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Heroes

This teen's app stops cyberbullying, and she's just one innovator in this competition.

Innovators are using technology to create impact on a massive scale.

True
Comcast NBCUniversal & NationSwell

In 2013, Trisha Prabhu read a news story that broke her heart — a 12-year-old girl had taken her life after experiencing cyberbullying.

Prabhu was only 13 at the time and couldn't understand someone younger than her taking her own life. However, instead of processing her shock and moving on, she decided to do something about it.

"I started thinking about what I could do to stop this from ever happening again," writes Prabhu in an email.

[rebelmouse-image 19532798 dam="1" original_size="920x652" caption="Trisha Prabhu. Photo via Trisha Prabhu." expand=1]Trisha Prabhu. Photo via Trisha Prabhu.

The inner workings of the brain had always fascinated Prabhu, so she decided to research adolescent behavior as it relates to cyberbullying for a science fair. What she found was startling — adolescents are 50% more likely to impulsively post hateful things online than adults because the part of their brains that makes decisions isn't fully developed yet.

Armed with that knowledge and her coding skills, Prabhu began working on an app designed to fight cyberbullying.

She called it ReThink.

According to her research, if given the chance, adolescents will change their minds and not post a hurtful message 93% of the time. With the help of her teachers, her parents, and endless Googling, Prabhu developed the ReThink app, which detects a hateful message before it's sent and gives the creator the option of deleting it.

[rebelmouse-image 19532799 dam="1" original_size="640x480" caption="Photo via Summer Skyes 11/Flickr. " expand=1]Photo via Summer Skyes 11/Flickr.

The app is now available for most smartphones and tablets, and so far, over 3,000 schools have adopted it. Not only has it received an overwhelmingly positive response from parents, students, teachers, and law enforcement officials, it has been awarded scientific merit by Google, MIT, Northwestern University, WebMD, and even the White House. Today, Prabhu is traveling the world, speaking out against cyberbullying and advocating for STEM education, especially for young women. At only 17, she's certainly an innovator to watch.

That's why she's one of the 2017 Tech Impact AllStars. Presented by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, Prabhu is one of five social innovators who are using technology to solve problems in their communities.

And she's in good company. Here's a look at four other trailblazers making a major impact on the tech world.

1. Dan Rhoton, Executive Director of Hopeworks 'N Camden, is preparing at-risk youths for careers in tech.

Not only does the nonprofit provide job training support, it offers counseling for kids who've experienced all levels of trauma.

[rebelmouse-image 19532800 dam="1" original_size="400x400" caption="Dan Rhoton. Photo via NationSwell." expand=1]Dan Rhoton. Photo via NationSwell.

This is why their mission states, "we believe every youth, no matter their history, has the ability to succeed and thrive. Not just survive."

Rhoton joined Hopeworks in 2012, and helped direct its focus on trauma support. As a result, the program's college enrollment numbers increased more than 300% and job placement by 70%.

2. Felecia Hatcher-Pearson, Co-founder of Code Fever, is helping to bring more people of color to the tech community table.

[rebelmouse-image 19532801 dam="1" original_size="1000x662" caption="Felecia Hatcher-Pearson. Photo via NationSwell." expand=1]Felecia Hatcher-Pearson. Photo via NationSwell.

Hatcher-Pearson runs a coding and entrepreneur training facility in Miami called Code Fever for kids age 13 to 21. The organization was specifically created to help underserved minorities break into various STEM fields and take up leadership positions in order to level the cultural imbalance that currently exists.

Hatcher-Pearson's no stranger to overcoming obstacles. When she was younger, her guidance counselor told her she didn't have the grades to get into college, so she taught herself how to code and landed over $130,000 in scholarship funds. She's basically the archetype for the idea "if you can dream it, you can be it," so now she's made it her mission to inspire others. She's already introduced over 3,000 kids and adults to the tech ecosystem.

3. Kelsey Foster, Campaign Director for the Committee for a Better New Orleans, is using a video game to make city budgets more accessible to the people of New Orleans.

[rebelmouse-image 19532802 dam="1" original_size="400x400" caption="Kelsey Foster. Photo via NationSwell." expand=1]Kelsey Foster. Photo via NationSwell.

Public finances aren't exactly the easiest things to understand, especially for the majority of people directly affected by them. That's why Kelsey Foster helped come up with a user-friendly video game to clearly show them how it all works.

It's called the Big Easy Budget Game, and it allows residents to see just how city budgets are balanced and where their hard-earned tax dollars go. Users play the mayor and are allotted the same budget (simulated, of course) to dispense where they see fit. Who says budgeting has to be boring?

Right now, 80% of New Orleans' population feels neglected when it comes to budget decisions. Foster knew it was high time they found a way to include them in the conversation, which is why the data the game collects is being used to inform voters ahead of the mayoral election.

4. Jeremy Peskin, Co-founder of Borderwise, is streamlining the citizenship process for undocumented immigrants.

[rebelmouse-image 19532803 dam="1" original_size="600x600" caption="Jeremy Peskin. Photo via NationSwell." expand=1]Jeremy Peskin. Photo via NationSwell.

Before Peskin became an American citizen, he always feared he'd be deported when he traveled back to see his family in Canada. He wanted to find a way to eliminate that fear for the millions of undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States.

He created Borderwise in 2016 to reduce the cost for immigrants to achieve citizenship status and to make the application process much easier to digest. By putting all the paperwork online, costs are lowered from thousands to just $500. Peskin hopes this will help more immigrants, who might otherwise be unsure how to proceed, apply for citizenship.

While only in its first year, the program's already helped hundreds of immigrants get the process underway.

Developing technology is an ongoing process, but with such brilliant minds like the ones above at the helm, there's no telling what a difference they'll make.

Innovations like these have the power to change millions of lives, especially in the hands of compassionate creators.

Prabhu put it succinctly: "If I am working on making the world around me a better place, in ways big or small, I would consider myself to be on the right track."

Vote for your favorite 2017 Tech Impact AllStars presented by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal from October 2nd through November 2nd by clicking here.

Pop Culture

Here’s a paycheck for a McDonald’s worker. And here's my jaw dropping to the floor.

So we've all heard the numbers, but what does that mean in reality? Here's one year's wages — yes, *full-time* wages. Woo.

Making a little over 10,000 for a yearly salary.


I've written tons of things about minimum wage, backed up by fact-checkers and economists and scholarly studies. All of them point to raising the minimum wage as a solution to lifting people out of poverty and getting folks off of public assistance. It's slowly happening, and there's much more to be done.

But when it comes right down to it, where the rubber meets the road is what it means for everyday workers who have to live with those wages. I honestly don't know how they do it.

Ask yourself: Could I live on this small of a full-time paycheck? I know what my answer is.

(And note that the minimum wage in many parts of the county is STILL $7.25, so it would be even less than this).

paychecks, McDonalds, corporate power, broken system

One year of work at McDonalds grossed this worker $13,811.18.

assets.rebelmouse.io

This story was written by Brandon Weber and was originally appeared on 02.26.15

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Family

Mom’s blistering rant on how men are responsible for all unwanted pregnancies is on the nose

“ALL unwanted pregnancies are caused by the irresponsible ejaculations of men. Period. Don't believe me? Let me walk you through it."

Gabrielle Blair/Twitter

Mom has something to say... strongly say.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, are a conservative group who aren't known for being vocal about sex.

But best selling author, blogger, and mother of six, Gabrielle Blair, has kicked that stereotype to the curb with a pointed thread on reducing unwanted pregnancies. And her sights are set directly at men.

She wrote a Cliff's Notes version of her thread on her blog:

If you want to stop abortion, you need to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And men are 100% responsible for unwanted pregnancies. No for real, they are. Perhaps you are thinking: IT TAKES TWO! And yes, it does take two for _intentional_ pregnancies.

But ALL unwanted pregnancies are caused by the irresponsible ejaculations of men. Period. Don't believe me? Let me walk you through it. Let's start with this: women can only get pregnant about 2 days each month. And that's for a limited number of years.

Here's the whole thread. It's long, but totally worth the read.

Blair's controversial tweet storm have been liked hundreds of thousands of time, with the original tweet earning nearly 200,000 likes since it was posted on Thursday, September, 13.

The reactions have earned her both praise and scorn.

Most of the scorn was from men.

But Blair wouldn't budge.

For other men, the tweet thread was a real eye-opener.

Women everywhere applauded Blair's bold thread.

This article originally appeared on 02.22.19

From Your Site Articles
women
Pop Culture

What is 'Generation Jones'? The unique qualities of the not-quite-Gen-X-baby-boomers.

This "microgeneration" had a different upbringing than their fellow boomers.

Photo Credits: Michelle Obama, US Department of Education, Lawrence Jackson

Generation Jones includes Michelle Obama, George Clooney, Kamala Harris, Keanu Reeves and more.

We hear a lot about the major generation categories—boomers, Gen X, millennials, Gen Z and the up-and-coming Gen Alpha. But there are folks who don't quite fit into those boxes. These in-betweeners, sometimes called "cuspers," are members of microgenerations that straddle two of the biggies.

"Xennial" is the nickname for those who fall on the cusp of Gen X and millennial, but there's also a lesser-known microgeneration that straddles Gen X and baby boomers. The folks born from 1954 to 1965 are known as Generation Jones, and they've been thrust into the spotlight as people try to figure out what generation to consider 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris.

Like President Obama before her, Harris is a Gen Joneser—not exactly a classic baby boomer but not quite Gen X. Born in October 1964, Harris falls just a few months shy of official Gen X territory. But what exactly differentiates Gen Jones from the boomers and Gen Xers that flank it?

"Generation Jones" was coined by writer, television producer and social commentator Jonathan Pontell to describe the decade of Americans who grew up in the '60s and '70s. As Pontell wrote of Gen Jonesers in Politico:

"We fill the space between Woodstock and Lollapalooza, between the Paris student riots and the anti-globalisation protests, and between Dylan going electric and Nirvana going unplugged. Jonesers have a unique identity separate from Boomers and GenXers. An avalanche of attitudinal and behavioural data corroborates this distinction."

Pontell describes Jonesers as "practical idealists" who were "forged in the fires of social upheaval while too young to play a part." They are the younger siblings of the boomer civil rights and anti-war activists who grew up witnessing and being moved by the passion of those movements but were met with a fatigued culture by the time they themselves came of age. Sometimes, they're described as the cool older siblings of Gen X. Unlike their older boomer counterparts, most Jonesers were not raised by WWII veteran fathers and were too young to be drafted into Vietnam, leaving them in between on military experience.

Gen Jones gets its name from the competitive "keeping up with the Joneses" spirit that spawned during their populous birth years, but also from the term "jonesin'," meaning an intense craving, that they coined—a drug reference but also a reflection of the yearning to make a difference that their "unrequited idealism" left them with. According to Pontell, their competitiveness and identity as a "generation aching to act" may make Jonesers particularly effective leaders:

"What makes us Jonesers also makes us uniquely positioned to bring about a new era in international affairs. Our practical idealism was created by witnessing the often unrealistic idealism of the 1960s. And we weren’t engaged in that era’s ideological battles; we were children playing with toys while boomers argued over issues. Our non-ideological pragmatism allows us to resolve intra-boomer skirmishes and to bridge that volatile Boomer-GenXer divide. We can lead."

Time will tell whether the United States will end up with another Generation Jones leader, but with President Biden withdrawing his candidacy, it has now become a distinct possibility.

Of note in discussions over Kamala Harris's generational status is the fact that generations aren't just calculated by birth year but by a person's cultural reality. Some have made the argument that Harris is culturally more Gen X than boomer, though there doesn't seem to be any record of her claiming any particular generation as her own. However, a swath of Gen Z has staked their own claim on her as "brat"—a term singer Charli XCX thrust into the political arena with a post on X that read "kamala IS brat." That may be nonsensical to most older folks, but for Gen Z, it's a glowing endorsement from one of the top Gen Z musicians of the moment.

From Your Site Articles
generations
Identity

When a man asks people to translate a hate message he's received, their response is unforgettable

Reading the words would be one thing. Having to think about what they mean is almost too intense.

All images via Lietuvos žmogaus teisių centras/YouTube


As part of an experiment, a man asks for help translating a Facebook message he has received.

There's a man in Lithuania who speaks only English. The message is in Lithuanian. He can't read it, so he asks some locals to translate it for him.

As he asks one person after another to translate the message for him, two things become obvious.

1. He's received a message full of hate speech.

2. Translating it for him is breaking people's hearts.

It's nearly more than these people can bear.

There's a sudden, powerful connection between the translators and the man they're translating for. They want to protect him, telling him not to bother with the message.

They apologize for the message.

They look like they want to cry.

Words hurt.

Most of us would never think of saying such horrible things. This video shows people realizing in their gut what it must feel like when those words are pointed at them — it's all right on their faces. And so is their compassion.

The Facebook message is horrible, but their empathy is beautiful. The video's emotional power is what makes it unique, and so worth watching and passing around.

Here it is.

The video's in English, subtitled in Lithuanian. Just watch the faces.

This article originally appeared on 04.10.15

From Your Site Articles
Science

Researchers dumped tons of coffee waste into a forest. This is what it looks like now.

30 dump truck loads and two years later, the forest looks totally different.

assets.rebelmouse.io

One of the biggest problems with coffee production is that it generates an incredible amount of waste. Once coffee beans are separated from cherries, about 45% of the entire biomass is discarded.

So for every pound of roasted coffee we enjoy, an equivalent amount of coffee pulp is discarded into massive landfills across the globe. That means that approximately 10 million tons of coffee pulp is discarded into the environment every year.


When disposed of improperly, the waste can cause serious damage soil and water sources.

However, a new study published in the British Ecological Society journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence has found that coffee pulp isn't just a nuisance to be discarded. It can have an incredibly positive impact on regrowing deforested areas of the planet.

via British Ecological Society

In 2018, researchers from ETH-Zurich and the University of Hawaii spread 30 dump trucks worth of coffee pulp over a roughly 100' x 130' area of degraded land in Costa Rica. The experiment took place on a former coffee farm that underwent rapid deforestation in the 1950s.

The coffee pulp was spread three-feet thick over the entire area.

Another plot of land near the coffee pulp dump was left alone to act as a control for the experiment.

"The results were dramatic." Dr. Rebecca Cole, lead author of the study, said. "The area treated with a thick layer of coffee pulp turned into a small forest in only two years while the control plot remained dominated by non-native pasture grasses."

In just two years, the area treated with coffee pulp had an 80% canopy cover, compared to just 20% of the control area. So, the coffee-pulp-treated area grew four times more rapidly. Like a jolt of caffeine, it reinvigorated biological activity in the area.

The canopy was also four times taller than that of the control.

Before and after images of the forest

The forest experienced a radical, positive change

via British Ecological Society

The coffee-treated area also eliminated an invasive species of grass that took over the land and prevented forest succession. Its elimination allowed for other native species to take over and recolonize the area.

"This case study suggests that agricultural by-products can be used to speed up forest recovery on degraded tropical lands. In situations where processing these by-products incurs a cost to agricultural industries, using them for restoration to meet global reforestation objectives can represent a 'win-win' scenario," Dr. Cole said.

If the results are repeatable it's a win-win for coffee drinkers and the environment.

Researchers believe that coffee treatments can be a cost-effective way to reforest degraded land. They may also work to reverse the effects of climate change by supporting the growth of forests across the globe.

The 2016 Paris Agreement made reforestation an important part of the fight against climate change. The agreement incentivizes developing countries to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, promote forest conservation and sustainable management, and enhance forest carbon stocks in developing countries.

"We hope our study is a jumping off point for other researchers and industries to take a look at how they might make their production more efficient by creating links to the global restoration movement," Dr. Cole said.


This article originally appeared on 03.29.21

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climate change
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