Between 1979 and 2013, wages of middle-income workers rose just 6 percent. The wallets of low-income workers have been hit even harder: Their incomes fell 5 percent during the same time period.
As stagnant wages and flat mobility continue to deepen inequality in America, politicians, social entrepreneurs and other leaders are looking to technology for a solution. The number of jobs in computers and information technology is projected to increase 12 percent by 2024 — faster than any other sector. According to industry experts, nearly 60 million of Americans can’t even access the internet in their own homes because of cost.
To spur much-needed job growth, the digital divide must be eliminated. Watch the video above to see how EveryoneOn‘s pioneering model is leading the way by making high-speed, low-cost internet plans, refurbished computers and digital literacy courses available to low-income communities nationwide.
Tag: Low-Income Communities
America’s Youngest Mayor
During the 20th century, Stockton was a commercial hub between Sacramento and San Francisco. It had military installations and was regularly used as a Hollywood set. But when Michael Tubbs grew up there in the 1990s, gunshots whizzed in the streets and more than half of the city’s high schoolers dropped out before graduation.
Tubbs was raised by his mother, who had him at 16. In a high-school essay, Tubbs describes meeting his father for the first time at the age of 12. He was in chains and dressed in an orange jumpsuit at the Kern County Prison. “Why are you here,” Tubbs recalls asking.
His dad responded: “Prison is your destiny. From birth you are set up to fail. …You’re a black man in America, and it’s either prison or death.”
His father’s words have never left him. They settled in his core and drive his ambition.
In less than two decades he’s graduated from Stanford, captured Oprah Winfrey’s attention and worked at Google. Once a White House intern, he’s also famously set his sights on the presidency. In 2008, during Barack Obama’s first presidential bid, Tubbs met the then Illinois senator and recalls: “I looked at him, shook his hand and told him, ‘I’m next.’” Obama reportedly said, “Okay.”
But for now, Tubbs is focused on his Californian city. The goals he’s set for himself as mayor are lofty: Lowering unemployment (8.3 percent in February 2017), raising graduation rates (82.6 percent in 2015), lowering violent crime (25 instances of murder between January and June 2016) and attracting a major philanthropic investment, like the $816 million Detroit received from the Ford Foundation and other donors to save its art museum.
“I’m tired of talking about where we’ve been. I’m more interested in talking about where we’re going,” Tubbs said at his victory party, “We have to mature as a community and start demanding solutions.”
But finding them will require deft political skill. The average Stockton resident earns $19,900 annually, yet the city has little ability to provide revitalizing social services, considering it’s still recovering after declaring bankruptcy in 2012.
Tubbs’s approach to government taps an innovation-based strategy much like the tech campuses in nearby Silicon Valley. He pilots small projects and relentlessly studies the data to determine what’s most effective for the lowest cost. He’s also investing in long-term fixes — rather than short-term patches that drained city coffers — so that the kids born today will have more opportunity than he did.
“I would say I’m solution-oriented. I don’t want to know how this can’t happen. Tell me how it can,” Tubbs says.
Some of his earliest efforts — ones he helped initiate as a Stockton city council member — have established Tubbs reputation as so-called “doer.” He closed liquor stores in South Stockton, opened a health clinic and worked with young people on community cleanup projects.
As mayor, however, he faces inherent challenges that come with the implementation of his early projects. For example, as a council member, Tubbs was a key advocate for distributing body cameras to Stockton’s police officers as a way of raising accountability. In August 2016 (prior to Tubbs’s mayoral election), a 30-year-old man named Colby Friday was killed in an officer-involved shooting. An officer’s body camera failed to capture the incident because it was not activated. A nearby security camera did record the event, and the district attorney has agreed to share that footage with Friday’s family.
In another incident, when Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted a city council meeting in February, Tubbs announced a five-minute break and abruptly left the podium, angering his one-time supporters. A month later, he tells NationSwell his number-one rule about politics: “It takes thick skin.”
During his 2016 run for mayor, Tubbs built his campaign around the idea of creating opportunities and stability for the people of Stockton. And it worked. He beat his opponent, Republican Anthony Silva, by almost 40 points.
Tubbs credits the young interns who canvassed and phoned banked for him with drumming up civic engagement in the city. In contrast to many of Tubbs’s childhood peers, these teens are some of the loudest voices in the ears of Stockton’s elected officials.
“My phone does not stop ringing, because the young people we’ve trained expect more from their elected officials,” says Lange Luntao, a Stockton school board member.
Michael Tubbs and his friends grew up believing they needed to leave Stockton to find opportunity and a better life. Once gone, few ever felt the need to return. Already, Tubbs is inspiring more of his young constituents to stay. With time, perhaps others from his own generation will return.
Editors’ note: A previous version of this article stated that the Colby Friday incident was reportedly captured on a police officer body camera. NationSwell apologizes for the error.
How President Trump’s Federal Budget Hits 3 Model Programs Gradually
At NationSwell, our mission is to highlight solutions driving America forward. From rural Appalachia to South Central Los Angeles, we’ve covered the work of dedicated individuals fighting to improve people’s lives. Here are a few updates on how President Trump’s proposed federal budget cuts to social programs could gradually rollback the positive impact made by these initiatives.
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It’s Possible to Close the Achievement Gap and Have Fun at the Same Time
If it looks like summer camp, and kids are having fun like they do at summer camp, it must be summer camp, right?
Not if you’re talking about Horizons National’s intensive, six-week-long summer session. Watch the video above to see how the program utilizes project-based learning, extracurriculars like swimming and gardening and a low 5:1 student-to-teacher ratio (compared to 16.1 nationally) to instill a love of learning in students.
At a time when all eyes are on the latest proposed cuts to education and numerous states have already slashed school spending, Horizons has found an innovative, fun way to help close the achievement gap between kids living in poverty and their more affluent peers. Its low-income students are succeeding — both in school and beyond.
MORE: What Does Swimming Have to Do With Stopping the Summer Slide?
Notes From the Field: Miriam Altman on School Absenteeism
One hot afternoon in late August, I spotted a familiar face as I exited the Prospect Avenue subway station in New York City’s South Bronx. It was Tonya, one of my former students. She was holding the hand of a young girl dressed in an orange school uniform.
Bright and focused on earning her high school diploma, Tonya’s plans to go to college changed when she became pregnant during her senior year with Destiny, the girl whose hand she held. After a three month hiatus from school, Tonya graduated, and went on to have two more children — all by the age of 22. As a single mother, she worked odd jobs and collected food stamps to make ends meet.
I know first hand that Tonya’s story is not uncommon where she lives in Community District 3. I am the cofounder of Kinvolved, a company that is working in her community to increase graduation rates by fighting school absenteeism.
Tonya lives in the poorest congressional district in the country, where about 37 percent of residents live in poverty and nearly 50 percent of residents earn less than a high school degree. By targeting the specific challenges facing the area’s youth, there’s hope to dramatically alter their futures.
South Bronx Rising Together is a group of neighborhood stakeholders working to improve the quality of life of neighborhood residents, in part, by ensuring that kids are college and career ready. Focused on elevating literacy rates, the organization discovered that student absenteeism is the main cause of lower-than-average scores. SBRT uses Collective Action Networks (CANs) made up of families, educators, business leaders, service providers and others to combat absenteeism.
Research proves chronic absence patterns can predict students’ graduation as early as sixth grade. New York City schools have one of the highest chronic absence rates in the country; public schools in Community District 3 have some of the highest rates of chronic absenteeism in the city: 36.6 percent of preK-12 students miss a month or more of school each year.
As SBRT analyzed absentee data, my colleagues and I at Kinvolved were working to help schools address absenteeism. We developed an app — KiNVO — that schools use to track attendance and to send text messages to families so they know whether or not their children are in class in real time. More than 100,000 stakeholders at 90 preK-12 schools in New York City benefit from KiNVO. At schools using the app, attendance rates improved 13 times that of an average NYC school.
As a CAN participant, my efforts focus on supporting the 60 schools in Community District 3. My CAN colleagues and I recruit schools in the neighborhood to be “All-In” schools, meaning they have committed to joining the fight against chronic absenteeism. By the end of the school year, there will be 30 “All-In” schools that participate in SBRT-sponsored events, webinars and meetings to exchange best practices to elevate attendance.
In part, as a result of these efforts, “All-In” schools that had regular attendance meetings and staff dedicated to attendance, experienced a drop in absenteeism between 5.7 percent and 10.3 percent from the 2014-2015 school year to the 2015-2016 school year.
According to SBRT co-directors Elizabeth Clay-Roy and Abe Fernandez, the organization wants its model and learnings to be open sourced. That way, improvement in school attendance will extend beyond Community District 3 in the South Bronx to the entire country.
Looking back, I have realized that I learned about SBRT and its focus on chronic absenteeism just before my reunion with Tonya and her daughter Destiny. That day, as we parted ways, I hugged Tonya goodbye and felt Destiny’s small arms hugging my knees. I looked down at her eager smile and bright eyes and wished her a wonderful school year.
I believe that through the work of South Bronx Rising Together and also Kinvolved’s progress in fighting chronic absenteeism, we’re going to help Destiny and her peers achieve a future that hasn’t been as easily attained for her mother.
Miriam Altman is the chief executive officer and cofounder of Kinvolved.
Correction: The original version of this post misidentified Miriam Altman in the second photo. NationSwell apologizes for the error.
This Private Real Estate Developer Uncovers the Beauty of Aged Buildings
The late 2000s was a dark period for homeownership in America. Viewing the real estate bust as an opportunity to rethink affordable housing, childhood friends Jason Bordainick and Andrew Cavaluzzi pooled their entrepreneurial backgrounds and real estate experience to create the Hudson Valley Property Group.
The New York-based business works with property owners to rehabilitate blighted developments to improve the lives of existing residents and the surrounding community. Avoiding the types of projects that other real estate developers rush towards, HVPG builds upon existing infrastructure, utilizing investors with long-term financial goals.
See this unique public-private funding model in action by watching the video above.
It’s About More Than Just a Pipeline
Midway into Donald Trump’s third week in the White House, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced a stunning reversal on a decision made during the waning days of the Obama administration. The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a 1,170-mile duct to carry oil from North Dakota fields to an Illinois refinery, will proceed without an environmental impact review. Despite protestors camping out for months, the final phase of construction—burrowing underneath the Missouri River, which provides drinking water to the Standing Rock Sioux less than half a mile away— resumed last week. One of the pipeline’s most devoted protestors, however, is making his strongest stand back in his hometown.
On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, Nick Tilsen, a 34-year-old member of the Oglala Lakota Nation and founding executive director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, is breaking ground on nearly three dozen homes and other amenities on 34 acres of land. The planned community for Porcupine, S.D., nearly a decade in the making, will incorporate the latest in sustainability: energy-efficient buildings, a local food network and a walkable, self-contained neighborhood — all elements of the traditional Lakota lifestyle made modern. As debate over the pipeline rages, Tilsen’s fighting on two fronts: protecting the waterway that will provide today’s drinking water to residents and preparing for a “post-petroleum future” tomorrow.
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A Regenerative Community Development
Judged by per capita income, Oglala Lakota County, one of five counties within the Pine Ridge reservation, is among the poorest places in America. With wages at a paltry $9,150 per person, almost half of all residents—44.2 percent—live in poverty. Only one-tenth of teenagers graduate from college, and barely half of adults are employed. Proponents argue that the pipeline would jumpstart the region’s economy, creating up to 12,000 direct jobs during construction and supporting up to 81,500 more workers tied to the petroleum industry.
Tilsen, however, believes a pipeline that rips through the landscape to deliver an increasingly antiquated energy source cannot restore economic independence. Infrastructure is needed, he agrees, but destitute pockets in the Dakotas need to bolster themselves by building sustainable communities instead.
Rising against what they see as a century of their people’s subjugation for gold and oil, Tilsen and other Lakota youth proposed the development in 2004. “People are facing the threat of resource extraction in many communities, in the form of dams, in oil and gas drilling, in nuclear storage,” he says. “But in the same breath that we talk about what we’re against and what we’re resisting, it’s important that people take back what solutions they want to have. If we’re against this pipeline and unsustainable projects, it’s just as important for us, as indigenous people, to define what we’re for, double down and start working toward the kinds of communities we want.”
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At numerous gatherings sponsored by the Thunder Valley CDC throughout 2006, members of the entire tribe debated what features make up an ideal town and whether to pursue constructing one. A few tribal elders scoffed at what looked like foolhardiness and doubted that Tilsen’s young cohort could overcome Pine Ridge’s longstanding poverty; others believed the youth needed to focus on pressuring the federal government to uphold existing obligations, not divert attention to a new project.
Tilsen’s persuasion proved effective, and the conversation shifted to what should be built, a discussion that lasted 10 years. As part of a grand vision articulated by the community, Thunder Valley CDC installed the infrastructure — roads, sewers, electricity and broadband internet — in the newly planned development, which is located in Porcupine, a small town roughly midway between the entry to South Dakota’s Badlands National Park and the Nebraska border. During the next decade, 30 single-family homes, 48 apartment units and up to 10 artist studios; a market, a geothermal greenhouse and coops for 400 chickens; a youth shelter and powwow grounds will be constructed. Foundations have been poured for the first seven houses, and one has a roof. This summer, construction will begin on a 4,000-square-foot community center, reports Kaziah Haviland-Montgomery, an architectural fellow.
In line with Lakota values, the affordable houses are highly insulated, both to keep out the bitter Dakota winds but also to retain energy from heating. Each will be built with a five-kilowatt-hour solar panel on the rooftop, installed by locals.
A Sustainable Form of Resistance
Thunder Valley’s plans gained momentum as the Standing Rock movement grew. Those who couldn’t join the protestors viewed working on the development or becoming more conscious of waste as their own forms of organized resistance, notes Cecily Engelheart, Thunder Valley CDC’s communications director.
“Instead of styrofoam or paper plates at a community feed, we [have discussed] bringing our own picnic box of plates and silverware…It’s those smaller scale actions, really individual choices,” Engelheart explains.
If Thunder Valley ends up alleviating the desperation, both economic and environmental, its lessons could be adopted well beyond tribal nations. “If we’re pulling up our sleeves to do it here, then absolutely New York City should do it, as should Boston, Houston and Los Angeles. Everybody should be finding the right way to build equitable and sustainable communities in their city. It’s not just for Indian Country, as much as for humanity,” Tilsen says.
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In Lakota mythology, there’s a prophecy about a great black snake that slithers across the heartland. Where it burrows underground, the tale goes, the serpent will poison the earth. To many tribal nations, the warning is clear: the impending Dakota Access Pipeline, which will travel under the Missouri River, embodies the creature that elders warned of. Protestors gathered at Standing Rock talk about massing together to kill the black snake.
But there’s a lesser-known story about how the serpent must be vanquished. Tilsen grew up hearing that its blood must be drained. In other words, to defeat the pipeline, Americans need to sever their dependence on oil, both foreign and domestic. Otherwise, “the black snake always rears its head,” Tilsen says.
The Dakota Access Pipeline may be built, endangering Lakota Nation’s water and sacred lands. But with Tilsen’s strategy, any construction will be a temporary setback. The snake can be outmaneuvered still.
MORE: How Do You Breathe Life into a Neighborhood That’s Been Forgotten?
The Impressive Top-to-Bottom Makeover of the Massachusetts Juvenile Justice System
Teenagers make mistakes. They sneak out past curfew to drink at a house party, shoplift clothes, graffiti their names in bathroom stalls, talk back to authorities and throw punches in heated moments. Our juvenile justice system views some of these violations as youthful folly; others are deemed criminal offenses. Unjustly, skin color or socioeconomic status might determine how the behavior is categorized. Suburban white youth are tsk-tsked, while urban black children are handcuffed and jailed.
Massachusetts created the nation’s first juvenile correctional system around 1846, and it also led the first reforms by shutting down Dickensian “training schools.” But during the high-crime spike of the 1990s, the punitive model common to most states made a resurgence. However, while laws passed making it easier to try kids as adults, a group of fed-up employees teamed up to reform youth courts, juvenile detention facilities and probation offices from within. While much of the country continues to arrest more than 1.02 million children every year, Massachusetts reduced the number in custody down to a daily average of about 190 youth, or 2,240 admissions annually. These state workers also dramatically slashed the number of children under age 14 placed in secure facilities from roughly 500 to just a handful.
What changed? The state wised up to normal teenage behavior and its institutions’ role in either furthering or freezing maturity. Reformers implemented what they call “positive youth development” as the main priority. Under this philosophy, which draws much of its insight from developmental psychology, the Massachusetts juvenile justice system stopped focusing on the bad things kids shouldn’t do and started promoting positive outcomes. When a child makes a mistake, the state steps in as the de facto parent, teacher, mentor and neighbor. Recognizing that youth need to grasp a sense of their own future in order to avoid a life of crime, college graduation and job placement replace recidivism as measures of success.
“For example, the kid who comes into court for fighting at school will ordinarily be put on probation, where he’s told, ‘Don’t fight, follow all the rules, keep a curfew.’ But if this is an 8th grade boy who’s old enough to be in high school and reading at a 2nd grade level, he’ll never succeed on probation. It’s never enough to order children to behave better. We need to look at their life circumstances and ask, ‘What resources, opportunities, services or supports are they going to need in order to be able to behave better?’ asks Joshua Dohan, head of the state public defenders’ juvenile unit. “As adults, we need to do something kids are not good at, which is taking the long view. What do we need to invest in over the long run so that we can nurture a healthy adult, as opposed to punishing a kid because he missed school one day?”
A little over a decade ago, Dohan, a public defender representing youth in Boston reached out to one of the men in charge of the state’s juvenile detention facilities. Dohan wanted to know if the official (who regularly locked up plenty of teenagers) wanted to join him at an upcoming conference on juvenile defense. “Ignorant” of the role good defense attorneys played in a child’s case, Edward Dolan, then deputy commissioner of Massachusetts’s Department of Youth Services, accepted. In an unexpected turning point, Massachusetts’s entire juvenile justice system started to flip. As the top leadership started collaborating, a punitive model slowly lost out to a restorative one.
For too long, each separate agency in the criminal justice system — from the lawyers in court, to guards in detention facilities, to officers in probation — had been caught up in its own institutional inertia, carrying out policies because that’s how they had always been done. There’d been some dissenting voices, most prominently Ned Loughran, a former priest who had agitated against harsh retribution for juveniles as head of DYS from 1985–1993. But on the whole, the agencies remained trapped within their respective silos. At the conference, focused on the entire juvenile justice system, Dohan and Dolan had their first chance to look outside their own roles, question the underlying rules and realign the system in kids’ best interests.
“Even though I’m in the business, it was the first time I was seeing the world through [the public defenders’] eyes. I put myself in their position, looking from a kid’s perspective and a…mother’s perspective at some of the things we did as an agency. We were like a machine,” Dolan says. “[Juvenile detention] was a pretty troubled agency at the time, overwhelmed and overcrowded. Even for the big leadership in the organization, we didn’t feel good about the way we were doing things. We were looking for a better pathway forward.”
Starting with that one conference where defense attorneys and a juvenile jailor found common ground, the agencies initiated a conversation about their overlapping roles in helping youth. Side by side, they could no longer blame other parts of the system for the dysfunction. From there, a group of bureaucrats started to rewrite the system together, unified under the banner of an approach that made more sense for children.
“Positive youth development” generally defines the field of academics applying insights from neuroscience and knowledge of human development to criminal justice. As practitioners, attorneys and officers usually don’t have time to get an advanced degree in social work, says Dohan. “The people who apply it have taken it on as their task to sort through and operationalize [the research] for youth workers, teachers, lawyers and probation officers to give us guidance about what works and what doesn’t and why.”
At the height of the War on Drugs, policymakers generally split along partisan lines about how to respond to criminal acts by youth. The right wing saw unchangeable “super-predators” who needed to be incarcerated to restore law and order, while leftists saw victims of poverty who needed counseling and therapy, says Dr. Jeffrey Butts, director of John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Research & Evaluation Center.
Both of these viewpoints are “incredibly biased in terms of class and race,” adds Butts, best known as one of the field’s founders, because they assume teens from high-crime communities are inherently more criminal than their peers elsewhere. The developmental approach, in contrast, doesn’t take a child’s actions as indicative of their character. Butts’s theory holds that the best way to stop crime is to encourage youth to acquire skills. Unlike the other two models, “the fact that a 17-year-old stole a bike doesn’t mean he’s destined to be an adult criminal,” Butts says.
Positive youth development maintains that five assets enable teens to mature into law-abiding citizens: strong bonds with adults and prosocial peers, a safe home, a healthy lifestyle, opportunities for civic engagement and an effective education and success in the labor market. Possessing these resources will make youth naturally begin to see that belonging to conventional society is more valuable, says Butts, than the short-term advantage one might accrue from committing a crime. If a young person feels connected to his community, “there’s more to lose by being caught stealing someone’s phone than by saving the few hundred dollars to buy a new one,” he adds.
“We have to be at least as good as criminal street gangs. They know exactly how to bring a 10-year-old into a group, how to increase their sense of purpose until they become very loyal,” Butts adds. “We need to be at least that good in attaching young people to our community.”
Positive development takes place at every step of the Massachusetts juvenile justice system — from when a public defender meets a client in lockup to the last appointment with a probation officer. For them, it’s not about creating a “feel-good” system, so much as designing systems that will reduce recidivism and lead to positive outcomes. Unlike most other states, Massachusetts offers a network of highly specialized public defenders for juveniles — a benchmark few under-resourced legal aid societies across the country have met. “What makes juvenile defense such a critical area of specialized practice is that in order to be effective, you need to have all the skills of an effective criminal defense lawyer and all the knowledge of adolescent development,” says Mary Ann Scali, head of the National Juvenile Defender Center. “In places like Massachusetts…, we know that we can provide constitutionally mandated access to counsel and effective counsel all the time.”
In Massachusetts, Dohan built the Committee for Public Counsel Services’s Youth Advocacy Department into a premier league of 36 staff attorneys and over 500 private attorneys who receive regular trainings on juvenile-specific topics. That’s a big feat considering these lawyers sign up for an unforgiving job. “The pay is terrible. Juvenile is the hardest place to make a living because there’s no private clients,” Dohan explains. (Still, you won’t hear him brag about what he’s developed; when NationSwell reached out to profile him for this story, the humble attorney sent back a list of 18 other sources to interview.)
Even when these experienced defense lawyers can’t argue their client’s innocence, the child is still in good hands in the Department of Youth Services, which leverages every connection it has to ensure kids receive the services they need. DYS tries to offer “all those things that you’d want for your own 17-year-old teenager,” says Peter Forbes, DYS commissioner. Indeed, kids seem to grasp the value, because half continue to go back to DYS for services (like tutoring, job training, coaching and counseling) for up to three years after they’re released. Most return for about six months on average, Forbes reports — something that would be unheard of at a jail like New York’s Rikers Island or a prison like San Quentin in California.
And finally, once a child is put on probation, her public defender will argue for a reasonable plan that’s created to advance her best interests. It’s a stark contrast with the old model — “trail ‘em and nail ‘em,” as Dohan calls it. The new system’s main goal is to ensure conditions are achievable. Much of this advocacy centers on education. As Dohan’s seen from experience, an 8th grader reading at a 2nd grade level feels like they’re being “tortured.” Bored, frustrated or humiliated, these students are prone to acting out. To help a child catch up, the lawyers are trained to involve the school system. “It’s not enough not to be expelled. We also get them into a program in which they can succeed,” Dohan describes. Kids won’t march themselves into a principal’s office to request this fix, but their lawyers in Massachusetts will. “Our job is not just to make the kid look good in the courtroom,” he adds. “Our job is to litigate but then put them in a much better position to succeed when the case is over.”
In implementing this program, the Massachusetts reformers, at first, fought an uphill battle to win funding from legislators. “In fairness to legislators, you are asking them to make an investment of the public’s money. They should expect a return on that investment,” Dolan says. They quickly saw a payback, in the form of reduced recidivism, and legislators soon allowed money saved from reduced caseloads to be reinvested into other initiatives. (Where that funding didn’t suffice, agencies turned to nonprofits outside the state system to supplement their work, assistance they still rely on today.) As evidence accrues, it’s getting easier to sell the developmental approach.
Even as this model gains traction, it still presents problems to be solved. Up next? The reformers are trying to confront racial and ethnic discrimination that’s endemic to the system by rigorously studying the data to locate what Dolan calls “unintentional but undeniable” disparities in treatment, offering classes on implicit bias and working with partners outside corrections to generate awareness. If they get it right, there’s much that can be used in correctional systems — both juvenile and adult — nationwide. Dohan, Dolan and Forbes started out with the intention of helping kids see their future; in the process, they’ve defined what’s next for a justice system in sore need of a new direction.
MORE: When Traditional Disciplinary Actions Don’t Work, Restorative Justice Can Bring About the Healing Process
Erecting Skyscrapers With Climate Change in Mind, Coping With Pain Through Virtual Reality and More
Building to the Sky, With a Plan for Rising Waters, The New York Times
As climate change becomes impossible to ignore, real estate developers are adjusting their plans for rising storms and sea levels. A new waterfront property in New York City features generators with the ability to power tenants’ refrigerators and power outlets for a week, because “if you have your phone and your refrigerator, you can survive,” as one designer put it. After devastating hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, “resilient design” has become the buzzword in architecture.
Virtually Painless — How VR Is Making Surgery Simpler, Science Focus
Could VR headsets replace painkillers? That’s what a handful of surgeons are betting on in regions where sedatives are expensive and hard to come by. Once a high-tech luxury, virtual reality is becoming ever more mainstream and affordable, and has proven to reduce patient pain by up to 50 percent.
First Class Meal: Could the Declining U.S. Postal Service Deliver Food to the Needy? The Guardian
A creative proposal from students at Washington University in St. Louis aims to turn the stagnant U.S. Postal Service into a thriving food delivery service for underserved communities. A number of organizations are working to curb food waste in a nation where, despite its wealth, one in seven residents experiences food insecurity. But most lack a sustainable transport system to get surplus food to those in need. With vehicles, routes and workers already in place, the declining postal service could be an invaluable resource in the fight against hunger.
Continue reading “Erecting Skyscrapers With Climate Change in Mind, Coping With Pain Through Virtual Reality and More”
The Low-Risk Way to Help At-Risk Kids
Perhaps the biggest danger for at-risk youth is the loss of social ties. Stranded by an absent family or an uncaring community, there’s usually no stopgap to prevent a young person from dropping out of school, turning to drugs or uncorking their anger with violence — unless a coach, pastor or neighbor steps in. In other words, these children need a mentor.
Too often, the kids most in need of reassurance and guidance aren’t connected with a mentor. Nearly one-third of America’s youth grow up without a trusted adult relationship outside their home. Of those, more than half — 9 million American kids, about the same size as all of New York City — are considered at-risk.
As the founder and CEO of MentorMe, a tech platform for youth and small business development, Brit Fitzpatrick is out to change that. “I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we shifted the way we view mentoring relationships from something formed by happenstance or as a product of privilege, to something that can be used as a tool to actually strengthen our communities,” she says. “What would happen if we shifted the focus of cities from attracting outside talent to actually investing in the young talent that’s already there? What if, along with great neighborhoods and great schools, every child was given a great mentor?”
The for-profit MentorMe, founded in 2014 in Memphis, Tenn., uses technology to better serve disconnected youth. Their cloud-based platform helps nonprofit organizations match their volunteers to the right child, manage the pair’s activities and then measure the impact of the relationship. As clients like Points of Light, the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce and the State of New York can vouch, MentorMe’s automated software program beats tracking each mentor and mentee on an Excel spreadsheet or, worse, with pen and paper. At Memphis Grizzlies Foundation, senior manager Desiree’ Robertson says the biggest boon has been the online application, particularly useful during the holidays when she might receive five or six requests a day. Fitzpatrick estimates that, for most clients, administrative time is cut by a quarter with the platform.
“The way mentoring programs are traditionally run is not scalable, as they rely on paperwork, spreadsheets and half-baked solutions,” Fitzpatrick says. “Unfortunately, most people underestimate the time needed to run mentoring programs successfully, and while they roll out to great fanfare, most fizzle out before gaining significant traction.”
Why is a streamlined process so important? Matching a kid with the wrong mentor can actually do significant damage. A mentoring relationship that lasts for less than six months actually degrades a young person’s feelings of self-worth and perceived performance in school. That’s why it’s essential to partner adults and children based on shared interests and expectations and to ensure they are meeting up at regular intervals, which MentorMe’s platform tracks.
If the pair jives, the results can be life-changing. Fitzpatrick, who herself benefited from mentoring, knows this firsthand. Raised by a single mom, she spent her after-school hours and summers at the Boys and Girls Club. Since graduating from Howard University in 2009, getting her first job in digital media marketing and founding a startup, she has given back by mentoring others. And her platform has helped another 6,000 volunteers find a young person to advise.
“As individuals, we may not be able to eradicate poverty; we may not be able to wipe out youth violence,” Fitzpatrick says. “But we can all start where we are, reach back and find a young person to invest in. Then, collectively, we can all be part of providing a brighter future for the next generation.”
Homepage photo courtesy of MentorMe.