Tag: North Carolina

These 10 Documentaries Will Change How You See America

Posted on by robbie

Documentary films are known for sparking social change. (Case in point: Who wants to eat at McDonalds after seeing Super Size Me or Food, Inc.? What parent suggests visiting SeaWorld after seeing Blackfish?) Though 2014’s nonfiction films weren’t massive box office hits, they pointed out injustice and lifted our eyes to the doers making a difference. Here are the 10 must-see documentaries that inspired us to action.

10. The Great Invisible

BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 still darkens the coastline along the Gulf of Mexico in the form of altered ecosystems and ruined lives. Named best documentary at the SXSW Film Festival, Margaret Brown’s documentary dives deep beyond the news coverage you may remember into a tale of corporate greed and lasting environmental damage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDw1budbZpQ

9. If You Build It

Two designers travel to the poorest county in rural North Carolina to teach a year-long class, culminating in building a structure for the community. In this heartwarming story, 10 students learn much more than construction skills.
http://vimeo.com/79902240

8. The Kill Team

An infantry soldier struggles with his wartime experience after alerting the military his Army platoon had killed civilians in Afghanistan. On the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ long list for best documentary, Dan Krauss’s challenging film shows how morality dissolves in the fog of war and terror of battle.

7. Starfish Throwers

Three people — a renowned cook, a preteen girl and a retired teacher — inspire an international movement to end hunger. Jesse Roesler’s film includes the story of Allan Law, the man who handed out 520,000 sandwiches during the course of a year in Minneapolis, which we featured on NationSwell.

6. Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story

A former Navy SEAL (formerly named Christopher, now Kristin) says that changing genders, not military service, was the biggest battle of her life. In retrospect, her SEAL experience takes on new importance as she comes to understand the true value of the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

5. The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

An online pioneer who developed Creative Commons with the academic and political activist Lawrence Lessig at age 15 and co-founded Reddit at 19, Swartz crusaded for a free and open internet. Another potential Oscar candidate, the film poignantly recounts how Swartz ended his own life at age 26 after aggressive prosecutors initiated a federal case against him.

4. True Son

A 22-year-old black man recently graduated from Stanford returns to his bankrupt hometown of Stockton, Calif., to run for city council. Michael Tubbs convinces his neighbors (and the movie’s audiences) you can have “a father in jail and a mother who had you as a teenager, and still have a seat at the table.”

3. The Hand That Feeds

After years of abuse from their bosses, a group of undocumented immigrants working for a New York City bakery unionize for fair wages and better working conditions. Led by a demure sandwich maker, the employees partner with young activists to fight their case against management and the food chain’s well-connected investors.

2. Rich Hill

Three boys confront impoverishment, learning disabilities and dysfunctional families in this human portrait of growing up in small-town America. The backdrop to the teenagers’ lives is their Missouri hometown of 1,396 residents, where one in five lives in poverty and where the fireworks still glow every Fourth of July.
 

1. The Overnighters

Our top film and a favorite for an Academy Award nomination details how an oil boom draws a city-sized influx of workers to a small town in North Dakota, where they scrape by on day labor and live in their cars. With the heft, detail and narrative twists of a Steinbeck novel, Jesse Moss profiles the Lutheran pastor Jay Reinke, who welcomes these desperate men into a shelter called “The Overnighters,” to his congregation’s dismay.
 

Are there any documentaries that should have made the cut? Let us know in the comments below.

The 10 Most Inspiring Books of 2014

Posted on by robbie

In a year where our country witnessed a widening gap between rich and poor, a toxic chemical leak, long delays for veterans at hospitals and clinics, botched lethal injections, racially-charged protests, record low voter turnout and stunning Congressional dysfunction, we at NationSwell turned to these ten books for stories of hope. Confronted by complex issues, these authors never flinched. Instead, they brought us creative solutions and unwavering heroics. Read on for our top ten books of 2014 (alphabetized by author):

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Are there any inspiring books we missed? Let us know in the comments below.

When Families Can’t Make It to a Food Pantry, This Nonprofit Brings Food to Them

Posted on by robbie

Food pantries run by nonprofits, churches, schools and other groups are often all that stands between a poor family and going hungry. But what if a family is struggling so much that they can’t find transportation needed to reach a food pantry?
To alleviate this problem, the Salvation Army in High Point, N.C., started operating a mobile food pantry this month.
High Point Salvation Army social services director Tashina Oladunjoye explains the need for the service to Sarah Krueger of Fox 8: “We have individuals in low income apartments that are in dry, food desert areas. These are individuals who cannot get out to pantries. Who cannot get out to their local grocery stores because of transportation, money in general.”
Each week, the mobile food pantry visits two different apartment complexes, reaching eight different locations in total before returning the first so that the needy in each building receives food once a month. Oladunjoye aims to add a refrigerated truck to the program within six months so that she can provide fresh produce to the families.
Darlene Graves, a single mother who received food from the truck, tells Krueger, “I thank God for the program and I thank God for the Salvation Army. It’s going to help me feed my family another day.”
MORE: This Innovative Idea Brings Produce Directly to Low-Income Communities
 

Despite Living in a Food Desert, One Community is Eating Healthy

Posted on by robbie

What does a hipster like more than a food truck? A farmers market. Combine those two things together, and you have a way to bring farm-fresh healthy eats to countless people.
As TakePart reports, starting tomorrow (Oct. 1) and running to Nov. 26, a farmers market on wheels called the Mobile Oasis Farmers Market will be rolling around Guilford County, N.C. as part of a nine-week-long pilot program organized by the county’s Public Health Department.
According to the report, the county is home to 60,000 residents who live in the area’s 24 food deserts (which means they are more than a mile from the closest supermarket). About 20 percent of the population are low-income, and many cannot afford cars — which means they don’t have a lot of fresh-food options.
MORE: Why Public Markets Are So Important 
“A lot of these folks don’t have transportation and end up doing shopping at convenience stores or local corner stores,” Janet Mayer, a nutritionist with the department, tells TakePart.
It’s important to recognize how the lack of access to fresh food can negatively impact one’s health. Since these residents can’t get to fruits and veggies, why not bring fruits and veggies to them? Guilford’s mobile farmers market will sell goods such as broccoli, collard greens, sweet and white potatoes, pumpkins, onions, apples and kale from Smith Farms Greenhouses, a local farm in Gibsonville, N.C.
The trailer will visit two food deserts every week, setting up shop by the Department of Social Services in Greensboro, N.C. and at the Warnersville Community Center. As for the prices, the mobile farmers market is said to be “really reasonable” and will accept SNAP and EBT benefits.
With any luck, Guilford’s farmer’s market will be a rolling success.
DON’T MISS: This Innovative Idea Brings Produce Directly to Low-Income Communities

The Label You Should Look for at Your Supermarket

Posted on by robbie

Farming runs in Robert Elliot’s family — but he never expected that he’d make a living off of the land.
Instead, he served in the Marines, completing five years of active duty service before returning to the U.S. and taking a job as a contractor for the Marine Corps. In 2011, he was abruptly laid off along with many others due to budget cuts, and he didn’t know what to do. “It was hard to make ends meet so I moved home,” he tells Shumurial Ratliff of WNCN News.
Back home in Louisburg, N.C., on the land his family used to farm, Elliot decided to try his hand at the old family profession, establishing Cypress Hall Farms with the help of the nonprofit Farmer Veteran Coalition.
The organization supports veterans looking to transition into farming with resource guides, training and funding opportunities. It partners with Homegrown by Heroes to help veteran farmers label their produce with a patriotic-looking sticker that informs consumers know that they’re buying food grown by vets.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 17 percent of the American population lives in rural areas, but 45 percent of those who serve in the military are from rural America. At the same time, American farmers are aging, averaging 55.9 years and returning veterans face higher unemployment than non-veterans. Many people think the perfect solution to these problems is to convince some veterans to return to their rural roots and take up farming.
Elliot, who specializes in pasture-raised meats and organic vegetables, agrees. “A lot of farmers now are getting up in age,” Elliot tells Ratliff. “They are retiring, they are getting out of farming. We are losing farms left and right. There is nobody better suited for the job to take over where America’s food is going to come from tomorrow than veterans. We are already adapted to the outside, we like to work hard, we know what we have to do. We will get the job done.”
Elliot, who also spends time teaching other veterans how to farm, told a group of people at the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) that he revamped his family’s farm from a traditional approach to a sustainable one because, “Being a veteran, I don’t mind putting in the manual labor required to farm sustainably.”
MORE: A Nonprofit that Helps Vets Get Involved in Sustainable Agriculture
 
 

For Veterans Suffering from PTSD, Relief is Found Deep Under Water

Posted on by robbie

For U.S. soldiers, returning home from deployment can be a lonely event. That’s especially true for those suffering from PTSD; these veterans often isolate themselves from others, seeking the quiet and calm that they haven’t experienced since before their service.
Marine veteran Timothy Maynard of Greenville, N.C., has found a way to achieve that peace without isolation and now he’s sharing his secret with others.
After serving his country for eight years, Maynard struggled. “It was pretty bad,” he tells Josh Birch of WNCT. “I did a little bit of time with the rehabilitation clinic trying to get back to where I could kind of function with normal people and on my own.”
Then Maynard tried scuba diving through Scuba Now, and enjoyed it so much, he became an instructor. “Underwater it’s just kind of quiet, it’s slow, I don’t have to worry about distractions from other people, other noise,” Maynard tells Birch. “It’s just me and my breath. I’m just doing my own thing. So it lets me slow my mind down so that I can relax and I don’t have to stress.”
Maynard began to invite other vets to try scuba diving as therapy, and he must be a pretty convincing pitchman because over the past year, the Scuba Now shops in Greenville and Wilmington, N.C. have trained 400 veterans, bringing the total number of service members receiving instruction to over 2,500 in the past six years.
Scuba Now offers scuba certification, which normally costs hundreds of dollars, free of charge to any veteran who has earned the Purple Heart medal.
Maynard thinks scuba’s benefits have gone beyond just a fun hobby for him. “I attribute it to saving my life cause it kind of gave me meaning, gave me something to do again and now I just love it,” he says.
MORE: Meet the Marine-Turned-Doctor Helping Veterans Overcome PTSD
 

Can Nail Polish Prevent Date Rape?

Posted on by robbie

As young adults across the country head to college this month, they might be worried about more than just getting to class on time. That’s because the Washington Post analyzed the most recent federal campus crime data available and found over 3,900 reports of sexual assaults on American college campuses in 2012. These statistics, coupled with the probability that such crimes are massively underreported, are disturbing, to say the least.
But four North Carolina State University students are developing an innovative product that might bring some peace of mind: a nail polish that changes color when it detects the presence of the date rape drugs, such as Xanax, Rohypnol or GHB in a drink.
How does it work? If the wearer uses her (or his) finger to stir their drink, the polish will change color if any of these drugs are present.
The team of invetors, which consists of Tyler Confrey-Maloney, Stephen Gray, Ankesh Madan and Tasso Von Windheim, are currently raising funds for research and development of the nail polish. According to Lauren K. Ohnesorge of the Triangle Business Journal, a securities filing indicates that they’ve already raised $100,000 from one investor, with the goal of ultimately collecting $250,000.
Back in April, these students won the Lulu eGames, which is sponsored by NC State’s Entrepreneurship Initiative, with their invention. Next they applied to present their startup idea at this fall’s Kairos Global Summit, and earlier this month, made it to the semi-finals.
The young entrepreneurs are keeping mum about when their product will be available, but the idea has already generated widespread interest.
Other products already exist for detecting date rape drugs, including Drink Safe’s testing coasters, and the pd.id, a battery-powered gadget that indicates the presence of drugs when immersed in a beverage, but none of them have the ease of use as nail polish. After all, if it works, Undercover Colors has the advantage of offering users one less thing to carry. Plus, since the polish is invisible, it will likely deter would-be attackers from even trying to spike someone’s drinks since they wouldn’t know who might be wearing it.
As the inventors behind Undercover Colors write on their Facebook page, “In the U.S., 18% of women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. We may not know who they are, but these women are not faceless. They are our daughters, they are our girlfriends, and they are our friends. While date rape drugs are often used to facilitate sexual assault, very little science exists for their detection. Our goal is to invent technologies that empower women to protect themselves from this heinous and quietly pervasive crime.”
MORE: The Innovative Blood-Drawing Technique That’s Pain-Free and Saves Money
 

While Civil Unrest Rocks Their Community, This Teacher is Working to Prevent Ferguson’s Kids from Going Hungry

Posted on by robbie

Since police shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed, college-bound teenager in Ferguson, Mo., the violent unrest in the small town near St. Louis has yet to cease. With outrage and confusion coming from all directions, basic safety and calm are at a premium. Families are in danger, and as a result, school has been canceled for at least the remainder of this week.
In Ferguson, a week off from school means more than just missed lessons.
The poverty rate there is almost double Missouri’s average, so unfortunately, many kids don’t get proper nutrition unless they are in school, according to the Huffington Post.
Thankfully, Juliana Mendelsohn, a teacher in Raleigh, N.C., recognized the need to provide food and launched an online campaign to raise money for hungry children in Ferguson. Appealing for donations on the crowd funding site Fundly, Mendelsohn says, “when I found out school had been canceled for several days as a result of the civil unrest, I immediately became worried for the students in households with food instability.”
So far, over $78,000 has been raised by thousands of donors (as of publication), with another two days left to reach the goal of $80,000. Dennis Hu, Fundly’s CEO, was so impressed with the mission and success of the campaign that he personally called Mendelsohn to express his support for her.
All the money raised goes directly to help those in need through the St. Louis Area Foodbank, which says the funds are substantial enough to continue making a difference for the next year.
“Regardless of your opinion on the civil unrest in Ferguson,” Mendelsohn continued, “there is no need for innocent children to go hungry because of it.”
If you’re interested in donating, click here.
DON’T MISS: When School’s Not in Session, NYC Food Trucks Are Serving Hungry Kids

Short on Cash? That’s No Problem at This Farmer’s Market

Posted on by robbie

The way it typically works at a farmer’s market (and with just about every retailer, in fact): You pay money and in exchange, you go home with a bunch of fresh produce.
But at the go-go fresco farmer’s market in Charlotte, North Carolina, if you don’t have enough money to pay for your greens, you don’t have to worry.
Huh?
If you’re telling yourself that there must be a catch, there’s not. The farmer’s market frequently operates on the pay-what-you-can principle that’s already the basis for many cafés across the country.
Even better: You might not have to drive across town to visit go-go fresco, since it visits 10 different locations each week, with the goal of bringing fresh produce to people who might not be able to access it otherwise.
Two of the locations are designed to reach low-income families and that’s where patrons can pay what they care to — either the suggested price, a bit more to help another shopper out, or less if that’s all they’ve got. Go-go fresco also accepts food stamps and often donates produce (which it buys from local farmers) to the non-profits that host their mobile market: The YWCA and the Children and Family Services Center.
“We have good weeks and some bad weeks, but it balances out,” Nick Knock (who founded go-go fresco with Leconte Lee) told Mark Price of the Charlotte Observer. “It’s inspiring to see the hearts and generosity of people who don’t think twice about paying more so someone in need can get fresh food.”
Knock told Price that there have been a few times when he wondered if patrons were taking advantage of the pay-what-you-want option, “But then I saw that they only had $3.19 left on their (food stamp) account, and I got choked up. They were spending what little money they had left at our market. It was mind-blowing when you think they were able to get food because of us.”
MORE: The Restaurant Without A Cash Register

This Program Shares Its Wisdom About Producing Minority Ph.D. Science Students

Posted on by robbie

It goes without saying that the folks at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) know a thing or two about supporting and encouraging minority and low-income undergraduate students in continuing their studies and earning science Ph.D.s.
Impressively, over the past two decades, the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC has produced 900 graduates who have gone on to rack up 423 advanced science degrees and 107 medical degrees.
Compare that to Penn State, which was recently named one of the top 40 schools for educating black students who eventually earned advanced science degrees. Despite the recognition, the public university earned that status by producing just four (!) degrees earned by black science students out of about 3,000 STEM students total.
“The data is shocking,” Penn State Chemistry professor Mary Beth Williams told Jeffrey Mervis of Science Insider. “Clearly we have to do a better job.”
So the people behind UMBC’s successful Meyerhoff Scholars Program will mentor faculty and staff at Penn State and the University of North Carolina in an attempt to increase the number of minority students enrolled in science Ph.D. programs. Over five years, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will dedicate $7.75 million to the effort.
Clearly, UMBC has figured out a formula that keeps minority and low-income students on track to become scientists: Close monitoring of academic progress, a summer program for incoming freshmen, scholarships, research opportunities, and a close cohort of talented students who foster a sense of teamwork with each other. Its current four-year class of Meyerhoff Scholars includes 300 students, 60 percent of which are underrepresented minorities.
Williams said she plans to study these lessons carefully in the program’s implementation at Penn State. “My goal is to clone it as much as possible. It’s been successful for 25 years, so why mess with it? The more you change, the more you’re inviting failure.”
The president of UMBC, Freeman Hrabowski, is proud of how the scholars program has grown from its initial class of 19 African-American male science students in 1989. “What Meyerhoff has done is get us to think about our responsibility to students who say they want a STEM degree,” he told Mervis. “And what helps underrepresented minorities will also help the rest of our students.”
MORE: When People Said Minorities Weren’t Interested in Science, This Guy Proved Them Wrong
Correction: June 5, 2014
A previous version of this post misstated the funding for this program. It is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, not the UMBC.