Monthly Archives: October 2019

Steve Jobs, John Sculley, and Steve Wozniak, 1984. Steve Jobs, John Sculley, and Steve Wozniak, 1984.

One of Apple cofounder Steve Jobss most audacious marketing triumphs is rarely mentioned in the paeans to his genius that remain a staple of business content farms. In 1982, Jobs offered to donate a computer to every K12 school in America, provided Congress pass a bill giving Apple substantial tax write-offs for the donations. When he arrived in Washington, DC, to lobby for what became known as the Apple Bill, the 28-year-old CEO looked more like a summer intern than the head of a $600-million-a-year corporation, according to The Washington Post, but he already showed signs of his famous arrogance. He barraged the legislators with white papers and proclaimed that they would be crazy not to take us up on this. Jobs knew the strength of his hand: A mania for computer literacy was sweeping the nation as an answer to the competitive threats of globalization and the reescalation of the Cold Wars technology and space races. Yet even as preparing students for the Information Age became a national priority, the Reagan eras budget cuts meant that few schools could afford a brand-new $2,400 Apple II computer.Ad Policy Books in Review

The Apple Bill passed the House overwhelmingly but then died in the Senate after a bureaucratic snafu for which Jobs forever blamed Republican Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, then chair of the Finance Committee. Yet all was not lost: A similar bill passed in California, and Apple flooded its home state with almost 10,000 computers. Apples success in California gave it a leg up in the lucrative education market as states around the country began to computerize their classrooms. But education was not radically transformed, unless you count a spike in The Oregon Trailrelated deaths from dysentery. If anything, those who have studied the rapid introduction of computers into classrooms in the 1980s and 90s tend to conclude that it exacerbated inequities. Elite students and schools zoomed smoothly into cyberspace, while poorer schools fell further behind, bogged down by a lack of training and resources.

A young, charismatic geek hawks his wares using bold promises of social progress but actually makes things worse and gets extremely rich in the processtoday it is easy to see the story of the Apple Bill as a stand-in for the history of the digital revolution as a whole. The growing concern about the role that technology plays in our lives and society is fueled in no small part by a growing realization that we have been duped. We were told that computerizing everything would lead to greater prosperity, personal empowerment, collective understanding, even the ability to transcend the limits of the physical realm and create a big, beautiful global brain made out of electrons. Instead, our extreme dependence on technology seems to have mainly enriched and empowered a handful of tech companies at the expense of everyone else. The panic over Facebooks impact on democracy sparked by Donald Trumps election in a haze of fake news and Russian bots felt like the national version of the personal anxiety that seizes many of us when we find ourselves snapping away from our phone for what seems like the 1,000th time in an hour and contemplating how our lives are being stolen by a screen. We are stuck in a really bad system.

This realization has led to a justifiable anger and derision aimed at the architects of this system. Silicon Valley executives and engineers are taken to task every week in the op-ed pages of our largest newspapers. We are told that their irresponsibility and greed have undermined our freedom and degraded our democratic institutions. While it is gratifying to see tech billionaires get a (very small) portion of their comeuppance, we often forget that until very recently, Silicon Valley was hailed by almost everyone as creating the path toward a brilliant future. Perhaps we should pause and contemplate how this situation came to be, lest we make the same mistakes again. The story of how Silicon Valley ended up at the center of the American dream in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as well as the ambiguous reality behind its own techno-utopian dreams, is the subject of Margaret OMaras sweeping new history, The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America. In it, she puts Silicon Valley into the context of a larger story about postwar Americas economic and social transformations, highlighting its connections with the mainstream rather than the cultural quirks and business practices that set it apart. The Code urges us to consider Silicon Valleys shortcomings as Americas shortcomings, even if it fails to interrogate them as deeply as our current crisisand the role that technology played in bringing it aboutseems to warrant.

Silicon Valley entered the public consciousness in the 1970s as something of a charmed place. The first recorded mention of Silicon Valley was in a 1971 article by a writer for a technology newspaper reporting on the regions semiconductor industry, which was booming despite the economic doldrums that had descended on most of the country. As the Rust Belt foundered and Detroit crumbled, Silicon Valley soared to heights barely conveyed by the metrics that OMara rattles off in the opening pages of The Code: Three billion smartphones. Two billion social media users. Two trillion-dollar companies and the richest people in the history of humanity. Many people have attempted to divine the secret of Silicon Valleys success. The consensus became that the Valley had pioneered a form of quicksilver entrepreneurialism perfectly suited to the Information Age. It was fast, flexible, meritocratic, and open to new ways of doing things. It allowed brilliant young people to turn crazy ideas into world-changing companies practically overnight. Silicon Valley came to represent the innovative power of capitalism freed from the clutches of uptight men in midcentury business suits, bestowed upon the masses by a new, appealing folk hero: the cherub-faced start-up founder hacking away in his dorm room.

The Code both bolsters and revises this story. On the one hand, OMara, a historian at the University of Washington, is clearly enamored with tales of entrepreneurial derring-do. From the traitorous eight who broke dramatically from the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 to start Fairchild Semiconductor and create the modern silicon transistor to the well-documented story of Facebooks founding, the major milestones of Silicon Valley history are told in heroic terms that can seem gratingly out of touch, given what we know about how it all turned out. In her portrayal of Silicon Valleys tech titans, OMara emphasizes virtuous qualities like determination, ingenuity, and humanistic concern, while hints of darker motives are studiously ignored. We learn that a visionary and relentless Jeff Bezos continued to drive a beat-up Honda Accord even as he became a billionaire, but his reported remark to an Amazon sales team that they ought to treat small publishers the way a lion treats a sickly gazelle is apparently not deemed worthy of the historical record. But at the same time, OMara helps us understand why Silicon Valleys economic dominance cant be chalked up solely to the grit and smarts of entrepreneurs battling it out in the free market. At every stage of its development, she shows how the booming tech industry was aided and abetted by a wide swath of American society both inside and outside the Valley. Marketing gurus shaped the tech companies images, educators evangelized for technology in schools, best-selling futurists preached personalized tech as a means toward personal liberation. What emerges in The Code is less the story of a tribe of misfits working against the grain than the simultaneous alignment of the countrys political, cultural, and technical elites around the view that Silicon Valley held the key to the future.

Above all, OMara highlights the profound role that the US government played in Silicon Valleys rise. At the end of World War II, the region was still the sleepy, sun-drenched Santa Clara Valley, home to farms and orchards, an upstart Stanford University, and a scattering of small electronics and aerospace firms. Then came the space and arms races, given new urgency in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik, which suggested a serious Soviet advantage. Millions of dollars in government funding flooded technology companies and universities around the country. An outsize portion went to Northern Californias burgeoning tech industry, thanks in large part to Stanfords far-sighted provost Frederick Terman, who reshaped the university into a hub for engineering and the applied sciences.Current Issue

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Stanford and the surrounding area became a hive of government R&D during these years, as IBM and Lockheed Martin opened local outposts and the first native start-ups hit the ground. While these early companies relied on what OMara calls the Valleys ecosystem of fresh-faced engineers seeking freedom and sunshine in California, venture capitalists sniffing out a profitable new industry, and lawyers, construction companies, and real estate agents jumping to serve their somewhat quirky ways, she makes it clear that the lifeblood pumping through it all was government money. Fairchild Semiconductors biggest clients for its new silicon chips were NASA, which put them in the Apollo rockets, and the Defense Department, which stuck them in Minuteman nuclear missiles. The brains of all of todays devices have their origin in the United States drive to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

But the role of public funding in the creation of Silicon Valley is not the big government success story a good liberal might be tempted to consider it. As OMara points out, during the Cold War American leaders deliberately pushed public funds to private industry rather than government programs because they thought the market was the best way to spur technological progress while avoiding the specter of centralized planning, which had come to smack of communist tyranny. In the years that followed, this belief in the market as the means to achieve the goals of liberal democracy spread to nearly every aspect of life and society, from public education and health care to social justice, solidifying into the creed we now call neoliberalism. As the role of the state was eclipsed by the market, Silicon Valleyfull of brilliant entrepreneurs devising technologies that promised to revolutionize everything they touchedwas well positioned to step into the void.

The earliest start-up founders hardly seemed eager to assume the mantle of social visionary that their successors, todays flashy celebrity technologists, happily take up. They were buttoned-down engineers who reflected the cool practicality of their major government and corporate clients. As the 1960s wore on, they were increasingly out of touch. Amid the tumult of the civil rights movement and the protests against the Vietnam War, the major concern in Silicon Valleys manicured technology parks was a Johnson-era drop in military spending. The relatively few techies who were political at the time were conservative.

Things started to change in the 1970s. The 60s made a belated arrival in the Valley as a younger generation of geeks steeped in countercultural values began to apply them to the development of computer technology. The weight of Silicon Valleys culture shifted from the conservative suits to long-haired techno-utopians with dreams of radically reorganizing society through technology. This shift was perhaps best embodied by Lee Felsenstein, a former self-described child radical who cut his teeth running communications operations for anti-war and civil rights protests before going on to develop the Tom Swift Terminal, one of the earliest personal computers. Felsenstein believed that giving everyday people access to computers could liberate them from the crushing hierarchy of modern industrial society by breaking the monopoly on information held by corporations and government bureaucracies. To change the rules, change the tools, he liked to say. Whereas Silicon Valley had traditionally developed tools for the Man, these techies wanted to make tools to undermine him. They created a loose-knit network of hobbyist groups, drop-in computer centers, and DIY publications to share knowledge and work toward the ideal of personal liberation through technology. Their dreams seemed increasingly achievable as computers shrank from massive, room-filling mainframes to the smaller-room-filling minicomputers to, finally, in 1975, the first commercially viable personal computer, the Altair.

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Yet as OMara shows, the techno-utopians did not ultimately constitute such a radical break from the past. While their calls to democratize computing may have echoed Marxist cries to seize the means of production, most were capitalists at heart. To advance the personal computer revolution, they founded start-ups, trade magazines, and business forums, relying on funding from venture capital funds often with roots in the old money elite. Jobs became the most celebrated entrepreneur of the era by embodying the discordant figures of both the cowboy capitalist and the touchy-feely hippie, an image crafted in large part by the marketing guru Regis McKenna. Silicon Valley soon became an industry that looked a lot like those that had come before. It was nearly as white and male as they were. Its engineers worked soul-crushing hours and blew off steam with boozy pool parties. And its most successful company, Microsoft, clawed its way to the top through ruthless monopolistic tactics.

Perhaps the strongest case against the supposed subversiveness of the personal computer pioneers is how quickly they were embraced by those in power. As profits rose and spectacular IPOs seized headlines throughout the 1980s, Silicon Valley was championed by the rising stars of supply-side economics, who hitched their drive for tax cuts and deregulation to techs venture-capital-fueled rocket ship. The groundwork was laid in 1978, when the Valleys venture capitalists formed an alliance with the Republicans to kill then-President Jimmy Carters proposed increase in the capital gains tax. They beta-tested Reaganomics by advancing the dubious argument that millionaires making slightly less money on their investments might stifle technological innovation by limiting the supply of capital available to start-ups. And they carried the day.

As president, Ronald Reagan doubled down with tax cuts and wild technophilia. In a truly trippy speech to students at Moscow State University in 1988, he hailed the transcendent possibilities of the new economy epitomized by Silicon Valley, predicting a future in which human innovation increasingly makes physical resources obsolete. Meanwhile, the market-friendly New Democrats embraced the tech industry so enthusiastically that they became known, to their chagrin, as Atari Democrats. The media turned Silicon Valley entrepreneurs into international celebrities with flattering profiles and cover storiesliving proof that the mix of technological innovation, risk taking, corporate social responsibility, and lack of regulation that defined Silicon Valley in the popular imagination was the template for unending growth and prosperity, even in an era of deindustrialization and globalization.

The near-universal celebration of Silicon Valley as an avatar of free-market capitalism in the 1980s helped ensure that the market would guide the Internets development in the 1990s, as it became the cutting-edge technology that promised to change everything. The Internet began as an academic resource, first as ARPANET, funded and overseen by the Department of Defense, and later as the National Science Foundations NSFNET. And while Al Gore didnt invent the Internet, he did spearhead the push to privatize it: As the Clinton administrations technology czar, he helped develop its landmark National Information Infrastructure (NII) plan, which emphasized the role of private industry and the importance of telecommunications deregulation in constructing Americas information superhighway. Not surprisingly, Gore would later do a little-known turn as a venture capitalist with the prestigious Valley firm Kleiner Perkins, becoming very wealthy in the process. In response to his NII plan, the advocacy group Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility warned of a possible corporate takeover of the Internet. An imaginative view of the risks of an NII designed without sufficient attention to public-interest needs can be found in the modern genre of dystopian fiction known as cyberpunk, they wrote. Cyberpunk novelists depict a world in which a handful of multinational corporations have seized control, not only of the physical world, but of the virtual world of cyberspace. Who can deny that todays commercial Internet has largely fulfilled this cyberpunk nightmare? Someone should ask Gore what he thinks.

Despite offering evidence to the contrary, OMara narrates her tale of Silicon Valleys rise as, ultimately, a success story. At the end of the book, we see it as the envy of other states around the country and other countries around the world, an exuberantly capitalist, slightly anarchic tech ecosystem that had evolved over several generations. Throughout the book, she highlights the many issues that have sparked increasing public consternation with Big Tech of late, from its lack of diversity to its stupendous concentration of wealth, but these are framed in the end as unfortunate side effects of the headlong rush to create a new and brilliant future. She hardly mentions the revelations by the National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden of the US governments chilling capacity to siphon users most intimate information from Silicon Valleys platforms and the voraciousness with which it has done so. Nor does she grapple with Uber, which built its multibillion-dollar leviathan on the backs of meagerly paid drivers. The fact that in order to carry out almost anything online we must subject ourselves to a hypercommodified hellscape of targeted advertising and algorithmic sorting does not appear to be a huge cause for concern. But these and many other aspects of our digital landscape have made me wonder if a technical complex born out of Cold War militarism and mainstreamed in a free-market frenzy might not be fundamentally always at odds with human flourishing. OMara suggests at the end of her book that Silicon Valleys flaws might be redeemed by a new, more enlightened, and more diverse generation of techies. But havent we heard this story before?

If there is a larger lesson to learn from The Code, it is that technology cannot be separated from the social and political contexts in which it is created. The major currents in society shape and guide the creation of a system that appears to spring from the minds of its inventors alone. Militarism and unbridled capitalism remain among the most powerful forces in the United States, and to my mind, there is no reason to believe that a new generation of techies might resist them any more effectively than the previous ones. The question of fixing Silicon Valley is inseparable from the question of fixing the system of postwar American capitalism, of which it is perhaps the purest expression. Some believe that the problems we see are bugs that might be fixed with a patch. Others think the code is so bad at its core that a radical rewrite is the only answer. Although The Code was written for people in the first group, it offers an important lesson for those of us in the second: Silicon Valley is as much a symptom as it is a cause of our current crisis. Resisting its bad influence on society will ultimately prove meaningless if we cannot also formulate a vision of a better worldone with a more humane relationship to technologyto counteract it. And, alas, there is no app for that.

Read more from the original source:

How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy - The Nation

I havebeen engaged in international relief and development fundraising for many years,and I have learned a lot about humanitarian aid and sustainability. Over theyears, several program interventions have touched both the emotional andlogical sides of my thinking and personal giving.

Two ofmy favorite programs are girls education and livelihood development. Knowledgeis a lifelong skill that brings empowerment, and education for girls results inhealthier families, less early-life pregnancies and increases in householdincomes. Progress in the last 20 years has been significant for girlsenrollment rates although there are still huge barriers caused by poverty,cultural norms and practices, limited infrastructure and safety issues.

Livelihoodprograms help families by teaching them new ways to support themselves andgenerate income by earning and saving money. One breakthrough practice is groupsavings which has helped poor people, particularly poor women, in thedeveloping world access safe places to keep their savings. What is amazing isthat the loan repayment rate for micro-loans in some of the poorest communitiesaround the world is over 90%.

Everyimportant social issue is impacted by literacy how to read and write, how todo basic math. Ensuring that girls and women have access to education andfinancial tools has broken the poverty cycle for millions of people. However,the international community has recently recognized that if mens attitudestowards women arent changed, then programs which focus on women will bemarginally successful in generating change.

That iswhy I am worried about boys. They dont seem to get as much development attentionas girls. And not just boys in poor communities, but boys around the world.

Below isa short list of things for parents and caregivers to do when raising boys,recognizing that boys are developmentally different from girls. Boys tend to bemore physical, boys are less communicative or verbal than girls, and boys tendto be more impulsive than girls. Helpingyour child understand and manage their feelings is a skill that will allow themto enjoy long-term happiness in life, regardless of their gender.

As amom, I believe that change starts at home. Please help your boys respect thefemales in their lives and develop the emotional intelligence needed for themto thrive.

Link:

Lets Not Forget the Boys - Thrive Global

The EY STEM Tribe platform engages girls on their mobile devices with an entertaining and gamified STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) experience and was developed working with Tribal Planet, a Silicon Valley-based company that develops innovative platforms and ecosystems to engage global citizens around social impact priorities. The app is available for free on Android and iOS platforms in Delhiand will be available inAtlantaandSeattlein the future.

The EY STEM Tribe platform features modules focused on science, such as climate change or space exploration; technology, such as artificial intelligence, 3D printing or blockchain; the future of work and skills that may be required for future, yet-to-be-defined jobs; and inspirational stories of women in STEM.

Rajiv Memani, Chairman and EY India Regional Managing Partner, says:As technology continues to shape the future, it has become imperative to provide equal opportunity for girls to pursue high-growth STEM careers. We are pleased to launch this global initiative inIndiathat will enable STEM learning for 6,000 girls across 45 private and government schools in the Delhi National Capital Region, which has the potential to scale rapidly, empowering young girls to learn STEM in a pragmatic and contemporary manner.

Girls choose topics based on their interests. To help incentivise learning, they earn points as they complete an activity, such as reading an article, interviewing members of their community, completing an experiment or watching a video.

As girls build their rewards wallet and see points accumulate, they redeem points in three ways: fun rewards include STEM-related products; important rewards include work shadowing opportunities or virtual mentoring sessions on topics such as building a CV, honing interviewing skills or understanding how millennials engage in the workplace; or lasting rewards, where they choose to donate their points to a non-profit cause of their choice related to empowerment of girls and women. The point donations are converted into a monetary donation by Tribal Planet to the non-profit. Girls parents and their schools teachers also have access to the platform.

Dan Higgins, EY Global Advisory Technology Consulting Leader, says:The EY STEM Tribe digital platform forms a part of the EY Women in Technology movement across the globe, aimed at supporting gender parity in the technology space and reinforcing the EY commitment to building a better working world. This platform will help girls to build a passion for STEM, learn new concepts and apply them in real life, and most importantly, will inspire even more girls across the world to embark on STEM careers. We purposely chose the themes and designed the platform to trigger real-life actions, where girls can reach out to their communities, individually or collectively, and make a greater impact on society.

The EY Women in Technology Program was formed to create an inclusive culture to successfully harness technologys potential to truly transform society. By educating women and girls, incubating their leadership potential and innovating new ways to empower a diverse workforce, the EY organisation supports the closing of the gender gap and nurturing an environment where everyone can become an architect of the transformative age. EY teams support women in tech through education by investing in educational products and programs that drive awareness and participation that encourage girls and women to enter and remain in STEM fields of study and careers.

Amanda Gethin, EY Global Talent Leader, Advisory, says:Technology jobs are increasing but so is the gender gap. As a result, we need to change the talent pipeline and address this gap, lighting the spark to help ensure that women have equal chances to enter, remain and thrive in the technology industry.

STEM activities on the platform are developed with leading educational institutions around the world. The EY STEM Tribe platform is fully aligned with theUN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) GoalsandOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) framework for transferable skills, such as analytical thinking or problem-solving.

In addition to earning rewards points, girls earn digital badges aligned with the UN SDGs to help them better understand the goals and empower them to have a personal impact related to the SDGs they care about the most. As they participate in SDG-related activities, their badge levels increase.

Visit link:

New app supporting the future women of STEM - SciTech Europa

Did you know that one out of five Egyptians is a girl below the age of 17? Today, the country comprises around 19 million girls and this number is expected to grow to 21 million Egyptian girls by 2030.

Why does this matter? Because in Egypt, girls are more vulnerable to illiteracy, more likely than their brothers to never attend school, to leave school early, or to skip school. And that matters for the future of Egypt.

Egypt has successfully prioritized gender equality within its Sustainable Development Strategy 2030 and the National Women Empowerment Strategy is paving the way for a more equitable society. There are some clear positive trends in terms of reducing inequalities between boys and girls, such as the educational attainment levels for males and females in the 15-19-year-old age group, which are much closer than they used to be for older generations. In fact, for the 15 to 19 age group, the proportion of girls who had completed secondary education in 2015 was higher than that of boys (10.7% and 9.2%, respectively).

There is ample evidence that points to one thing: sustained, targeted investments in adolescent girls not only improve the lives of the young girls, it also yields returns across generations, boosting economic growth and improving the wellbeing of children, families and communities.

Investing in girls today can accelerate economic growth and increase the skilled labor force of tomorrow: if young women were given the chance to be as economically active as young men, annual GDPs could grow up to 4.4 per cent faster. In Egypt, it is estimated that raising female employment rates to match those of males will result in a direct positive impact on GDP of 34%. And that is not all. Investing in girls also results in a more equitable society where the acceptance of violence will be reduced and the opportunities for stability and development will be increased.

Still, it is not an easy problem to fix and there are many challenges ahead of us.

Young girls are 5 times more likely than boys to be found simultaneously outside education and not in employment or training. They are less likely to use information communication technology. Almost 61% of girls aged 15-17 years have undergone circumcision and 11% of girls 15-19 years are either currently married or were married before, which is hampering their access to education, then their access to a job and ultimately, their contribution to the national wealth.

These injustices are not only a detriment to the lives of millions of girls and to the economy. It also harms the families and children of today and tomorrow and undermine development progress across the board, perpetuating cycles of poverty and disadvantage from one generation to the other.UNICEF, along with other actors, believes that gender equality is key to human development. In practice, this means that boys and girls need support to overcome the barriers they face because of their age and gender.

The goal for UNICEF is to support governments and other partners to address the vulnerabilities of every boy and girl so that they play on an equal field and get the targeted support they need to be empowered to fulfill their own potential. However, empowerment is not a service that can be provided to a person. Empowerment is a personal journey of transformation. Yet, this journey takes place in the context of families, communities and social institutions which facilitate or hinder the journey.

Thanks to the generous support of multiple donors including USAID and the European Union, UNICEF supports the journey of millions of Egyptian girls and boys through cross sectorial interventions targeting individuals, communities and social institutions.

Technical support is provided to the National Girls Empowerment Initiative, Dawwie, led by the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), to facilitate access to services, skills and opportunities to be heard.

UNICEF is supporting the Government of Egypt to strengthen child protection systems and national capacities to protect and respond to girls at risk and/or survivors of gender-based violence, including supporting the Child Help Line 16000, and the National Committee for the Eradication of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), co-chaired by the National Council for Women and the NCCM.

Because education is so important, UNICEF has also worked with the Ministry of Education and Technical Education on the Education 2.0 reform porgramme which builds on life skills and focuses on personal empowerment and respect for diversity for girls and boys.

UNICEF also support the inclusive education model which improves the access of disadvantaged children to quality education services. As well as implementing the community-based education model that is particularly useful for girls, who are more likely to never attend school because of the schools remoteness.

However, having a diploma is not always sufficient for satisfactory employment outcomes. Hence, UNICEF supports the Meshwary project, providing disadvantaged youth, especially girls with the employment and life skills and opportunities through training and internships. An initiative taking place with the Ministry of Youth and Sports (MoYS) and several private sector companies who are willing to support young girls in Egypt in securing a better future.

For girls living in ultra-poor families, empowerment includes an additional element of social protection. In that context, the Ministry of Social Solidaritys (MoSS) National Social Protection Programme, Takaful and Karama (TKP), has a positive impact on women and girls. MoSS receives UNICEF technical support on designing and implementing an integrated social protection program, which includes health and education conditionalities and a positive parenting programme to promote behaviors favoring equality and positive gender approach among TKP beneficiaries.

I strongly believe that with a population that includes over 19 million girls, Egypt has a unique opportunity to take to achieve its 2030 vision. UNICEF stands behind the government of Egypt, civil society, boys and girls with the ambition to positively contribute in making the opportunity a reality.

*The writer is UNICEF Representative in Egypt

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Invest in girls and you empower an entire nation - Opinion - Ahram Online

Mitchel Tigon. Photo courtesy of APACE.

Civic engagement is perhaps one of the last frontiers in the social landscape today that remains largely untouched by APIS. A certain number of groups around Seattle are working hard to change that. This summer, I had the pleasure to volunteer with APACE (Asian and Pacific Islanders Americans for Civic Empowerment) and truly dive into what it means to help a community become engaged and represented. To truly understand why encouraging political engagement from the API community is important to me, however, it is important to understand a little bit about my grandfather.

Born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, Eui Chung was lucky enough to receive admission to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to pursue a degree in economics. In order to fit in to his new country he picked up a smoking habit it would give him permanent respiratory issues later in his life. But this story isnt about him smoking to be American. This story is about examining what it truly means to be American. My grandfather never truly felt comfortable in America. Would the situation have been different if he was white? Quite possibly.

In 2019, it befuddles me to believe that our nation still divides its citizens into categories based on what they look like and where theyre ancestors are from. Akemi Matsumoto, a member of APACEvotes board of directors observed this on a personal level, stating that even as a third generation Asian American she was still told her English was very good.

This same bias has been observed not just in the daily lives of many API folks, such as Akemi, but at the state level as well. In fact, there are many other problems that the API community faces on a statewide level that must also be addressed. Without political representation at the state level, these issues can often be shot down or overlooked as non-important pieces of the agenda.

Needless to say, I am under the impression that civic engagement and empowerment changes lives. It enables folks to speak up about the issues that affect them on a personal level. Civic engagement is much more than that though, its about changing peoples lives and making America more inclusive than it was yesterday so that everyone can find a home here. Its about leaving the world changed for the better and after all, isnt that what it means to be American?

Read more from the original source:

Civic engagement and empowerment changes lives - The International Examiner

A Professional Reckoning

Im a workplace people-pleaser. I say that mostly with pride, as I can pretty much get along with anyone, and that has proven advantageous to my career, since I am often given opportunities to engage in collaborative endeavors that encourage my own creativity and contribute to my professional fulfillment. However, being a workplace people-pleaser also means that Ive sometimes had to learn the hard way when it comes to setting boundaries in my professional roles--particularly boundaries that are protective of my personal life. And Im not the only one. Recently, an article was released that noted that workers are miserable because the professional keeps creeping into the sanctity of the personal--specifically, Sunday night has become the new Monday morning. Ive experienced the drawbacks of this creep myself, and as such, Im here to offer two strategies for integrating nope and never again into a purposeful professional practice. Further, Ill show how employing these approaches in my own career has helped me to create a successful balance between the personal and professional, and even more explicitly, helped me see the benefit of encouraging their separation.

Protecting Personal and Professional Boundaries with the Power of Nope

After I graduated from my masters program in English, I accepted a position as an academic advisor within an engineering student services office. I know--this may seem like a strange segue. Maybe it was just having finished my thesis--a trial by fire that while rewarding, completely (even if only temporarily) annihilated my ability to analyze one more piece of literature (and thus prevented me from moving into a PhD program). Or maybe it was just time to try something else. I tend to be someone who (at least thus far) is good for about five years or so before I need to move on to the next creative challenge. In either case, my experience is further proof that we English majors are going to be a-okay , especially because we have diverse career options, and sometimes in unexpected fields.

Back then, I embraced my professional transition enthusiastically. And by embraced enthusiastically, I mean I made it annoyingly intense. I was always early to the office, checked my emails in the off-hours, and volunteered for extra activities and duties that might keep me away on the weekends or evenings. I made myself anxious about performance and productivity, and started to base my personal worth on my professional performance. Thus, it may come as no surprise to you, readers, that I burned out after a few years in this position, too. Dont get me wrong--because Im a type-A gal with high functioning anxiety, I still did well, and kept excelling (even finding enjoyment) while I was in the role, but I did so by prioritizing the professional through personal deprivation, continuously conflating two worlds that, at least for me, necessarily required some separation to ensure success (and my sanity!) in either.

As it always goes with hindsight, it was only because of this experience that I was finally able to gain some essential self-awareness about the positive potential of placing barriers between my professional and personal worlds. According to Rebecca Knight, saying no is not always a natural response for employees. Indeed, saying no is still a little scary to me, since I do take a lot of pride in my professional productivity, but Ive found a comfortable way to turn down, or even turn off, workplace overload. By engaging a little English major syntax-switch, and tapping into my Midwest roots, I have learned to make nope a part of my professional practice. I say nope to checking email after hours, I say nope to working on vacation or sick days, and I say nope to prioritizing the professional above the personal. I even workout on some of my lunch hours at our campus gym, a strategic physical redirection which requires me to walk away from my computer for an entire hour! Nope has thus become an enabling mantra for me; when I say nope, I am executing my professional empowerment.

Saying Never Again to Roles that Dont Recognize or Reward

Im the primary earner in my marriage. For some reason I cant stand the term breadwinner, but if we think about this in terms of winning the bread (lets not spend too much time parsing that out, as I think the metaphor will lose its effect), I would be confident in claiming I bring home at least four to five loaves a day, in comparison to my husband's single loaf. In this way, we are a modern couple, with him operating as the primary caretaker, and me operating as the primary professional. Though, because we are also the most modern of modern, even maybe the postmodern, he also works part-time remotely from home, and I do a large amount of the caretaking, too (second shift, anyone?). But, I digress. This article isn't about the dynamics of my marriage. Thats my next publication.

As the aforementioned breadwinner, I engage in a lot of part-time remote positions, and Im always on the lookout for the next best gig--both because Im someone who would rather be busy than bored, but also because Im still solidifying my ideal professional path. Not to worry--this doesnt negate the entire first part of this article; I schedule these part-time positions into my day in the same way that I do my full-time work. With them, Im still saying nope productively--just in a different capacity. Wait. Am I digressing again? Anyways, sometimes in my seemingly never-ending scramble for side-hustles that might lead me somewhere important, it can be all too easy to forget to factor in my own worth and value as part of the job-hunting process. In the rush to secure the next stable income, I can get too caught up in the act of acquiring, neglecting the importance of self-alignment when it comes to position fit and function. In addition, as someone who is continually haunted by an economically insecure childhood, the spectre of financial disaster--one that can feel impending, even when it is not at all inclement--can cloud my professional judgment. I get money for that? Of course I need to do it!

This spectre may explain why, recently, I found myself accepting a part-time remote teaching job that I had strong reservations about. A good majority of these reservations centered on the energy-output to fiscal-input ratios. Like many adjuncts, I would be drastically underpaid for eight weeks of rather intensive writing teaching. For this reason, I decided fairly early on that I would not be renewing my contract (or reserving my energy) for this endeavor. This was the first time in my entire professional career that I willingly turned down reliable remote work. Even as I type this out, I am feeling a small smattering of anxiety--did I just make a big mistake? Isnt some pay better than no pay? What if this was an essential stepping stone to my next big professional thing? What if we suddenly implode financially? But that anxiety soon dissipates into a feeling of accomplishment and positive professional self-actualization. I am worth more. I am valuable and deserve to be compensated for my skills and education. I am in control of my employment experiences, and if they are not empowering, they are not worth engaging. It is my goal to never again allow myself to forget these facts. Neither should you, reader-friends.

Acknowledging Boundaries and Remaining Aware of Workplace Worth

I realize that these might be considered the ramblings of a pretty privileged professional--you have had stable, reliable employment in higher ed and now you have too many jobs to choose from? Poor you! Let me be clear: there have been many times in my life where working was not an option (I started helping support my single-mother and younger brother when I was 15 and got my workers permit), and choice was a luxury I couldnt afford (living with my single-mother, I experienced eviction, homelessness, and continued financial distress), literally. But--I would argue that even when the stakes are dire, or maybe especially in those instances, acknowledging boundaries and maintaining an awareness of workplace worth are both key to professional self-advocacy and actualization. We are in charge of building the environment we want to engage as employees. Saying nope to unrealistic expectations and waving goodbye to positions that negate our potential, or purposefully take advantage of it, is an empowering move that will only enhance our future career endeavors. You can wield this power, readers. You should.

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Integrating Nope and Never Again | University of Venus - Inside Higher Ed

One volunteer-spirited couple from White Bear Township recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary by traveling to the West Virginia part of Appalachia.

Thomas and Kathryn Kromroy spent their anniversary providing community service and friendship to some of the most impoverished populations in the nation.

The Kromroys worked with students in the Southern Appalachian Labor School (SALS), an alternative high school focused on providing education and opportunities to disadvantaged youth in Fayette County, West Virginia. The Kromroys are part of a growing minority of Americans who choose to combine volunteerism with travel in the United States and abroad. This was their fourth trip together as volunteer tourists.

Kathy explained: I give what I can of myself and my skills and receive a great deal in return, including a more open mind and heart. She is a recently retired plant pathologist with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, who sometimes is able to use her professional skills but most often works with children of various ages in educational and enrichment programs.

During their service in West Virginia, Kathy encouraged and mentored students at Energy Express a morning summer camp for youth living in poverty, held at the Beards Fork School. Reading, writing, drawing and outdoor play were daily activities for the elementary school children at the camp, Kathy said. In the afternoons, she participated in a Read and Feed project. Free bag lunches, milk and books were delivered to children living in communities most in need. We spent an hour at each location reading with the children while they ate their lunch. Before leaving, each child could pick a book to bring home.

Tom, who was an independent specialty contractor for more than 30 years, helped a student work crew rebuild a small home in the nearby town of Oak Hill. YouthBuild programs in the U.S. and across the globe teach low-income and at-risk youth construction skills and work ethic while helping to build affordable housing and other assets, such as community centers and schools. Truly, the most important and powerful aspect of this volunteering is connecting with the people as individuals working side by side, learning and teaching, sharing our stories and our friendship, offered Tom.

Kathy and Tom said working hand in hand with local people provided an intense and personal perspective of the daily life the struggles, as well as the joys of life in West Virginia coal country. We prefer to work alongside local community members in everyday activities to experience more of a place; and, if possible, do something helpful in the process. We actually make friends with people and learn something about their lives, said Kathy. For those who want to connect more personally than say, the beach bartender, this is a great way to do it, Tom added.

The volunteer service program was organized through Minnesota-based Global Volunteers, a nonprofit, nonsectarian development assistance organization in special consultative status with the United Nations. Tom learned about Global Volunteers in 2006, and took their daughter, Anna, to Costa Rica on a service program.Following that life-enriching experience, Tom and Kathy served together in the Cook Islands, India and St. Lucia. This year they decided to try a U.S.-based program.

Global Volunteers has mobilized teams of short-term volunteers to assist this area of Appalachia since 1999.Fayette County, a federally designated empowerment zone, is one of the poorest counties in the U.S., where 22 percent of people live below the poverty line. Its also home of the famed New River, one of Americas National Heritage Rivers, and the New River Gorge Bridge, the longest steel arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere.

The local people we met and interacted with were friendly, mostly hardworking, and appreciative of our presence and interest in working with them. Family ties are strong, as is loyalty to friends and community, Kathy reported.

Volunteering with Global Volunteers differs from other travel in two major ways most of our time is scheduled, whether it is project work, team meetings or meals, and we are part of a team with other volunteers with whom we live, work and share some of the same goals, Tom explained.

Volunteers have time at the end of the workday and on weekends to enjoy the recreational, cultural and historical attractions that draw tourists to the area. Kathy added, Our experiences with Global Volunteers are now part of who we are as individuals and, in our case, as a married couple. Volunteering is one of our retirement goals, so it will help shape our annual calendar.

Global Volunteers invites people of all ages and backgrounds to serve in this unique way to give back and make a genuine difference by working with and learning from and about local people in their community.

The fixed tax-deductible service program contribution covers three meals each day, community hotel lodging, local transportation, medical and emergency evacuation insurance, a trained team leader and project materials. Airfare and visas are extra and can be tax-deductible.

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Couple celebrate 40th anniversary as volunteer tourists | News - The Sun

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --This fall,Money Experience personal finance programs are being offered to high school juniors and seniors at Canton High School through a partnership with Canton Co-Operative Bank. Money Experience is a simulator and curriculum that helps teach the next generation how their life choices can impact their finances and quality of life.

Canton Public Schools Wellness Coordinator Ryan Gordy will lead the implementation of the Money Experience program for two cohorts through Family & Child Studies and Life After Canton courses. These courses are offered to juniors and seniors at Canton High School.

"Part of a well-balanced approach to overall wellness includes establishing healthy habits when it comes to managing finances," Gordy said. "It's my goal to prepare these teens for life after high school by arming them with information they need to be healthy physically, emotionally, socially, financially and more."

Money Experience blends classroom-based curriculum, storytelling, and software simulation to teach students about the relationship between financial choices and quality of life. Students are exposed to choices such as those surrounding buying a car, living in a city versus a suburb, and going to a four-year college or technical school or directly joining the workforce. Within the simulator, they can directly see how their choices affect their near- and long-term lifestyle goals.

"We are excited to be a part of the financial empowerment of students at Canton High School," said Brilene Faherty, curriculum director at Money Experience. "Educating students early on the relationship between financial decisions, personal priorities, and quality of life helps to prepare them for a lifetime of better decisions."

Offering the program through a general wellness curriculum led by the wellness teachers allows for lessons to be conducted in a supportive, collaborative environment, where students are encouraged to lead the discussion rather than be lectured to. A second session will be offered in early 2020.

According to Vice-President & Senior Loan Officer Anabela Vargas, "At Canton Co-operative Bank, we're all about helping people be successful with money. So this truly innovative program seemed like something that would be perfect for us to be involved with. Students at Canton High School will have the opportunity to learn hands-on how the financial decisions people make affect their quality of life, no matter what path they plan to take. Learning money management skills is important for everyone."

About Money Experience Part of the family of companies founded by noted Boston tech entrepreneurs Jeet Singh and Joe Chung, Money Experience is an educational technology company addressing the need for personal finance education among young people and adults. Money Experience is headquartered at One Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. https://www.moneyexperience.com/

About Canton Co-Operative BankWe are a local, 100% independent Bank that has been Canton's hometown bank since 1891. Our approach to banking is simple: we combine old-fashioned personalized service with today's cutting edge technology. We get to know our customers and create a banking relationship unique to their needs. Our bank is rated 5-Star Superior according to Bauer Financial of Coral Gables, Florida, the nation's leading independent bank rating and research firm. For more information, visit https://cantoncoopbank.com/.

About Canton High School Canton High School educates approximately 980 students from grades 9-12. Our mission is to engage all students in learning by providing a rigorous and relevant curriculum in an environment of mutual respect and personal responsibility. Our dedicated faculty and staff focus on these values every day, as they challenge students to grow through fostering critical thinking and individual reflection, encouraging development of skills for lifelong learning, supporting students to reach their full potential, while providing a safe and secure environment. We pursue continuous improvement while honoring our strong educational legacy and traditions. We unite with families and the community to provide challenging educational experiences that promote the intellectual, physical, social and emotional potential of our students. For more information, visit http://www.cantonschools.org/chs/.

Media contact:Monica Higgins for Money Experiencemonica@hollywoodagency.com781-749-0077 x22

SOURCE Money Experience

https://www.moneyexperience.com/

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Money Experience Offers Financial Education Program To Canton High School Through Partnership With Canton Co-Operative Bank - PRNewswire

John Hope Bryant, an advocate of economic empowerment through Operation Hope, wants Democratic presidential candidates Sens.Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to know that he would not have been successful without capitalism.

"I think Bernie and Elizabeth mean well," Bryant said on CNBC on Monday, regarding their criticism of how capitalism has led to wealth inequality. However, he said, "We got to stop with the prosperity-or-pitchforks conversation."

Looking to put himself to the left of the bank-bashing and wealth-taxing Warren, Sanders told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, "Elizabeth, I think, as you know, has said that she is a capitalist through her bones. I'm not." Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist.

In capitalist economies, such as in the U.S., free markets fuel growth. Socialist models, and stricter communist societies, rely on government planning to drive the economy.

Capitalism is like democracy, it's a 'horrible' system except for every other system.

By telling his personal story in a "Squawk Box" interview, Bryant sought to illustrate how capitalism and the free enterprise system can work for everyone. Modeling Operation Hope around that premise, his organization aims to give low-income and moderate-income Americans a sense of "financial dignity and inclusion" though coaching and education.

Bryant said, "I grew up in Compton in South Central" a Los Angeles community with longstanding problems with gangs. Homicides there increased in 2018, a year that saw overall violent crime decline in the city.

"Without capitalism and a banker teaching me financial literacy at 9 years old," he said, "I wouldn't be who I am."

"I said, 'How did you get rich legally?' Bryant recalled, saying the banker "who was Caucasian by the way" and "didn't want to be there but the law, the CRA, forced him to be there, Community Reinvestment Act."

"When he came and taught me financial literacy, my life fundamentally changed," Bryant said. "I wouldn't be who I am" under the communist systems in China or Russia.

"Capitalism is like democracy, it's a 'horrible' system except for every other system," said Bryant, adding he does not want to say who he voted for in 2016 or who he likes in 2020. Operation Hope is a "big tent" for everyone in need, he said, adding he speaks out on "issues but not on a particular person."

Bryant, also a best-selling author and philanthropist, has served as an advisor to the last three presidents. He's also a founding member of Clinton Global Initiative. The nonprofit Operation Hope, which Bryant started in 1992 after the Los Angeles riots, is headquartered in Atlanta.

CNBC's Anjali Sundaram contributed to this report.

CNBC's before the bell news roundup

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Operation Hope founder: 'I grew up in Compton' without capitalism, 'I wouldn't be who I am' - CNBC

Owner of Beauty Canvas, Aurelia Rangata, believes in sharing her skills to empower women and that makeup can build one's confidence.

POLOKWANE Known for her signature colourful eye-shadow, founder and owner of Beauty Canvas, Aurelia Rangata (24) is a real definition of beauty with brains. When she studied a B.Comm accounting course at the University of Limpopo, this beauty thought to start her own business to make some extra money, but also managed to complete her degree in 2017.

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She realised how she empowered other women to not only love themselves, but to also turn the knowledge she gives them into a way of generating income for themselves. When I started doing makeup, it was just a way to make an extra income, until I started teaching people how to apply make-up on themselves in 2017. From there I started to host professional makeup classes for ladies that love applying make-up, she said.

Bred and born in Polokwane, Aurelia resides in Flora Park and enjoys giving back her make-up skills to the community.

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She attended Flora Park Comprehensive Primary School and Horskool Noorderland where she completed matric in 2013. She started her business in 2016 and was a part-time make-up, while still studying. After completing a degree, she took an online make-up course and then became a full-time make-up artist.

My passion in the beauty industry started while I did my second year in 2015. I used to only do make-up on myself, then I noticed people loved my make-up and wanted me to be their make-up artist for their special occasions. I grabbed the opportunity with both hands, she added.

She shared that she does not know where shed be without Gods guidance in juggling all her work as well as her personal life. I always have support from the people I hold close to my heart and my family. With them, I feel I am never unable to overcome challenges and they are always there to help. It helps to be self-disciplined and not procrastinate, she added.

She said opportunities in the beauty industry are endless. You need to find where you blossom the most and if there is not an opportunity, create one for yourself.

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Beauty and empowerment go hand-in-hand for Aurelia - Review