t know the system,” recalls Chaudhary, now CEO. “We didn’t start with a solution or even assume that we knew the problem.” The teachers they interviewed kept bringing up the same issue — namely, that the various players in a kid’s education weren’t working as a team. To get parents and teachers on the same page, Chaudhary and Don proposed building a communication tool that could provide live updates about students, and in 2011 ClassDojo was born.
Five years and millions of downloads later, teachers report that ClassDojo has dramatically eased communication with parents. Stephanie Smith, the fourth-grade teacher at Roy Waldron Elementary who corresponded with Diane Portillo daily on ClassDojo, used to rely on paper worksheets to connect with parents. She’d write down assignments, add one of three colors (red, yellow, green) for the student’s conduct that day, and ask the kid to bring back a parent’s signature the next day. “It was very tedious and a lot of extra work just to make sure that parents were even looking at it,” says Smith, a teacher with 12 years in the classroom. Even if the sheet did come back signed, Smith wouldn’t know if a parent had actually read it or just signed it pretty much blindly. It became a daily exercise in frustration.
But now, Smith has ClassDojo, and she uses it all day, every day. “Lunch, recess, field trips, anything like that — ClassDojo goes with us,” she says. Smith begins assigning points as soon as work starts. A sound plays, and the room goes quiet as the students hope another will be awarded soon. (The points can be used within the app to buy customizations for an avatar, and often, they can be cashed in at a concessions stand on Fridays.) “It’s nonverbal communication, where students just know what they should be doing,” she says. “It saves time, my voice and words. It’s so much easier than fussing at them to be quiet when all you have to do is push a button.”
Outside the classroom, overworked parents, like those who are employed in La Vergne’s warehouses or commute the half-hour to Nashville, might just stand to gain the most, Smith says. In those cases, a mom might have only a short time to check in on her children’s schooling. “It used to be that they would ask, ‘What happened at school today?’ Like all kids, they’d reply, ‘Nothing,’” Chaudhary says. ClassDojo, which also has an automatic-translation feature compatible with 35 languages, skips that guessing game. Appraised of what’s going on in each subject, a parent feels more involved and their child will likely know it. “Students need all the help and support they can get,” adds Smith. “When their parents and teachers are closely connected, they know they have two people investing their time in them. It helps them realize, ‘Maybe I should take this to heart. This is important.’”
While the cartoon avatars have won plenty of student devotees, ClassDojo isn’t without its critics. The company, for one, hasn’t collected any data on the app’s impact and instead points to the number of people participating as proof the app is working. But a recent study by the Center for Learning in Technology at SRI International, a nonprofit think tank, found that the most popular ed-tech apps are usually the ones that fit best within the status quo, even if they don’t improve student learning. Anecdotal evidence of teachers who use the app also doesn’t give a full picture, adds Brett Clark, the director of technology at Greater Clark County Schools in Jeffersonville, Ind. “That’s like polling people in McDonald’s about how they like the food,” he told The New York Times, without surveying anyone who refuses to eat there. “They are not asking the teachers who looked at the app, walked away and said, ‘Not in my classroom.’”
For his part, Chaudhary says proof is on the way. While more curricula are still in the works, ClassDojo has already demonstrated one important rule for how education technology should be integrated into the classroom. In place of advocating for sweeping change, the platform has prized small but meaningful online tools, and the reward has been millions of downloads. In other words, the role of technology in the classroom shouldn’t be to replace teachers, but to simply help them do their jobs. After that, the company will need to show how — and whether — it measurably helps the kids.
One Man’s Plan to Green the Coal Industry, Spotlighting Urban Blight With Public Art and More
A Curious Plan to Fight Climate Change: Buy Mines, Sell Coal, The New York Times
The lines in the so-called war on coal were drawn long ago: Sierra Club lawyers, on one side, clashed with Republican legislators and energy companies on the other. Tom Clarke, owner of a chain of nursing homes, set up a lonely camp in the battlefield’s middle ground. His nonprofit is buying up mines at bankruptcy proceedings, then selling the coal bundled with carbon offsets from tree-planting.
The Art of Breathing Lights, Albany Times-Union
At sundown in upstate New York, the blight is aglow with light. For the next two months, as part of a massive public art project, hundreds of vacant clapboard homes in Albany, Schenectady and Troy are being lit from inside with LED lights. Pulsing as if they were slowly exhaling, these abandoned houses refuse to be ignored.
The Children Who Saw Too Much, RYOT
Whipped with a belt buckle by his abusive stepfather, 17-year-old Ryan grew up believing all adults deal with their problems through aggression. At least, until he attended the nation’s first summer camp for children marred by domestic violence, where he learned, amid the Northern California pines and Klamath River rapids, about a different emotion: hope.
In Indianapolis, Trash Is Everyone’s Treasure
What good can come from a demolished football stadium? That’s the question Indianapolis twins Michael and Jessica Bricker asked themselves in 2008, when the city slated the RCA Dome, home to the Colts’ NFL team for a quarter-century, to be dismantled.
To their surprise, the Brickers found they were the only ones asking if materials could be reused, rather than dumped. “We are very much in this place in history where architecture feels as disposable as plastic or anything else. We have this sense that once a place is old, it’s used up and just turns to trash,” says Michael. “These huge stadiums, which were all built in the 1970s and ’80s, are not nearing the end of their lifespans but are being replaced anyway. That’s not going to change. We have the opportunity, as citizens, to expect and demand reuse of those buildings as part of the plan.”
After city officials agreed, the twins salvaged 13 acres of waterproof, Teflon-coated fiberglass fabric, which had once stretched across the stadium’s ceiling. With it, they fashioned a series of bags, ranging from zip-up weekenders to clutches, that generated $70,000, essentially building a social enterprise a year before Kickstarter became a household name.
The Brickers invested the proceeds into a new nonprofit, People for Urban Progress (PUP), whose goal would be to introduce upcycling to the city. Calling themselves a “do-tank,” they took on a series of projects, like refurbishing 9,000 bright orange seats left over from the demolition of the city’s Bush Stadium and installing them at bus stops around Indianapolis. They also used some of the leftover fabric from the RCA Dome and built standalone canopies that provide shade in area parks.
PUP’s mission, Michael says, has been to get people thinking about sustainability — a word rarely heard in Indiana a decade ago — from the very beginning of any public-work design. Even better, he adds, is when sustainability intersects with the adrenaline-fueled world of sports, whose big-business spectacles generate a lot of waste. “We’re trying to almost reengineer the whole process,” Michael says. “We’re thinking about these resources through their entire life-cycle and trying to be smarter about how everyone can use them every step of the way.”
Indianapolis, located in a vast, flat expanse of Midwestern lands, doesn’t necessarily have a strong sense of place — nothing like San Francisco’s hilly terrain or New York CIty’s rivers and bays. Growing up there, the Brickers never expected their home would be a hub for smart design initiatives or a thriving arts culture. But as people have moved back to the Hoosier State capital’s urban core in the wake of the Great Recession, there’s been a revival of local brands and some new upstarts like PUP who are making investments in the city. Connected by a cultural trail that loops through downtown and various PUP projects dotting neighborhoods, Indianapolis’s identity feels resurgent.
For other cities admiring how PUP’s creative projects have benefited Indianapolis, the Brickers suggest starting by looking at all architecture as an asset. That includes not just repurposing bricks, steel and wood, but also textiles like firehose fabric, and structures like parking meters and payphone booths. If you’re willing to take on the cause and find designers with a fresh perspective, the Brickers say, you’ll have no trouble figuring out what to do with them.
Homepage photo of PUP messenger bag courtesy of People for Urban Progress