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Art Teachers Are Teaching Girls to Code

Celeste Hamilton Dennis

June 10, 2021 |

Next City |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Miami, Florida

Code/Art trains art teachers in a curriculum that combines art and coding, with the goal of inspiring girls to code. They also offer weekly clubs for elementary and middle school girls, a Future Female Tech Leaders program for high schoolers, and an annual conference to celebrate the girls’ achievements. Teachers who take the training can satisfy continuing education requirements by learning four lessons: an abstract art generator and donut maker game, coding self-portraits using JavaScript, and 3-D modeling. Facilitators are assisted by college-age interns, who are available to help in the classroom.

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Seminary Built on Slavery and Jim Crow Labor Has Begun Paying Reparations

Will Wright

May 31, 2021 |

The New York Times |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Alexandria, Virginia

The Virginia Theological Seminary is giving cash to descendants of Black Americans forced to work there during slavery and Jim Crow. Annual payments, taken from a fund set to grow at a sustainable rate, will go to the closest direct descendant of each Black worker. Fifteen descendants have received payments so far, but that number will likely grow as genealogists continue to search through records. The payments, along with efforts to build relationships with the families, are the Seminary’s way of acknowledging their role in the exploitation and recognizing the contributions of those forced to work there.

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Young People Are Digitally Rebuilding Tulsa's Black Wall Street

Kristi Eaton

May 26, 2021 |

Next City |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Urban Coders Guild provides STEM education opportunities to underrepresented communities and is working with local students to build websites for the businesses destroyed during the Tulsa Race Massacre. While none of the businesses operate today, the program builds awareness of the massacre while also teaching students coding skills to build websites. The course is also considered a “prep” course for the future because it teaches students how to interact with others as well as listen to and accept feedback from others. The group partnered with Tulsa Community College students to create the content and logos.

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Bogota crowdsources a green transport future to cut emissions

Anastasia Moloney

May 26, 2021 |

Thomson Reuters Foundation |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Colombia, Bogotá

Citizen participation in meetings, door-to-door surveys, and via an open-source online platform where residents could edit and add to draft plans resulted in 7,000 citizen proposals to redesign one of Bogota’s major, car-choked, 23-km thoroughfares. Residents as young as 10 years old contributed to design plans that will cut climate-changing emissions and pollution by adding more bike lanes, pedestrian paths, and electric buses and cable cars. City officials spent substantial time listening to residents’ ideas and concerns, including talking with populations that are often ignored by those in power.

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Okemos Public Schools is changing its mascot. Belding already did and says they have no regrets.

Mikayla Temple

May 25, 2021 |

WSYM-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: United States, East Lansing, Michigan

Many parents and community members lobbied the Okemos School Board, which approved a name change for the public school's mascot from one that objectifies and stereotypes Native Americans to one that promotes a positive imagery for students of all races and backgrounds. Belding area schools also approved a name change after parents protested an interim solution that allowed the use of the mascot’s name without imagery as not going far enough. The Native American Heritage Fund provided grants to schools wanting to change their mascots to help mitigate the obstacle of the high costs of rebranding.

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The other SNL: New York City's athletic approach to curbing rising gun violence

Talib Visram

May 20, 2021 |

FastCompany |

Multi-Media |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, New York, New York

Saturday Night Lights is run by the DA’s office and aims to reduce gun violence by providing organized sports for school-aged kids on weekend nights, when crime often goes up. Active in 20 locations across the city, SNL has served over 20,000 kids in 10 years. Partners must open on Saturday nights, for at least 46 weeks per year, and provide high quality coaching. There is no formal sign-up process or eligibility requirements apart from age and participants can join on any given night. As a response to surging crime rates in 2020, the mayor’s office has committed $5 million a year to expand to 100 locations.

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Hong Kong Protests, Silenced on the Streets, Surface in Artworks

Mike Ives

May 20, 2021 |

The New York Times |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Hong Kong

Even though police silenced the 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, artists, writers, and filmmakers are producing work about the protests in more abstract and ambiguous ways to evade authorities. For example, the Goethe-Institut’s Hong Kong branch hosted a mixed show that included photographs of the 2019 protests that the artist had punched, ripped, or cut in order to hide protestors’ identities. Even though Chinese law criminalizes anything that the government deems as promoting “secession, subversion, or collusion with foreign powers,” several other exhibits are also featuring protest art.

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People Are Using an Ancient Method of Writing Arabic to Combat AI Censors

Hakim Bishara

May 19, 2021 |

Hyperallergic |

Text |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: Palestine

To get around algorithms that have flagged and removed Palestinian content, users on platforms like Facebook and Instagram are using an old version of Arabic, dating back at least a thousand years, that doesn’t have diacritical points (dots above or below letters). Converting Arabic into a dotless form in social media posts makes it much more challenging for AI machines to identify because they use a binary code to identify each letter.

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San Francisco's Filipino Cultural District Keeping Hope Alive After a Tough Year

Oscar Perry Abello

May 18, 2021 |

Next City |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, San Francisco, California

“UNDSCVRD SF," funded by the SOMA Community Stabilization Fund and produced by the nonprofit Kultivate Labs, is a night market held once a month from July to November that features a range of Filipino vendors. There were over 35,000 attendees in 2019 and it generated $300,000 in sales. It also serves as a testing ground to select businesses for Kultivate Labs’ SEED Accelerator Program and grantees for the SOMA Fund. The former provides bootcamps and one-on-one support for Filipino-owned businesses that are located in, or would like to be located in, a permanent space within the SOMA cultural district.

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Washington School kids receive lesson on ‘Participatory Budgeting'

Beverly Barela

May 13, 2021 |

Merced County Times |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Merced County, California

Student leaders formed the Participatory Budget Committee at a Merced River School and ran the voting process for students decide which initiatives would be funded. The students had a budget of $5,000 to allocate and used actual county voting booths. The winning project was the modernization of campus restrooms. Students learned about participatory budgeting and brainstormed a set of four projects they felt were most needed at the school. They held regular meetings, highlighting the importance of civic involvement.

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