Tag Archives: google.org

Stonewall Forever: Honoring LGBTQ+ history through a living monument

Many people have shaped my life—my parents who brought me into the world; Miss Moran, my fifth grade teacher, who pushed me to be a better student; my late mentor Bill McCarthy who helped guide my career early in my professional life. But perhaps the most meaningful people in my life are my husband, whom I have been with for nearly 30 years, and my son, who gives me more joy (and a fair amount of frustration) than I could have ever imagined. For them, I owe thanks in large part to a valiant handful of New Yorkers whom I've never me. Their act of defiance ultimately enabled me to live, love and be who I am.

It was early in the morning on Saturday, June 28, 1969, when the police raided the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, one of the few places at the time where LGBTQ people could gather openly. New Yorkers fought back. This altercation, known as the Stonewall Riots, led to angry protests that lasted for days and sparked the modern fight for LGBTQ rights around the world.

In 2016, President Obama designated Christopher Park, the small triangle of green that sits in front of the Stonewall Inn, as the first national monument dedicated to telling the story of this community’s struggle. The Stonewall National Monument serves as a reminder of the continuing fight for civil and human rights.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. To recognize this pivotal moment in history, the LGBT Community Center of New York City (The Center) spearheaded the creation of Stonewall Forever, an interactive “living monument” to 50 years of Pride. Google provided support in the form of a $1.5 million grant from Google.org, and volunteers from Google Creative Lab helped bring the experience to life.

Stonewall Forever connects diverse voices from the Stonewall era to the millions of voices in today’s LGBTQ community. The monument is made up of countless colorful pieces that contain digitized historical artifacts, oral histories capturing the early days of the movement, interviews with new voices of LGBTQ equality, and photos and messages added by people around the world.

Anyone can visit Stonewall Forever on the web, and through an augmented reality app that allows you to experience the Stonewall National Monument in New York’s Christopher Park. Explore the past, present and future of Pride and then add your own piece to the ever-growing monument. You can dive deeper by watching a short documentary, directed by Ro Haber, featuring an inclusive array of activists, from across generations, each giving their own interpretation of the Stonewall legacy.

Beyond our support of Stonewall Forever, we’re launching Pride Forever, a campaign honoring the past, present, and future of the LGBTQ+ community. This theme is rooted in sharing the past 50 years of global LGBTQ+ history with our users. Today’s interactive Google Doodle celebrates 50 years of Pride by taking us through its evolution over the decades, with animated illustrations by Doodler Nate Swinehart.  

Google Arts & Culture is also preserving even more archives and stories from LGBTQ history, in partnership with The Center,GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco, the National Park Service’s Stonewall Monument, and Cyark. The collection includes never-before-seen photos and videos, 3D models of the Stonewall monuments, and a virtual walking tour of LGBTQ sites in the Village.

Here are a few other ways we’re helping people celebrate Pride.

  • Like past years, we’ll identify major Pride parade routes on Google Maps.
  • Later this month, check out Google Play for apps, movies, books, and audiobooks to help the LGBTQ+ community share stories and also learn more about the history of LGBTQ+ rights.
  • And through Google My Business, business owners can mark their businesses as “LGBTQ-friendly” and as a “Transgender Safe Space” on their Google listing to let customers know they’re always welcome. As of today, more than 190,000 businesses have enabled these attributes on their business listing.

Today, Stonewall lives on in images, histories and monuments—old and new. It also lives on in the LGBTQ community and its supporters. The past paves the way for the future, and Stonewall Forever reminds us that alone we’re strong, but together we’re unstoppable. Pride is forever.

Source: Google LatLong


How AI could tackle a problem shared by a billion people

Earlier this month, Google AI Impact Challenge grantees from around the world gathered in San Francisco to start applying artificial intelligence to address some of the world’s toughest problems, from protecting rainforests to improving emergency response times.


In addition to receiving part of the $25 million pool of funding from Google.org, each organization is participating in a six-month program called the Launchpad Accelerator. The accelerator kicked off with a week-long boot camp which included mentorship, workshops, presentations from AI and product experts and an opportunity to connect with other grantees. They also received support and guidance from DataKind, a global non-profit dedicated to harnessing the power of data science and AI in the service of humanity. Throughout the accelerator, grantees will receive ongoing support and coaching from their Google mentors as they complete the first phase of their projects.


We sat down with Rajesh Jain from grantee Wadhwani AI, an Indian organization with a project dedicated to using AI to help farmers with pest control, to learn more about the problem he and his team are setting out to solve, and how support from Google will help them get there.

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Rajesh Jain taking a photo of a pest trap

Why is pest control such a big issue?

More than a billion people around the world live in smallholder farmer households. These are farms that support a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. Many of these farmers struggle with pest damage that can wipe out a devastating amount of annual crop yield, despite heavy usage of pesticides. Currently, many farmers track and manage pests by manually identifying and counting them. In India, some send photos of pests to universities for analysis, but the advice often arrives after it’s too late to prevent irreversible damage to their crops. Last season, nearly 1,000 cotton farmers in India committed suicide after a pink bollworm attack destroyed 40% of the cotton yield. At Wadhwani AI, we’re creating technology that will help reduce crop losses.

What will you use the funding and support from Google for?

Before applying for this grant, we had already developed algorithms that detect two major pests, and have successfully tested this in parts of India. We plan to use the mentorship and funding from Google.org to develop a globally scalable pest management solution. This will allow farmers and agriculture program workers to take photos of pest traps and use image classification models on their phones to identify and count the pests and receive timely intervention recommendations, including what pesticides to spray and when. The goal is to provide millions of farmers with timely, localized advice to reduce pesticide usage and improve crop yield.

Going into the Launchpad Accelerator kickoff, what were you hoping to get out of it?

We’ve been working on this for nine months now—and we believe we’ve discovered a solution to this problem. We’re a small team, so funding and collaborations are necessary for us to succeed. We really needed help to scale our whole infrastructure. At first our goal was to get the project working, but we want this to be helpful to people around the globe, not just the subset of people who tested our first prototype. Companies like Google operate at scale so we were excited to get advice on how to do this.

What did you learn? 

We were really impressed with the kind of mentors we met with, especially the AI coach we’ve been assigned to work with in the coming months. He helped us set very concrete goals and we’re excited to continue to have his support in accomplishing them. It was helpful to learn practices that are commonplace at Google that can change how we do our work. For example, we learned and plan to implement right away when we get back is “Stand up Mondays” - it’s important for us to be on the same page - so this is a way to get us focused and connected at the start of the week.

What do you think is going to be the most challenging part of your project?

We have the technology, but scaling it and making it accessible to farmers will be difficult. There are differences in literacy, diversity, cultural differences, climate differences. We need to scale our solution to address all the challenges. We’re really looking to lean on the mentorship from Google to help us design the app so it’s scalable.

What are you most optimistic about?

We have confidence in our technical capabilities - and we got a lot of confirmation from other AI experts that this is a good idea. We’re excited to get to work.

 


Google.org and FII collaborate to empower low-income families

Since 2015, the Family Independence Initiative (FII) has used over $2.5 million in Google.org grants to empower families to escape poverty. Their technology platform UpTogether helps low-income families access small cash investments, connect with each other and share solutions—like how to find childcare or strategies to pay off debt. With the grants last year, FII improved their technology platform and expanded their sites to more cities including Austin and Chicago.

This year, the Family Independence Initiative is embarking on a mission of collaborative research to shift what’s possible for low-income families. And today, we’re expanding our investment in FII with a $1 million grant to support a pilot project called Trust and Invest Collaborative, which aims to guide policy decisions that will increase economic mobility for low-income families and their children. The grant will help FII, the City of Boston and the Department of Transitional Assistance examine learnings and successes from FII, and replicate them in future government services offered to low-income families.


In addition to our original grants to FII, we offered Google’s technical expertise. Over the last six months, six Google.org Fellows have been working full-time with FII to use their engineering and user experience expertise to help improve UpTogether. They used machine learning and natural language processing to make UpTogether’s data more useful in determining what leads to family success and to make it easier for families to share their own solutions with each other. These improvements in data quality will support the research for the pilot in Boston and Cambridge and help FII continue to share learnings from families’ own voices with future collaborators.

Affirming the identities of teachers and students in the classroom through #ISeeMe

Editor’s note: We’re thrilled to have Kristina Joye Lyles from DonorsChoose.org as a guest author, sharing about teaming up with Google.org to launch the #ISeeMe campaign.

I joined DonorsChoose.org in 2013 and have long been working with organizations like Google.org who share our belief in the power of teachers. To date, Google.org has provided over $25 million to support classrooms on DonorsChoose.org, and last week, they committed an additional $5 million to teachers, with a focus on supporting diverse and inclusive classrooms. Together, we’re kicking off #ISeeMe, a new effort to enable teachers and students across the country to celebrate their identities in their classrooms.

As a military brat, I attended many public schools across the U.S. but only had two teachers of color from kindergarten through twelfth grade. My teachers and professors of color had a particularly strong impact on me as mentors and role models; I was encouraged to see them as leaders in our school community, and their presence alone showed me that diversity and representation matter.

My story is like those of so many others. Research shows that students benefit from seeing themselves in their teachers and learning resources. For example, black students who have just one black teacher between third and fifth grade are 33 percent more likely to stay in school. Girls who attend high schools with a higher proportion of female STEM teachers are 19 percent more likely to graduate from college with a science or math major.

With this support from Google.org, teachers who are underrepresented in today’s public school classrooms--like teachers of color and female math and science teachers-- as well as all teachers looking to create more inclusive classrooms will get the support they need and deserve. Teachers from all backgrounds can take steps toward creating classrooms that reflect their students, whether they’re selecting novels with diverse characters to discuss or taking trainings to learn more about meeting the needs of students from culturally diverse backgrounds. And we’re eager to help them bring their ideas to life so that more students can see themselves reflected in their classrooms.

I’m thrilled that many teachers on DonorsChoose.org are already coming up with inspiring ways to foster classroom environments where every student can feel important and included.  Mr. Yung sees the power of food to bring his students together across different cultural backgrounds. Ms. McLeod is determined to bring her students from Lumberton, North Carolina, to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Toro-Maysaspires to bring her bilingual students books with culturally relevant heroes and heroines.

We hope you’ll join us and the philanthropists of various backgrounds who have lit the torch for #ISeeMe today. If you are a public school teacher, you can set up an #ISeeMe classroom project right now at DonorsChoose.org. You can also access free inclusive classroom resources and ideas created for educators, by educators at any time in Google’s Teacher Center. And for those of you who have been inspired by a teacher, we invite you to explore classroom projects that are eligible for Google.org’s #ISeeMe donation matching—we would love to have your support for these teachers and classrooms.

New career tools to help military spouses thrive

Service members aren’t alone in making great sacrifices for the good of our country. Military spouses are the backbone of their families and communities, often serving alongside service members and assuming responsibilities on the homefront. As a military spouse, I’ve experienced the challenges that this life brings. While separated from my husband for two and a half years, I took on all responsibilities for our home and managed several out-of-state moves.

The realities I’ve faced being part of a military family made it incredibly difficult to balance my husband’s military career with my own career goals and aspirations. Military spouses are resilient leaders with diverse perspectives, making them powerful assets to the workplace. To ensure that this community continues to thrive in the workplace, this Military Spouse Appreciation Day, Google is excited to share new initiatives that will empower military spouses to build meaningful careers, wherever they’re located.

According to a 2017 report from Hiring Our Heroes, 16 percent of military spouses are unemployed–a figure that’s four times higher than the national rate. And more than 55 percent are underemployed, working in roles below their abilities or education levels.

Despite this hurdle, there are spouses around the world who’ve built fulfilling careers that fit a military lifestyle. In Durham, North Carolina, the Grow with Google team met Kelly Grivner-Kelly, a military spouse whose frequent moves were holding her back in her job search. This changed when she found a job as a program manager where she can work from home–and stay on remotely after her next move.

In Fayetteville, North Carolina, the team met Krystel Spell, who started the blog Army Wife 101 and founded an influencer agency for military spouses after noticing a lack of resources available to her community. Through flexible career paths and entrepreneurial endeavours, more military spouses are pursuing their career goals, becoming breadwinners, and taking their work with them from place to place. And technology is making it easier.

Last year, Grow with Google developed tools and resources for the U.S. military community. Knowing the important role military spouses play, we want to continue using technology to address the unique challenges military spouses face as they build their careers.

Our improved experience within jobs on Google Search makes it easier to find quality remote jobs. Now, you can search for jobs that match your skill set, like “sales jobs” and filter your location to “work from home” to see a list of relevant job listings that meet your criteria. Remote work requires its own kind of expertise, so we created hands-on training that offers helpful tools and advice to set military spouses up for success in remote jobs. A new course from Google’s Applied Digital Skills program, a free online curriculum for digital skills, helps users learn about workplace collaboration tools like Docs, Calendar and Hangouts. We’ve also added two minicourses specifically for military spouses to the Primer app, a free resource for learning business and marketing skills. These minicourses share tips for transitioning to remote work, working from home and the basics of starting and growing an online business.

To ensure that military spouses across the country can benefit from these tools and resources, we’re supporting two organizations with a long history of supporting military spouses. We’ll be providing a Google.org grant to the Institute for Veteran and Military Families (IVMF) to offer IT training and career guidance to their network. The grant will enable IVMF to provide 1,500 scholarships for the Google IT Support Professional Certificate program, along with professional support and career navigation. Google’s IT Certificate program prepares beginners for entry-level jobs in IT support in about six months. We’ll also be partnering with Blue Star Families, an organization that provides support to military families, including career guidance for spouses. Blue Star Families will share our career preparation training with at least 10,000 spouses across its nationwide network of military families.

My vision is that these new resources empower military spouses to build meaningful careers, regardless of their location or balance of responsibilities. I hope these new efforts ease some of the career challenges military spouses often face as they plan for and build toward their futures. To learn more about our free tools and resources to help military spouses build flexible careers, visit grow.google/militaryspouses.

New career tools to help military spouses thrive

Service members aren’t alone in making great sacrifices for the good of our country. Military spouses are the backbone of their families and communities, often serving alongside service members and assuming responsibilities on the homefront. As a military spouse, I’ve experienced the challenges that this life brings. While separated from my husband for two and a half years, I took on all responsibilities for our home and managed several out-of-state moves.

The realities I’ve faced being part of a military family made it incredibly difficult to balance my husband’s military career with my own career goals and aspirations. Military spouses are resilient leaders with diverse perspectives, making them powerful assets to the workplace. To ensure that this community continues to thrive in the workplace, this Military Spouse Appreciation Day, Google is excited to share new initiatives that will empower military spouses to build meaningful careers, wherever they’re located.

According to a 2017 report from Hiring Our Heroes, 16 percent of military spouses are unemployed–a figure that’s four times higher than the national rate. And more than 55 percent are underemployed, working in roles below their abilities or education levels.

Despite this hurdle, there are spouses around the world who’ve built fulfilling careers that fit a military lifestyle. In Durham, North Carolina, the Grow with Google team met Kelly Grivner-Kelly, a military spouse whose frequent moves were holding her back in her job search. This changed when she found a job as a program manager where she can work from home–and stay on remotely after her next move.

In Fayetteville, North Carolina, the team met Krystel Spell, who started the blog Army Wife 101 and founded an influencer agency for military spouses after noticing a lack of resources available to her community. Through flexible career paths and entrepreneurial endeavours, more military spouses are pursuing their career goals, becoming breadwinners, and taking their work with them from place to place. And technology is making it easier.

Last year, Grow with Google developed tools and resources for the U.S. military community. Knowing the important role military spouses play, we want to continue using technology to address the unique challenges military spouses face as they build their careers.

Our improved experience within jobs on Google Search makes it easier to find quality remote jobs. Now, you can search for jobs that match your skill set, like “sales jobs” and filter your location to “work from home” to see a list of relevant job listings that meet your criteria. Remote work requires its own kind of expertise, so we created hands-on training that offers helpful tools and advice to set military spouses up for success in remote jobs. A new course from Google’s Applied Digital Skills program, a free online curriculum for digital skills, helps users learn about workplace collaboration tools like Docs, Calendar and Hangouts. We’ve also added two minicourses specifically for military spouses to the Primer app, a free resource for learning business and marketing skills. These minicourses share tips for transitioning to remote work, working from home and the basics of starting and growing an online business.

To ensure that military spouses across the country can benefit from these tools and resources, we’re supporting two organizations with a long history of supporting military spouses. We’ll be providing a Google.org grant to the Institute for Veteran and Military Families (IVMF) to offer IT training and career guidance to their network. The grant will enable IVMF to provide 1,500 scholarships for the Google IT Support Professional Certificate program, along with professional support and career navigation. Google’s IT Certificate program prepares beginners for entry-level jobs in IT support in about six months. We’ll also be partnering with Blue Star Families, an organization that provides support to military families, including career guidance for spouses. Blue Star Families will share our career preparation training with at least 10,000 spouses across its nationwide network of military families.

My vision is that these new resources empower military spouses to build meaningful careers, regardless of their location or balance of responsibilities. I hope these new efforts ease some of the career challenges military spouses often face as they plan for and build toward their futures. To learn more about our free tools and resources to help military spouses build flexible careers, visit grow.google/militaryspouses.

Here are the grantees of the Google AI Impact Challenge

As part of Google’s AI for Social Good program, we launched the Google AI Impact Challenge, based on our strong belief that emerging technologies will help us address big social, humanitarian and environmental problems. We were blown away by the number of thoughtful proposals we received: 2,602 applications from 119 countries, nearly two thirds of the world’s countries.

Forty percent of the applications came from organizations with no previous experience with artificial intelligence, which is still a developing concept in the social impact field. Our job, as we thoroughly vetted the applications, was to choose the best projects based on feasibility, potential for impact, scalability and the responsible use of AI.  

Today, at I/O, we are announcing 20 organizations that will share $25 million in grants from Google.org, credit and consulting from Google Cloud, mentoring from Google AI experts and the opportunity to join a customized accelerator program from Google Developers Launchpad. The selected projects address issues in the areas of health, economic opportunity and empowerment, environmental protection and conservation, education, misinformation and crisis and emergency response. Here’s the full list of grantees.

  • Google AI Impact Challenge winners 1

    Grantees: American University of Beirut, Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, Crisis Text Line, Inc. and Eastern Health

  • Google AI Impact Challenge grantees 2

    Grantees: Fondation MSF, Full Fact, Gringgo Indonesia Foundation and Hand Talk Serviços LTDA 

  • Google AI Impact Challenge grantees 3

    Grantees: HURIDOCS, Makerere University, New York University and Nexleaf Analytics

  • Google AI Impact Challenge grantees 4

    Grantees: The Pennsylvania State University, Quill.org, Rainforest Connection and Skilllab BV

  • Google AI Impact Challenge grantees 5

    Grantees: TalkingPoints, The Trevor Project, Wadhwani AI and WattTime Corporation

  • American University of Beirut (Lebanon): Applying machine learning to weather and agricultural data to improve irrigation for resource-strapped farmers in Africa and the Middle East.

  • Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario (Colombia): Using satellite imagery to detect illegal mines, enabling communities and the government to protect people and natural resources.

  • Crisis Text Line, Inc. (USA): Using natural language processing to optimize assignment of texters in crisis to counselors, reducing wait times and maintaining effective communication.

  • Eastern Health (Australia): Analyzing clinical records from ambulances to uncover trends and potential points of intervention to inform policy and public health responses around suicide.

  • Fondation MSF (France): Detecting patterns in antimicrobial imagery to help medical staff in low-resource areas prescribe the right antibiotics for bacterial infections.

  • Full Fact (UK): Developing trend monitoring and clustering tools to aid fact checkers’ analysis, so they can help contextualize the news and enable informed decisions.

  • Gringgo Indonesia Foundation (Indonesia): Building an image recognition tool to improve plastic recycling rates, reduce ocean plastic pollution and strengthen waste management in under-resourced communities.

  • Hand Talk (Brazil) Using AI to translate Portuguese into Brazilian Sign Language through a digital avatar, enabling digital communication for Brazilians who are deaf and and hard-of-hearing.

  • HURIDOCS (Switzerland): Using natural language processing and ML to extract and connect relevant information in case-related documents, allowing human rights lawyers to effectively research and defend their cases.

  • Makerere University (Uganda): Tracking and predicting air pollution patterns via low-cost sensors in Kampala, Uganda, improving air quality forecasting and intervention.

  • New York University (USA): Partnering with the New York City Fire Department’s analytics team to optimize response to its yearly 1.7 million emergencies, accounting for factors like weather, traffic and location.

  • Nexleaf Analytics (USA): Building data models to predict vaccine viability throughout the cold vaccine supply chain and ensure effective delivery.

  • The Pennsylvania State University (USA): Using deep learning tools to better predict locations and times at risk for landslides, creating a warning system to minimize the impact of natural disasters.  

  • Quill.org (USA): Using deep learning to provide low-income students with immediate feedback on their writing, enabling students to revise their work and quickly improve their skills.

  • Rainforest Connection(USA): Using deep learning for bioacoustic monitoring and commonplace mobile technology to track rainforest health and detect threats.

  • Skilllab BV (Netherlands): Helping refugees translate their skills to the European labor market and recommend relevant career pathways to explore.

  • TalkingPoints (USA): Using AI to enable two-way translated parent/teacher engagement and coaching when language represents a barrier to communication.

  • The Trevor Project (USA): Using natural language processing and sentiment analysis to determine a LGBTQ youth’s suicide risk level to better tailor services for individuals seeking help.

  • Wadhwani AI (India): Using image recognition to track and analyze pest control efforts, enabling timely and localized intervention to stabilize crop production and reduce pesticide usage.

  • WattTime Corporation (USA): Using image processing algorithms and satellite networks to replace on-site power plant emissions monitors with open-source monitoring platforms.

Next week, the grantees will converge in San Francisco for the kickoff of the Google AI Impact Challenge Accelerator, the six-month program run by Google Developers Launchpad. We look forward to working with these organizations, and to seeing the impact of their projects on such a wide variety of issues around the world.

Why you should thank a teacher this week, and always

Editor’s note: Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! We’re honored to have the 2019 National Teacher of the Year, Rodney Robinson, as today’s guest author (and Doodler), who shares more about his journey and all the ways we’re celebrating teachers this week and beyond.

I went into teaching to honor my first teacher: my mother, Sylvia Robinson. Growing up in rural Virginia, she dreamed of becoming  an educator but was denied the chance due to poverty and segregation; instead, she ran an in-home daycare center for all the neighborhood children, where she made each of us feel like we were the most important person on earth.

My mother always said, “every child deserves the proper amount of love to get what they need to be successful in life.” My sister, who had cerebral palsy, often needed more of my mother’s love and care than me and my other siblings did. Through her parenting, I learned what it meant to create a culture of equity—where every person gets the right amount of support they need to be successful—which has proven critical in my own teaching journey. 

Today I teach social studies in a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, where I work to create a positive school culture and empower my students to become civically-minded social advocates. When I was selected as Virginia’s Teacher of the Year, and then National Teacher of the Year, I was elated—mostly for my students. Their stories don’t often fit into the typical educational story in America, but they represent the power and possibility of second chances. They deserve a great education to take advantage of that second chance, and I’m eager to advocate for what they—along with other students from underprivileged backgrounds—need to be successful. That’s also why I’m so happy that Google is showing up this Teacher Appreciation Week, including a new $5 million grant to DonorsChoose.org, to make it easier for us to build classrooms that reflect the diversity of our students.

Google Doodle for Teacher Appreciation Week

Today’s Doodle was co-designed by the 57 2019 Teachers of the Year, representing each U.S. state, extra-state territories, the District of Columbia and the Department of Defense Education Activity.

Google’s homepage today is a tribute to teachers, and I feel proud to see the contribution I made—alongside my 56 fellow State Teachers of the Year—up there for everyone to see. Since Google is a sponsor of The Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) National Teacher of the Year program, we had the opportunity to spend a few days at Google’s Bay Area headquarters where I learned a lot about technology and using storytelling, advocacy and leadership in my practice. I am glad to see companies like Google have teachers’ backs.

The Teachers of the Year gather in San Francisco

While at Google, I got to engage in meaningful discussions with my fellow 2019 Teachers of the Year about how together we can advocate for solutions to some of the biggest issues in education.


A $5 million investment to bring teachers’ ideas to life

Today Google is making one of its largest teacher-focused grants to date, through a $5 million Google.org grant that will unlock over $10 million for teachers through DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit organization that helps teachers get funding for classroom resources and projects. For every dollar you donate to a teacher’s classroom on DonorsChoose.org today, Google will put in an extra fifty cents to help teachers get funding, from 8:00 AM EST on Monday, May 6 until 3:00 AM EST on Tuesday, May 7, up to $1.5 million total.

Later this month, the remaining $3.5 million of this grant will also go toward supporting underrepresented teachers and those looking to create more inclusive classrooms. Representation means so much to my students, which is why it’s so important to have teachers  who value their cultures and look like them .

Free resources and trainings for educators, by educators

Google is also launching free online and in-person resources and trainings. In the Teacher Center, you’ll find a new section with teacher guides and lesson plans—created for teachers, by teachers—made to help create classrooms that best reflect our students. And throughout the week, you can attend free in-person trainings for educators in the new Google Learning Center in New York City, led by teachers like me(!) and 2015 National Teacher of the Year Shanna Peeples, as well as teacher-focused organizations like TED-Ed. I’ll also be doing an Education On Air session later this week, so you can even tune in virtually.

Making it easier for teachers to learn from one another

As teachers, we often learn from each other. That’s why all of the 2019 State Teachers of the Year have recorded words of insight and encouragement to share with our fellow educators as part of CCSSO and Google’s “Lessons from Teachers of the Year” YouTube series.

As part of our work with Google, we also received early access toTED Masterclass, a new TED-Ed professional learning program they sponsored that supports educators in sharing their ideas in the form of TED-style talks. You can now check out several of my fellow educators’ TED Talks on the newly launchedTED-Ed Educator Talks YouTube Channel. More than 5,000 educators, including Google Certified Innovative Educators, are busy developing their Talks.

I hope you’ll join us in celebrating teachers everywhere who go the extra mile to help every student succeed. You can start exploring classroom projects eligible for today’s match on DonorsChoose.org, and of course, remember to #thankateacher—because we deserve it.

How we’re supporting economic opportunity in Iowa

For some, Iowa may call to mind images of rolling corn fields, or the Field of Dreams. But those in the know will tell you that the Hawkeye state has a storied history of technological innovation. The first electronic digital computer was created in a lab at Iowa State and Lee de Forest, the “Father of Radio,” was born and raised in Council Bluffs. Perhaps most impressively,  sliced bread is an Iowan invention, with the first single loaf bread-slicing machine patented here in 1928.

In 2009, Iowa also became home to a Google Data Center, where I—along with hundreds of Iowans—work to connect billions of people around the world to Google. When someone logs onto Gmail, watches a YouTube video or searches for an answer to some burning question, they might not think of Iowa, but they should.

With such a strong track record of fostering creative answers to difficult questions, Iowa is the perfect place for Google to kick off a statewide $1 million Google.org Impact Challenge, where we’re inviting local nonprofits to share their most ambitious ideas to create economic opportunity in their community. Then, a panel of local advisors will select the top five to receive a $175,000 grant to bring their ideas to life. Our advisors, listed below, represent all corners of the state:

  • Dr. Dan Kinney, President, Iowa Western Community College
  • Georgia Van Gundy, Executive Director and Board Secretary, Iowa Business Council
  • Monica Chavez-Silva, Assistant Vice President for Community Enhancement, Grinnell College
  • Sherry Ristau, President, Quad Cities Community Foundation
  • Tej Dhawan, Chief Data Officer, Principal Financial Group

To cap off the competition, Google will invite Iowans to select one of the five projects they believe will have the greatest impact.

We kicked the Challenge off this morning in Des Moines at the first stop of a three-city Grow with Google Iowa Tour, where we’re teaming up with local libraries and partner organizations across the state to offer free trainings so that Iowans have the opportunity to learn digital skills to grow their careers or businesses. Tomorrow and the following day, we’ll visit libraries in Council Bluffs and Davenport as part of a larger commitment to support economic opportunity in America and bring in-person digital skills workshops to libraries to all 50 states.

Iowa nonprofit organizations can find more information on the Google.org Impact Challenge and submit their applications by visiting g.co/iowachallenge. The deadline for submissions is May 17th at 11:59 p.m. CT. We’re expecting to name the five winners in the fall of 2019. Considering the sliced bread precedent, the bar is being set pretty high.

With Goodwill, we’re helping more Americans learn digital skills

In October 2017, I returned to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—the first city I saw when I came to America over 25 years ago—to announce Grow with Google, a new effort to create more opportunity for everyone. At the heart of this goal was our five-year commitment to provide $1 billion in Google.org grants and 1 million Googler volunteer hours to organizations all over the world. Goodwill Industries International was one of the first groups to join us in this effort, and just over a year later, I’m proud to share that our work together has already helped a quarter of a million Americans learn new digital skills, and 27,000 Americans find a job.

This impact was made possible by the Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator (GDCA), a program to equip 1.2 million Americans with the digital skills needed to succeed in today’s job market and prepare for the changing workforce. GDCA was launched with the support of a $10 million Google.org grant made to Goodwill Industries International, the largest grant we’ve ever made to a single organization.

Goodwill has a track record of helping place people in jobs that provide good wages and pathways to future careers, and the impact we’ve seen through this program is no different. One example is Simone in Astoria, New York, who was hired as a remote receptionist after taking a weeklong customer service and call-center training that taught her basic computer skills. Other job seekers have found positions in fields like IT support, aircraft manufacturing, and information and communications technology.

In the case of Chelsea, these trainings led her to a job at Google. After moving home to Nashville from Atlanta, she struggled to find housing for her family. While working at Goodwill of Middle Tennessee, she was encouraged to enroll in the Google IT Support Professional Certificate program. With nearly one year of training under her belt, she’s now working at our data center in Clarksville, TN, and has moved with her daughters into a house nearby. Chelsea is one of 66,000 people enrolled the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, and 84 percent of whom say it helped them to advance their job search or career.

Goodwill’s programs also give people the digital skills they need to launch and grow a business. Femeka in Fort Worth, Texas, started her own gift basket business, but was struggling to reach new customers. She saw a flier for the Goodwill program at a local women’s shelter and completed courses in basic computing, internet navigation, productivity tools and G Suite in just a few weeks. Femeka used these new skills she learned to create order forms for her gift baskets and build a website to attract new customers.

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    Simone was hired as a remote receptionist after completing a customer service and call-center training through Goodwill NYNJ.

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    Chelsea completed Google’s IT Support Professional Certificate in three months, landing a job at Google’s data center in Clarksville, TN

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    After enrolling in Goodwill Fort Worth’s Digital Skills program, Femeka learned the skills to build a website for her gift basket business.

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    The Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator enabled Goodwill of Wichita to transform an RV into a mobile training lab.

Goodwill’s model is effective because it’s not a cookie cutter approach to job training. There’s something for everyone to learn that can benefit their careers, whether it’s getting basics skills like word-processing or email, or more specific skills to get a better job in the same field. Local Goodwill organizations are also empowered to build programs that fit their communities best. In Wichita, Kansas, a lack of transit options led the local Goodwill to bring classes to 35 rural communities around the state in an RV!

The Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator operates at 93 Goodwill organizations across 34 states, with plans to expand to 126 in the coming months. Meanwhile, 200 Google employees have volunteered their time and expertise to conduct trainings, and seven Google.org Fellows are embedded full-time at Goodwill locations across the country.

Our strong collaboration with Goodwill has contributed to the progress we’ve made toward the goal of $1 billion and 1 million hours we set in Pittsburgh. Overall, Googlers have already served 280,000 volunteer hours and we’ve made over $300 million in grants. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together, but there’s a lot more to work to make sure everyone has access to opportunities, no matter where they live. We’ll continue to update you on the lessons we’re learning and the impact we’re seeing in the months and years to come.