GREENtrepreneurs: RecycleBank Shows Kids it Pays to Go Green!

Shaping Youth sent Rebekah Cohen, one of our newest correspondents (Rebekah has a Masters in Child Development from Tufts University, and media chops on the "commercialism in schools" gig) to cover this week’s MIT/Stanford Venture Lab event which was called “GREENtrepreneurs” all about helping people go green and the consumer/tech market. Her assignment? … [Read more...]

What’s A Kids’ Party Without Piles of Presents? EchoAge.

EchoAge. Echo: "One small act of giving can echo around the world" plus Age: "Each year I want to make a difference on the planet" Equals: a meaningful twist on birthdays. Not exactly a whack the pinata and dive for the candy 'gimme mode' moment or frenzied paper-flying present grab flashback...but certainly an alternate view of what's fun. EchoAge is an innovative … [Read more...]

Shaping Youth in SemiFinals for Echoing Green Fellowship

Remember those team tryouts or school elections as a kid where you ended up competing against your best friend and got all flustered? Well, I’m having an ‘echo’ moment here. Shaping Youth is proud to be selected as a semifinalist for the Echoing Green fellowship, an exciting social entrepreneur org that gives seed money to groundbreaking global projects and … [Read more...]

“Ni Hao, Kai-Lan” Chinese Skype, & Mandarin Media

It seems China is finally getting some much-needed positive media coverage, with the official 2008 Beijing Olympics site up, more people using Skype media to learn Chinese with authentic accent integration, and now, some preschool positives to bring Mandarin into the home. Nickelodeon’s diversity programming is enriched with the debut of the "play along, think-along" cartoon … [Read more...]

Will “Big-Thinking” Kids Adopt YouTube for Intellectuals?

High school brought forth some of my most thought-provoking peer to peer dialogue unmatched to this day. AP Honors Students. Brainiacs. SheGeeks. Ponderers. Really interesting global people. I'll probably find some of them on YouTube's new Big Think, which carries the tagline, "We are what you think." BigThink starts by defining what it is and how to use it framed around a 10 … [Read more...]