Since Boston Magazine published an article naming Lawrence, Massachusetts the City of the Dammed" and calling the residents godforsaken, an outraged community has been working to prove there are more positive things in the city than the label Nation's Stolen Car Capital would suggest. Taking matters into their own hands, a group of high school students have printed five issues of a newsletter, called What's Good In the Hood?, hand-delivering the positive news stories around town.
Since Boston Magazine published an article one month ago naming Lawrence, Massachusetts the "City of the Dammed" and calling it "godforsaken", outraged residents have been working to prove that there are more positive things in the city than the label "Nation's Stolen Car Capital" would suggest.
On March 1st, community leaders, parents and teachers, met at Cafe Verde to discuss a strategy for turning around the public relations nightmare. They planned a rally, marching two weeks later under the banner "We are Lawrence".
The "We are Lawrence" movement is building on what local high school students had already begun. Trying to reverse the town's negative stereotype, the group of teens began printing a newsletter called "What's Good In the Hood?", hand-delivering the positive news stories around town.
Instead of a drumbeat of stories about drug arrests, robberies and murders, Good In the Hood aims to give the city of Lawrence an image makeover. The passionate multicultural teens are empowering their city using funding to print their publication by selling ads to local businesses and organizations.
Last summer, Good In the Hood won the Storytellers For Good documentary contest which resulted in the filming of their own documentary in December. Watch the inspiring video below…
A 10-year-old girl was experimenting with a molecule-building set in her Montessori school when she created an unusual-looking specimen. Clara Lazen randomly arranged a unique combination of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon atoms, with the result being a molecule her teacher had never seen before. Intrigued, he photographed it and sent it to a chemistry professor at Humboldt State University in California, who discovered that not only was Lazen's molecule unique, it had the potential to store energy.
The Dutch are bicycle fanatics. Almost half of daily travel in the Netherlands is by bicycle. Devotees of the two-wheelers have taken the next logical step by launching what is likely the first bicycle school bus.
Who says science can't be fun? At the second annual White House Science Fair last week, President Obama got the chance to shoot a marshmallow across the State Dining Room using 14-year-old inventor Joey Hudy's "Extreme Marshmallow Cannon." (Video)
Gabe Marsh was raised to believe he is no different than anybody else. Now the athlete is inspiring more people as a finalist in America Inspired, a national contest sponsored by Examiner.com. His story was featured in the Huntsville Times, here.
A pair of brothers came into a video game shop. No sooner had the younger boy picked out his gift when his father insisted that he choose a more manly (shooter) game and scoffed at the boy's choice of a purple controller. Then, big brother stepped in.
Giselle Osborn was among a handful of youth chosen to travel to Haiti this past August as part of a delegation to build eco-friendly homes. Working side-by-side with the local villagers, they not only had to contend with oppressive heat, humidity and mosquitoes, but also the torrential rains of Hurricane Irene. Despite the miserable conditions, the Georgia teen is headed back again in mid-January to help a group of girls orphaned by the catastrophic earthquake of 2010.
A marine biology student at a NY high school learned she was named a finalist for the $100K Intel Science prize just days after her family moved into a homeless shelter.
Jake Barnett, an Indianapolis 13-year-old, has been acing college math and science courses since he was eight years old. At 13, he is a college sophomore taking honors classes in math and physics, while also doing scientific research and tutoring fellow students.
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