BrdsNBz Research Published In Journal of Sex Education
Kennon Jackson, BrdsNBz National Text Line Director, and graduate student, Jessica Willoughby, have published a co-authored paper about BrdsNBz North Carolina in the Journal of Sex Education.
The article “Can you get pregnant when u r in the pool?’: young people’s information seeking from a sexual health text line” is available in the online version of the journal.
Pregnant and Parenting Teen Conference, Indianapolis
The Young Families of Indiana Network sponsored a state-wide conference in June 2012: The 2012 Pregnant and Parenting Teen Conference – Stepping Stones to the Future, Promising a World of Possibilities.
BrdsNBz National Text Line Director, Kennon Jackson, spoke on “What Are They Really Asking: Adolescents’ Questions About Pregnancy”.
The Future Promises Program of Marion County includes a teen father’s program, a formal partnership with Indianapolis Healthy Start, and a regional/state resource for teen parents, their parents, and professionals. To reflect their expanded mission, they changed their name in 2012 and are now known as the Young Families of Indiana Network (YFIN). The Future Promises Program is one program within YFIN. The name change reflects their intent to be a service leader for this special population. Organizationally YFIN will remain a division of the External Affairs Department of Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County.
Sharing BrdsNBz Success at 2012 SexTech Conference, April 1-4
The 2012 Sex::Tech Conference is enjoying it’s fourth year and we’ve been chosen to speak on a panel including not only APPCNC but also Deb Levin, SexTech founder, and Jonathan Holly from Educational Messaging Services.
OneSeventeen’s public-private partnership with the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign of North Carolina (APPCNC) will share the success as the first text messaging service for sexual health education. Kennon Jackson, Jr. (APPCNC) and Jessica Fitts Willoughby will discuss “Adolescents’ Questions about Pregnancy Posed to an Interactive Text Message Service.”
Just in case you’re in SF and attending SexTech, be sure to stop by and hear Kennon and Jessica. Here’s a brief abstract of their panel discussion:
Want to know what questions adolescents really have about what leads to pregnancy? We examined the questions asked of a sexual health text messaging service promoted to North Carolina teens ages 14 to 19. BrdsNBz North Carolina allows adolescents to text a question to the service and receive a personalized response within 24 hours from trained health educators. Adolescents had a number of questions about pregnancy, mainly what situations can lead to pregnancy (60%). They wanted to know whether anal sex and oral sex could lead to pregnancy, if having sex when a girl is on her period could lead to pregnancy, and if having sex underwater could lead to pregnancy. Adolescents also often wanted to know how to detect and prevent pregnancy. Knowing what questions adolescents have may help health educators address them before they come up. Come find out what teens really want to know about pregnancy.
City of Austin Launches New Programs for Parents and Teens
The Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign (APPCNC) in Durham, NC has coordinated with officials in Austin, Texas the launch of the nation’s first personalized text-and-answer services specifically for parents and teens. A product of its public-private partnership, BrdsNBz National is APPCNC’s successful expansion of its North Carolina service over the past three years. This initiative is in conjunction with Houston-based OneSeventeen Media, the Austin City Health Department and the Austin Healthy Adolescent Initiative (AHA).
APPCNC caught the attention of public health officials nationwide with the launch of their BrdsNBz Text Message Warm Line in February 2009. The BrdsNBz service supplements the work of parents, educators, and medical professionals by providing North Carolina youth a medically accurate, personalized answer to teens’ sexual health and relationship questions.
AHA is an interagency collaborative that will ensure the overall health and well-being of all adolescents, 10-18 years of age, in Austin/Travis County and their adult caregivers to prepare them with a strong foundation for adult life. The Initiative uses a comprehensive evidence-based approach to increase healthy behaviors and decision-making among Texas adolescents by promoting the development of confidence, competence, connectedness, character, and contribution.
Is Your Company An UpStart?
Think Progress.org
By Stephen Lacey on Jun 3, 2011
UpStart [uhp-stahrt] n. 1. A company or organization with innovative approaches to energy use, carbon pollution, resource consumption, and/or social equity, 2. A company or organization overcoming market barriers to build the new clean energy economy.
While playing an important role, governments and non-profits cannot build a “clean economy” on their own; rather, the private sector must lead the way. And thanks to a growing number of forward-thinking companies, the clean economy is already in the works. In this series, Lisbeth Kaufman of the Center for American Progress highlights “UpStarts” – companies that are shaking up the market, breaking down barriers and helping change the economy.
B Lab is creating a new type of company, the B Corporation, which modifies governance so that managers respond to long-term interests of investors, stakeholders, and the environment, rather than just focusing on short-term profits.
In a Harvard Business School case study on B Lab, co-founder Coen Gilbert explained B Lab’s goals and approach to overcoming market barriers for social entrepreneurs:
“There are tons of individual companies that have managed to effectively balance social and business impact. Still, we need to institutionalize the values, standards, and accountability that allow companies to do that. We need systems in place. We need to change the rules of the game instead of continuing to clean up the mess.
We want to look at the root causes. The root causes are not evil people, but rather poor system design. Right now the system is designed to maximize short-term stock value; it does that well, but at the cost of everything else.”
The question is: How do we have a system that facilitates long term value for the good of society?
The Problem: Undefined status and standards for for-profit social entrepreneurs
Over the past decade the social entrepreneurship sector has grown to include an estimated 40 million people employed worldwide, all working to address the most pressing environmental, economic and social challenges of the day. Despite the rising numbers of social entrepreneurs, for-profit businesses in the sector face a number of daunting challenges.
These barriers include:
Legal Status: Current corporate law makes it difficult for companies to prioritize social and environmental impact, requiring companies to maximize shareholder financial return above all else. Until the advent of B-Corporations, there was no legal status for companies that seek to produce social and environmental benefits in addition to profits.
Standards and Transparency: Most corporations have a stated corporate social responsibility (CSR) mission, but without economy-wide standards it’s hard for consumers to tell which companies have real impactful social policies and which simply have impactful marketing campaigns.
Incentives: While the government grants non-profit organizations tax exempt status and allows non-profits to accept tax-deductable contributions, there are no such incentives for for-profit socially beneficial organizations.
The Solution: The B Corporation
Legal Status: B Lab is changing the rules of the game by changing the very structure and legal status of the corporation. Officers and directors of B Corporations have legal permission and protection to consider the interest of all stakeholders, in corporate decision-making: employees, consumers, the community, the environment, not just shareholders. The B Corporation is essentially a new corporate form, a for-profit hybrid of the standard corporation and the socially oriented non-profit. Four states have passed B Corp laws, while six more states consider B Corp legislation.
Standards and Transparency: B Lab has designed a B Impact Rating System (BIRS) to measure a company’s social and environmental performance, setting economy wide standards that apply for all sectors and business sizes. To qualify as B Corporation, a company must complete the B Impact Assessment and receive a composite score of at least 80 out of 200 points. BIRS is updated every 2 years to remain relevant and accurate, and version 3.0 is now up for review. The rating system uses a cold hard numerical score to cut through “green washing” and CSR marketing.
Incentives: B Lab is actively building incentives to encourage businesses to join the B Corporation community, and to reward the organizations that are already making positive impact. With a network of more than 60 service partners, B Corps get discounts on various business services amounting to more than $750,000 in savings, including Salesforce.com, NetSuite software, Inspire Commerce credit card processing, along with increased advertising and marketing benefits. Likewise, the B Corp community includes a growing network of more than 25 investors interested in supporting B Corps. To ensure the best and the brightest work for B Corporations, the Yale School of Management forgives student loans for graduates who work at a B Corporation within ten years of graduation.
So far there are 419 B Corporations of various sizes across 54 industries, with a total of $1.94 billion in revenues. The community includes large well known brands like Method, 7th Generation, and Good Capital as well as numerous smaller startups.
The conventional corporation has little incentive to address the most pressing issues the world faces. B Lab, a prime example of an UpStart, serves as a cutting-edge way to allow entrepreneurs to solve important climate, energy, and social problems — while making a profit.
Thanks to Mark Fischer, CEO, Inspire Commerce and InspirePay, for originally posting this article.
OneSeventeen Media is Texas’ first certified B Corporation.
iPhone Mom Reviews PlumbBrain Guardian
Heather Leister, better known as the iPhone Mom, reviews iPhone apps for other moms. She is also an expert contributor on Momtastic.com, a site that provides answers, support, ideas and inspiration for moms. Her 2010 Top 50 iPhone Apps for Mom’s was a hit on Babble.com, a website for the new generation parent.
Needless to say, we were ecstatic when the iPhone Mom chose to review PlumbBrain Guardian last week.
In her review, she stated that she was impressed with PlumbBrain Guardian’s key features of storing information about your child in their profile and simplifying the process of alerting emergency personnel should your child go missing.
But, she went on to say…..”This is all extremely helpful and important but the next feature is what made me think PlumbBrain Guardian is really onto something. If you’re like me you would install this app on your phone, add the photographs and then forget about it. Hoping I’d never need to use it and so never going back to update the information. Should something happen years later the only picture I would have of my fifteen year old daughter would be a photo from when she was eleven.”
“PlumbBrain has thought about people like me and they have built alerts into their app. When you setup your account you may schedule alerts that will remind you to update your children’s photos. Reminders can be set as frequently as weekdays, weekly, monthly or annually. This is a fantastic feature!”
How could we have asked for more than to be in the IPhone Mom’s “Hope I Never Have To Use Them” category??!! “I have several apps on my iPhone that fall into the category of “Hope I NEVER have to use them but I’m VERY glad I have them” and PlumbBrain Guardian is solidly in that category. This is a free and useful app you should definitely get your hands on.”
Learn more about the PlumbBrain Guardian and download a free copy in the iTunes Store.
PlumbBrain Guardian: First iOS Mobile Application Launched
Ok, I know I’m a little late sharing my excitement but I just had to share anyway how much fun it is to continue to learn new things and explore new frontiers.
On April 29, 2011, we launched a new child safety mobile application for the iPod, iPad and iPhone! PlumbBrain Guardian was created by parents for parents. The app helps you keep a current photo of your child or grandchild (or a child in your care) in case they wander off unexpectedly.
One of our advisors with AMBER Alert™ says one of the key features of the PlumbBrain Guardian app is it’s reminder feature telling you to update your child’s photo. A current photo is critical to finding a lost child quickly. The AMBER Alert™ Program is a voluntary partnership between law-enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the wireless industry, to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases.
Please check it out for yourself. Maybe you don’t have children in the 2-13 age range but I bet you know someone who does (OK, we’re assuming once our children reach 13 they won’t wander off!). Click here to download the app from the App Store in iTunes to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad – it’s free!
Please leave us your feedback in the comments section or contact us at mobile [at] oneseventeenmedia.com or twitter @bcarls.
