Tag Archives: google.org

Helping Australian teens hone media literacy skills

On April 28, 1996 at the historical Port Arthur site in Tasmania, 35 people were tragically killed. Alannah and Madeline Mikac, aged six and three, along with their mother, died that day. Because of this terrible act of violence, Alannah and Madeline's father, Walter Mikac AM, and a small group of volunteers, created the Alannah & Madeline Foundation with the belief that all children should have a safe and happy childhood. For more than 20 years, the Alannah & Madeline Foundation has worked to safeguard every child’s basic right to live free from violence and serves as a beacon of hope for a better, safer world. 

As the dangers children face today become increasingly complex, the Foundation is adapting and responding to modern challenges. To help young people become less susceptible to online harms like disinformation and hate speech, the organization is focusing on helping teens better understand their relationships with media.

In Australia, as in the rest of the world, it’s more crucial than ever to help young people distinguish fact from fiction online. Research by Queensland University of Technology and Western Sydney University shows that many teenagers regularly consume news media, but their trust in the stories provided by news organizations has fallen significantly since 2017. More than half of young Australians pay little or no attention to the source of news stories found online, and only one third agree that they can tell “fake news” from real news. Teachers believe it's important to teach media literacy, but many feel constrained by barriers like a strict curriculum and a lack of confidence about the topic. 

With support from Google.org, the Foundation set its sights on tackling this issue and worked with an advisory group of academics, industry experts and educators to develop Media Literacy Lab, a first-of-its-kind education resource for teachers and students aged 12-16. This e-learning platform helps Australia’s youth become media-savvy digital citizens, questioning what they see, practicing smart and safe online behaviors and seeking help when needed. 

A video from the foundation announcing their media literacy lab.

The Lab aims to both increase the media literacy of young Australians and support teachers to build their confidence in teaching the subject. Media Literacy Lab has two portals: one for teachers to administer the Lab and engage in professional learning, and one for students to experience narrative-based learning. In the Teacher Portal, educators can easily facilitate lessons, access resources and view real-time student reports. Media Literacy Lab’s gamified learning modules, including new and carefully curated content from our partners, sit in the Student Portal. Media Literacy Lab empowers students to strengthen their ethical understanding and critical thinking skills, crucial to navigate and thrive in today’s digital ecosystem.  

In its first month, we saw almost 200 Australian schools register, with nearly 270 educators facilitating the Lab and more than 100 users from other non-school settings like libraries and universities—a huge achievement amid a global pandemic. 

As we shifted to remote work in March as a result of COVID-19, we increasingly used Google for Nonprofits tools for organization and collaboration. Google Drive ensures our documents are protected, creating an easy way to invite the right people to contribute during product development. We simultaneously used Google Docs and Sheets for project management and content design documentation. The ability to collaboratively work with Google products was useful to keep project momentum. 

The Foundation recently extended the period to register and use Media Literacy Lab free-of-charge until the end of 2021. Next year, we will deliver a national series of professional learning events for teachers with expert guests and hold student workshops in critical media production. We will continue to support national media literacy research, partnerships, advocacy campaigns and policy development. With additional funding, we also plan to build new modules for upper primary students.

Media Literacy Lab forms part of the Foundation’s crucial work in transforming how society thinks about–and responds to–the barriers to every child’s basic right to safety. We believe explicitly teaching young people media literacy can lead to strengthened digital civic engagement and contribute to safer civil discourse, benefiting children across Australia. 

Investing in the next generation of NY tech talent

New York City is my home. I’m a proud graduate and parent of three children in the New York City public school system, and I chose to stay and build my career here. Twelve years ago, after a career on Wall Street, I joined Google and currently serve as Chief Information Officer (CIO) and co-site lead for Google’s growing New York campus. Like me, Google has been fortunate to call New York home and is committed to connecting students, teachers and job seekers to the local tech economy. 


Today, as part of Google’s commitment to the continued growth of our city’s current and future tech workforce, Google.org is announcing $3.5 million in grants to three local organizations: Pursuit, ExpandEd Schools and CS4All. 


Supporting organizations like these is especially important as the COVID-19 pandemic has unearthed unsettling truths about equity and access to resources, especially in underserved communities of color. As we navigate the short and long term effects of the pandemic, we must come together to create equitable solutions that meet the needs of the moment and provide a strong foundation for the future. This starts by making sure every New Yorker has access to a quality education and the training and resources needed for in-demand jobs—these grantees are working to make this possible. 


Pursuit: Connecting New Yorkers to careers in tech 

Pursuit creates economic opportunity for adults from low-income communities by training them to code and build careers in technology. Their fellows come from groups that are historically underrepresented in tech and are made up of majority Black or Latino people, women, immigrants and those without Bachelor’s degrees. Upon completing the fellowship, they go on to work at top tech companies, increasing their salaries from $18,000 to $85,000 on average. With $2 million in funding from Google.org, Pursuit will build on its work to remove systemic barriers preventing low-income communities from accessing careers in technology and connect 10,000 New Yorkers with jobs in the tech industry. 

 

ExpandEd Schools: Supporting after-school educators  

ExpandEdsupports a strong after-school system that enables students to thrive and educators to grow. Google.org's $1 million investment in ExpandED Pathways Fellowship Computer Science (CS) track will empower aspiring teachers of color from underserved communities to fulfill their professional goals through a 10-month after-school teaching practicum. Ultimately, this will help increase the number of diverse CS educators in New York City and nationwide.


CS4All: Sustaining Computer Science education in public schools

Computer Science for All (CS4All) began in 2015 as an innovative public-private partnership with the NYC Department of Education to train 5,000 teachers and bring equitable CS education to all 1.1 million public school students in NYC by 2025. As the program hits its halfway point, Google.org is providing $500,000 to fund their CS Leads program facilitated by the Fund for Public Schools. This will help provide more than 200 teachers with a comprehensive leadership training program focused on equity in CS education, peer coaching and in-school leadership.


The creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of New Yorkers is one of the reasons Google calls this city home. And I’m proud that the work we do helps nurture that spirit. Whether it’s standing alongside 26 CEOs from the largest employers in New York to launch the New York Jobs CEO Council with the goal of hiring 100,000 traditionally underserved New Yorkers by 2030, committing to additional hiring efforts focused on Black+ talent in NY or developing alternative pathways into the workforce, we believe tech should be for everyone and we’re committed to making that a reality. 


Building disaster resilient cities with Team Rubicon

Editor's note: Jake Wood is the CEO of Team Rubicon, a Google.org grantee. Today, he talks about how their preparedness efforts help communities across the U.S. respond to natural disasters. 

The idea for Team Rubicon came after I finished my two tours with the Marine Corps in 2010. The devastation from the Haiti earthquake was unfolding, and I couldn't just stand idly by and watch. I realized there was an untapped resource in veterans like myself. Our collective knowledge could help communities recover from tornadoes, fires, floods and hurricanes like the one Haiti was reeling from. 

I co-founded Team Rubicon with a vision to create a team of volunteer military veterans and first responders that could help bring immediate relief to marginalized communities recovering from disasters. Lately, we’ve been building on that vision and thinking about how we can better help communities prepare before a crisis happens.To that end, we started the Resilient Cities Initiative, which focuses on recruiting, organizing, and training thousands of veterans and volunteers across 300 metropolitan areas to respond to disasters at a local level. And thanks to Google.org’s $1 million grant last year, we were able to start expandingour Resilient Cities Initiative and scale necessary structures to train a localized and skilled volunteer base.  

We expected this project to increase the resilience of cities. But 2020 gave us the opportunity to prove our hypothesis in ways we never imagined. While some had estimated this would be a record-breaking year for natural disasters, no one predicted that a pandemic would compound these crises. 

This spring, Team Rubicon volunteers saw firsthand how the spread of COVID-19 destabilized communities. With restrictions on long-distance travel, local volunteers became the only solution for direct service organizations. Simultaneously, the disaster season raged on. There were tornados and derechos in the Midwest, Hurricanes Laura, Sally, and Delta in the Southeast, and fires in the West—leaving communities across the country struggling with where to start the recovery process. Thanks to support from Google, when these disasters hit during the pandemic, we already had volunteers who lived in those communities and were able to quickly and safely go out and help. 

  • Team Rubicon volunteers deliver essentials to a community member affected by COVID-19 in Boulder, CO.

    Team Rubicon volunteers deliver essentials to a community member affected by COVID-19 in Boulder, CO. Photo credit: Team Rubicon/LE

  • Team Rubicon volunteers in a COVID-19 testing site in Charlotte, NC.

    Team Rubicon volunteers work in a COVID-19 testing site in Charlotte, NC. Photo credit: Team Rubicon/HART

  • A volunteer prepares for a food bank to assist those affected by COVID-19 by unloading boxes in Englewood, CO.

    A volunteer preapres for a food bank to assist those affected by COVID-19 by unloading boxes in Englewood, CO. Photo credit: Team Rubicon/LE

To date, we’ve managed hundreds of requests for assistance with food, personal protective equipment (PPE distribution), COVID-19 testing, storm response, and other efforts critical in alleviating the strain on local resources. Thousands of our volunteers have deployed to missions right within the communities they live in and have performed over 9,000 acts of service. Additionally, our food support operations have served more than 2.7 million meals and our volunteers have driven 122 thousand miles (equivalent to driving around the earth four times) to deliver 48 million pounds of food to the doorsteps of vulnerable residents across hundreds of cities. 

While Google.org's support helped fuel the success of this program, to us it was more than just funding. Google.org pushed us to think bigger, be bolder and gain the needed lessons to confront what we can expect to face for the foreseeable future.

In 2010 we set out with a big dream: to transform disaster response. We threw out the playbook and recruited a generation of people who’d served in some of the world’s most complex environments. Today, during a year of compounding crises, communities are turning to veterans to lead them through.  That’s something we can all be proud of.

An update on our efforts to help Americans navigate COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges and emphasized how important it is for each of us to do our part to help find solutions. I’m sharing an update here on how Google is contributing to keep people safe and helping to get American businesses back up and running.

Contributing to economic recovery efforts

As I’ve written earlier, to help small businesses gain easier access to badly-needed capital, we founded the $170 million Grow with Google Small Business Fund alongside $10 million in Google.org grants, with an aim to help the most underserved small businesses, particularly those owned by women and minorities. In collaboration with Opportunity Finance Network, more than $53 million dollars of loans and Google.org grants have been allocated to community partners who are focused on serving rural, women, Black, Latino and Native borrowers, which helps American communities start to get back on their feet. Tires by Papi and Bailiwick Clothing Company are two such examples.


Of course, our greatest contribution continues to be developing products to help people stay informed, adapt and get through this pandemic. 

According to the Connected Commerce Council, nearly one in three small business owners report that without digital tools they would close all or parts of their business. To help small businesses, we rolled out many new, free product features earlier this year, so that they can inform their customers about things like takeout, delivery, no-contact delivery, or curbside pickup. Today, people can now find this information on Search and Maps for more than 2 million restaurants and retailers in the U.S.


Using Search and Maps, you can find information about businesses.

We’ve used Google’s Duplex technology to make calls to businesses and confirm things like temporary closures. This has enabled us to make 3 million updates to business information globally, which have been seen by people over 20 billion times in Search and Maps. 


To help people searching for jobs, we have stepped up to help in many ways. We added new relevant features in the U.S. like showing jobs that can be done remotely. Google Cloud has partnered with different states to help jobseekers: we assisted Rhode Island’s Virtual Career Center, a new platform that  connects thousands of jobseekers with jobs and employment services; worked with the State of Illinois to develop a 24/7 Virtual Intelligent Agent on the IDES website; developed a chatbot, in partnership with the New Jersey Office of Innovation to provide real-time answers to the 20 most popular unemployment questions. These are just some of the examples. 


We also transformed our free Grow with Google training to virtual formats and have already trained more than 1 million Americans on digital skills this year. The Google IT Support Professional Certificate—which takes beginner learners to entry-level jobs ready in under six months—has become the most popular certificate on Coursera during COVID-19.

Grow with Google digital skills training

Providing trusted information

Questions related to the pandemic are more searched than sports or music (and even elections) in every state. 

Top coronavirus related searches in the U.S. this month:

  1. Coronavirus symptoms

  2. Coronavirus update

  3. Coronavirus vaccine

Across the U.S. people are searching on Google to stay informed and adapt. In 47 states, the top coronavirus-related question during the last six months has been “How many cases of coronavirus in [my state].” Search interest for “online courses” reached an all-time high in April this year, as did searches for “unemployment,”compared to search trends over the last 15 years. 


During this time, we’ve also seen people seek out information to help them navigate their daily lives. For example, since the pandemic began, searches for “curbside pickup” have increased 13-fold compared to this time last year, while searches for “contact tracing” spiked 1,000 percent  in April and then reached an all-time high in May. 


In March, we launched Search Knowledge Panels so when people search for information related to COVID-19, they immediately see local guidance, information about symptoms, prevention and treatments. We’ve committed $250 million in Ad Grants to help government agencies provide critical information related to COVID-19. As of today we’ve served more than 100 million PSAs from local public health agencies, which have been seen by tens of millions of people across the U.S.


We also launched the Journalism Emergency Relief Fund to provide emergency funding for small and medium sized news organizations covering the pandemic. To date, we’ve distributed $9 million to U.S. newsrooms across all 50 states. 

Helping people make safe choices 

To help people make informed decisions about where to go, the COVID layer in Google Maps shows critical information about new cases in an area and how they’re trending. As of this month, our COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, which are used by public health agencies and researchers around the globe, have been downloaded more than 16 million times. 

In May, we partnered with Apple to launch the Exposure Notifications System (ENS) and made it available to public health authorities around the world in their fight against COVID-19. Designed specifically and carefully to protect users’ privacy while helping public health authorities and governments manage countries’ re-opening, today 13 states and U.S. territories have built apps based on this ENS technology.

In a short time, COVID-19 has changed how people live their lives. We’ll continue to update our products and roll out initiatives to help people and American businesses find trusted information, adapt and manage economic uncertainty.  

Source: Google LatLong


This researcher is tracking COVID with help from Google

A research team at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has been working to make epidemiological forecasting as universal as weather forecasting. When COVID hit, they launched COVIDcast to develop data monitoring and forecasting resources that can help public health officials, researchers, and the public make informed decisions. 

Last month, CMU received $1 million from Google.org and a team of thirteen Google.org Fellows to work pro bono for six months to help continue building out COVIDcast. This was part of Google.org’s $100 million commitment to COVID relief. 

We caught up with Ryan Tibshirani, a research lead at CMU, to learn more about the project and what the Google.org fellows will work on. 

Tell us a little bit about yourself.  

I'm a faculty member at CMU, jointly appointed in Statistics and Machine Learning, and I’m very interested in epidemiological forecasting and tracking. In 2012, I cofounded Delphi centered on this topic with Roni Rosenfeld, Professor and Head of Machine Learning at CMU.  

What do you focus on most these days?

Since the pandemic began I’ve  spent all of my time on COVID-19 research. Delphi has quadrupled the number of researchers in just eight months and we’re laser-focused on COVID. Leading Delphi's pandemic response effort has been both a challenge—I've never done anything like this before—and a joy—the group is full of amazing people. 

How did you come up with the idea for COVIDcast? 

To back up just a bit: Roni and I formed Delphi in 2012 with the goal to develop the theory and practice of epidemiological forecasting, primarily for seasonal influenza in the U.S. We want this technology to become as universally accepted and useful as today’s weather forecasting. 

Our forecasting system has been a top performer at the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) annual forecasting challenges, and last year Delphi Group was named one of the two Centers of Excellence for Influenza Forecasting. I like to think of COVIDcast as a replica of what we’ve done for the flu but better and faster.

Break it down for us, what is COVIDcast?

The COVIDcast project is about building and providing an ecosystem for COVID-19 tracking and forecasting. Our aim is to support informed decision-making at federal, state, and local levels of government, in the healthcare sector, and beyond. 

The project has many parts: 

  • Unique relationships with tech and healthcare partners that give us access to data with different views of pandemic activity in the U.S;

  • Code and infrastructure to build new, geographically-detailed, continuously-updated COVID-19 indicators;

  • A historical database of all indicators, including revision tracking;

  • A public API that serves new indicators daily, along with interactive maps and graphics to display them;

  • And lastly, modeling work that builds on the indicators to improve nowcasting and forecasting the spread of COVID-19.

A key element of COVIDcast is that we make all of our work as open and accessible as possible to other researchers and the public to help amplify its impact. We share both our data and a range of software tools—from data processing and visualization to sophisticated statistical tools. 

How will the Google.org funding and fellowship help?

This support will help Delphi expand our efforts to provide a geographically-detailed view of various aspects of the pandemic and to develop an early warning system for health officials, for example, when the number of cases in a locale are expected to rise. There will be more pandemics and epidemics after COVID-19. We want to be prepared, and we believe Delphi's work can help us do that. 

The Google.org Fellowship just kicked off. What are you most excited about?  

Everything! We're excited to embed all the Google.org Fellows—engineers, user experience designers and researchers, program and product managers—into our workstreams. We hope they can help accelerate our progress and introduce us to leading industry product and software development techniques. Each and every one of the fellows has special skills that will be put to good use. We can't wait to see what we can achieve, together. 

More broadly, what role does the tech sector play in COVID-19 response efforts? 

An enormous role. The tech sector is uniquely positioned to provide data and platforms that even governments can't provide. It also has the skills and experience to quickly assemble large-scale systems, in real time. Google has been extraordinarily helpful to us on all of these fronts.

How The Trevor Project continues to support LGBTQ youth

This September, National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month feels different. Over the past nine months, LGBTQ youth have experienced unique challenges in relation to COVID-19.The pandemic has amplified existing mental health disparities and created new problems that have impacted the daily lives of many LGBTQ youth. 

As the world's largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ young people, The Trevor Project has seen the volume of youth reaching out to our crisis services for support increase significantly, at times double our pre-COVID volume. We’ve heard from a great number of youth who no longer have access to their usual support systems, including many who have been forced to confine in unsupportive home environments. The unprecedented crisis of 2020 has reaffirmed the need for increased mental health support for LGBTQ youth, particularly as we’ve ventured into a more virtual world. 

From transitioning our physical call center operations to be fully remote to publishing aresource to help LGBTQ youth explore conversations around the intersection of their racial and LGBTQ identities—The Trevor Project has remained open and responsive to the needs of the young people we serve despite the onslaught of challenges. Technological advancement has been essential as Trevor adapts to meet this moment. In particular, artificial intelligence (AI) is a crucial component for scaling our services to support the increase of youth reaching out. 

IMG_7791.jpg

Kendra Gaunt joined The Trevor Project nine months ago as a Data and AI product owner.  

I joined The Trevor Project as the Data and AI product owner nine months ago, and started working alongside a team of 11 Google.org Fellows who were doing six months of full-time pro bono work with us. With the support of $2.7 million in Google.org grant funding and two teams of pro bono Google.org Fellows, we have introduced new AI applications to scale our impact. We built an AI system that helps us identify which LGBTQ individuals reaching out to us for support are at the highest risk of suicide so that we can quickly connect them to counselors who are ready to help at that moment. And now, we’re leveraging AI to ensure the safety of our TrevorSpace forums through auto-moderation, and to train more volunteer counselors through a conversation simulator.  It’s projects like these that have enabled The Trevor Project to directly serve more than 150,000 crisis contacts from LGBTQ youth in the past year. 

And we’re just getting started. With the guidance of best practices from Google, we’re building an in-house AI team. As we grow and develop a long-term product strategy around our use of data and AI, we acknowledge our responsibility to create a values-based system to guide how we use and develop AI. By applying learnings from Google's Responsible Innovation team, we created a set of principles to ensure that we develop models that avoid reinforcing unfair bias that impacts people based on their ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and the intersection of these identities. 

I joined The Trevor Project because it’s an organization driven by values, and our use of technology reflects this. I noticed an opportunity to leverage my years of experience and partner with people who are committed to employing technology for social good. Through the thoughtful and ethical use of AI, we can overcome obstacles of scale and complexity as we pursue our mission to end suicide among LGBTQ youth.

To learn more about National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and the work The Trevor Project is doing, check out ourCARE campaign. This includes actionable steps anyone can take to support their community and prevent suicide, as well as technological innovations that help us serve more young people, faster.

If you or someone you know needs help or support, contact The Trevor Project's TrevorLifeline 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386. Counseling is also available 24/7 via chat every day at TheTrevorProject.org/help or by texting 678-678.

The shift to distance learning in Asia Pacific

When I was growing up in Serbia, there was only one small school in my village, and we often shared a classroom with the grade above us. The teacher would focus on my classmates and me for a couple of minutes, before turning his attention to the older students on the other side of the room. I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been—but somehow, he made it work, kept our classes fun and engaging, and gave us all the best possible education.


I’ve thought about that experience a lot over the past few months, seeing how teachers and students around the world have struggled to keep learning going during the COVID-19 pandemic. 


Technology has made it easier to teach online—but not all communities have the same access to digital tools, or the same ability to use them. It’s one of the main reasons we launched Google.org’s $10 million Distance Learning Fund: an initiative to help educators and students get the resources they need, especially in underserved communities. 


In Asia Pacific, we’ve made a $1 million grant to INCO, a nonprofit that’s supporting local education organizations in Indonesia, Hong Kong, China and the Philippines. I recently spoke to some of the teachers and students these organizations have helped as they adapt to a new way of learning.  

Arnold Chan, politics teacher at Maximo Estrella Senior High School, Philippines 

I've been a public school teacher for four years now, and I've always found joy in teaching, especially when I interact with my students in class. When the pandemic hit the Philippines and classes migrated online, I was worried about whether I could efficiently and effectively deliver quality education remotely. I found myself becoming a student again, learning how to use online tools and design engaging learning materials through the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication. Since attending a few training sessions, I'm now confident that I can provide the same quality of education online as I could in face-to-face classes.

Arnold Chan

Asih Nurani, English teacher at Regina Pacis Bogor Junior High School, Indonesia

I may have been a teacher for the last nine years, but I never once imagined running an online class. I knew I had to find new ways to engage my students. I also felt responsible for helping other teachers, especially the senior ones who weren't familiar with distance teaching tools. Thanks to the support and materials from INCO’s partner, Semua Murid Semua Guru, I was able to team up with some of my colleagues to develop additional training materials and teaching techniques to help other teachers cope with this transition!

Asih Nurani

Ka Ka (12 years old), student in Hong Kong 

During the class suspension period, I was really affected by the prolonged schooling disruption and I fell behind in English and Mathematics. Through the Changing Young Lives Foundation (CYLF)'s digital learning platform, I was able to catch up with classes I missed since March and received extra learning opportunities for different subjects by attending online classes daily. I am now feeling more confident about entering my secondary schooling in the new school year, and looking forward to joining more online tutorial classes!

Ka Ka

Mirah (18 years old), student in Kintamani-Bali, Indonesia 

Distance learning was new to me, and I was also worried I could not study online as it required me to buy an internet package regularly, which my parents are unable to afford. But I am grateful to have received support from Putera Sampoerna Foundation-School Development Outreach, which covered my internet costs and provided me with my very own laptop. When I started attending my online classes, I realized how fun it was! We are currently doing project-based learning online, which allows us to do hands-on prototyping with our projects and collaborate with our classmates.

Mirah

I’m humbled and inspired by these educators and students—their adaptability, their positive attitude, and their determination to keep teaching and learning no matter what. I’m looking forward to continuing Google.org’s support of nonprofits like INCO, as they and their partners make learning more accessible in communities throughout Asia Pacific.  

Maab Ibrahim works each day to fight for racial justice

In her role at Google, Maab Ibrahim works to guide the company on the path toward creating a more just and equitable future. And she draws from her personal experience to guide her work.


Growing up in Richmond, Virginia, Maab reckoned with the city’s painful history and observed everyday injustices like racism and economic inequality. As the child of Black immigrants, she noticed racial inequity in her own backyard as her family and community navigated structural barriers. Today, as a grant portfolio manager for Google.org, Maab has spent the last four years working alongside nonprofit leaders to find solutions to address racial injustice—from centering community-led voices in the movement to using data to identify and analyze bias in the criminal justice system. 

How do you describe your job at a dinner party?

I’m a philanthropic portfolio manager for Google.org. My core focus is to provide support, such as grant funding and technical expertise, to nonprofits that are working to advance racial justice across a number of issue areas, including criminal justice reform, education, and economic opportunity. 

What inspired you to pursue racial justice work?

I draw a lot of inspiration for this work from Black and Latino communities where I grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Virginia has a deep and pained racial history. Our state welcomed the very first slave ships to America, housed the Confederacy, and was a battleground for historic civil rights cases such as Loving v. Virginia. As I learned about this history, I couldn’t help but notice the racial disparities that continue to persist in Black and Brown neighborhoods. Children in our classrooms were over-suspended and over-punished. Parents were attempting to be present in their kids’ educations, while overcoming language barriers or managing two or three jobs. Many families had a loved one behind bars due to biased policing and harsh sentencing.  

Over the years, I’ve learned strategies and tools, but my personal experience continues to deeply influence my approach to the work. As one of very few black women in philanthropy, I believe in trusting and supporting community leaders who are most proximate to racial injustice.

As one of very few black women in philanthropy, I believe in trusting and supporting community leaders who are most proximate to racial injustice.

Can you describe Google.org’s approach to racial justice grantmaking and racial justice work? 

We've primarily directed our grant funding to criminal justice work over the last five years, making more than $44 million in grants and giving more than 15,000 hours in pro bono services to nonprofits working in that space. Google has a deep appreciation for data science; it's a part of our DNA. So our largest grants in this space have been to nonprofits working to close data gaps across the criminal justice system. For example, we’re funding work to identify bias in policing practices and jail population trends in rural communities. 

Alongside the criminal justice data work, we’re also funding community-led solutions. We take to heart the importance of centering on the dignity of marginalized communities and affirming the flourishing of Black and Brown lives. What that means in practice is funding organizations that are led by and advocating on behalf of Black or Latino communities, such as the Black Lives Matter Movement.

What have been some of the biggest challenges this year?

We saw the most recent racial justice uprising happen in the wake of COVID-19. People from all kinds of communities came out on the streets in response to the death of George Floyd and demanded change in our justice system. As a result, reforms kicked off across cities in America. But behind the mobilization, the Black community continues to feel the loss of many loved ones due to COVID-19. The pandemic has exasperated systemic inequities in healthcare and in our economic system that leave Black communities most vulnerable. 

From the grantee perspective, that means organizations and their staff are dealing with two crises at one time. It's been very challenging but I’m proud that we’re able to support groups like The Satcher Health Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine that are working to address these disparities.

What keeps you motivated and positive? 

Racial justice work, at its core, requires a necessary discomfort that drives progress forward. But at this moment, I’m feeling energized by the catalytic shift the U.S. is experiencing in addressing systemic anti-Black racism. I am deeply inspired by the visionary leaders that drive community-led solutions. For me, it's a great honor to be in solidarity with their work.

What advice do you have for women starting out in their career? 

When you are early in your career, it can feel like there’s so much to learn from the people around you. I’d ask young women to consider just how much the world has to learn from them, too. Young people are the driving force behind social movements, the first adopters of new technologies and more willing to imagine the world differently. That perspective is invaluable to innovation and progress.

I’d ask young women to consider just how much the world has to learn from them, too.

How we’re helping military spouses find job success

Having grown up with a Marine veteran father, and then marrying a commissioned Air Force officer, I know firsthand the challenges that spouses and families face when it comes to military life. One month before my wedding, I learned that my partner would be relocating for his role in the military. Though my career was flourishing, I needed to quickly find a new role, in a new office, with a completely different culture. Though it all worked out in the end, my spouse and I had to live apart for some time, making the first few months of our marriage a little more challenging than your typical newlywed experience. 


These days, I’m proud to work at Google, a company that supports transitioning service members, veterans, and military spouses in meaningful ways every day, whether they are looking to grow their skills, find a job, or start a business. One of those ways is with Google committing to offering paid leave benefits up to 5 days to military spouses and domestic partners experiencing changes of location due to military orders or those preparing for a deployment or activation. We recently conducted research surveying more than 1,500 military spouses to learn more about the military spouse experience. Below are some of our key learnings from the survey, which was conducted in partnership with Hiring our Heroes, a nationwide initiative of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, with the support of a Google.org grant. As I read through this report, I related to so much of what these spouses said, and saw their stories reflected in my own. 


COVID-19 has changed a lot about the way we work, in a very short period of time. And even though the landscape of work has changed, this research remains relevant as so many Americans are looking to adjust to the new normal of remote work, while still others are seeking out opportunities to up-skill, re-skill or start new businesses. 


Many military spouses face challenges when looking for work, but we always get creative to make career and business choices that work for us and our families. Some want to open their own businesses, in an attempt to maximize flexibility and portability. While 76 percent of military spouses indicated that they were interested in starting a business, fewer had actually made the leap into business ownership.

Those who had already started their own businesses often did so with an initial investment of less than $1,000, but felt that aside from raising capital, they lacked skills in marketing and social media to maximize their business potential. 


To help military spouses learn the skills they need to help their businesses succeed, we’ve worked with Hiring our Heroes to curate a series of custom-made minicourses in the Primer app for military spouses, on topics like running a business and maximizing productivity while maintaining work-life balance. These new minicourses build on a series Grow with Google launched last year. 


Whether starting a business, finding a new position or exploring training and education opportunities, military spouses said they often felt overwhelmed and unsure of how to get started. While the outpouring of support for the military spouse community has been incredibly positive, navigating the vast array of government, nonprofit and corporate programs designed to support our community  sometimes creates anxiety and confusion.


That’s why Google is continuing our work with Hiring our Heroes by launching the MilSpouse Career Roadmap. This interactive hub combines a variety of tools and resources that support military spouses in building careers that move with them, like Google’s remote work search feature, and education and employment resources provided by the Department of Defense’s Spouse Education and Career Opportunities office.  


More than 80 percent of survey respondents said they would pursue additional training and education to build careers that were portable. To help, we’ve made Google.org grants to support scholarships through Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families to make Google’s IT Professional Certificate available to military spouses to get them the skills they need to find work in a fast-growing field. 


Audri Vergara, a mom who left her career to become a stay-at-home parent, is one heartening example from the research. Though working at home and taking care of her son kept Audri busy, she decided to complete the Google IT Professional Certificate through the Institute for Veterans and Military Families. Afterwhich, Audri was able to boost her resume and find a new full-time position where she uses skills from the certificate program. 


I hope that Google’s research and actions to support military families will continue to support people like Audri while also encouraging other organizations to help empower military spouses, too. To learn more about Grow with Google’s tools and resources for the military community, visit grow.google/militaryspouses.


“Buscándole:” Finding ways to help Latino small businesses

Every day for the past 47 years, my mother-in-law, who my kids and I love to call Nana, wakes up, has her required cup of cafecito and gets ready to go to work. She’s a hairstylist and the owner of Carmen’s Beauty Salon in Imperial Beach, California, and she wouldn’t give it up for anything in the world. She’s seen her regulars for decades, cutting and styling their hair through weddings, graduations and more. 

Carmen's Beauty Salon

My mother-in-law giving my son a trim at her salon. 

But in 2020, being a hairstylist—or any type of business owner—is tough. She is just one of the more than 30 million small business owners across the country who are struggling with the impact from the global pandemic. In many cases they are also trying to juggle other responsibilities like distance learning, taking care of sick or elderly family members and simply making ends meet. People like my Nana have been top of mind for me as we all cope with our current reality.

As we kick off Hispanic Heritage Month, a time to celebrate Latino culture, regardless of who you are or how you identify—whether it’s Hispanic, Latinx, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Black, Brazilian, Latino or any other way.  I also can't help but try to buscarle, which means to find a way around a problem or challenge, how to help small businesses like my Nana’s hair salon. And I'm glad to say Google is finding a way, too.

Today, we’re announcing a $3 million Google.org grant to the Hispanics in Philanthropy PowerUp Fund, to directly support hundreds of Latino-owned small businesses with access to capital and the training they need to successfully recover and continue to grow. This grant builds on Google’s $180 million commitment to support minority- and women-led small businesses across the country through the Grow with Google Small Business Fund and Google.org Grants Program.

We’re also providing free tools and training to help any Latino-owned businesses adapt and grow through Grow with Google’s "Paso a Paso" workshops and online training programs. Businesses can sign up for our new Google Ads workshop in Spanish, a special panel featuring resilient Latino entrepreneurs via OnAir En Español and continue their digital marketing training with Primer app minicourses in English or Spanish. We’re expanding our Digital Coaches program and kicking off a partnership with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce so Latino-owned businesses can get more localized support in their communities.

Beyond helping small businesses, we have lots more in store during Hispanic Heritage Month at Google. I encourage you to explore our updated Latino Cultures in the U.S. collection within Google Arts & Culture, where J. Balvin can share with you the untold story behind Fernando Botero’s “July 20th." Also, be on the lookout for our collaboration with Pop-Up Magazine, where we’ll celebrate Latinos across the country through virtual storytelling and art.

You'll also see us spotlighting Latino businesses around the country in our new "Buscándole" national campaign encouraging people to support neighborhood businesses. And today's Doodle features Felicitas Mendez, a Puerto Rican American civil rights pioneer who was a small business owner herself. Combined, we hope all these efforts can not only celebrate the Latino community during Hispanic Heritage Month, but also help members of our community thrive for the long term.