2021

Imagine living your truth, but not being able to tell anyone. That was my experience as a young queer person in small-town Alabama. Twenty years ago, nobody, including LGBTQ+ people, had the language we have today to talk about queerness or gender outside the binary. Coded language made it even more difficult to learn about the LGBTQ+ community, much less learn about myself. Even when I felt safe (mostly in anonymous chat rooms), I found it nearly impossible to talk about what I was going through.

It wasn’t until my college professor, Cliff Simon, shared his story that I first heard someone use terms like “gay” and “lesbian” without shame or judgement. Cliff’s story proved to me that I could be happy, and it’s the reason I came out — and ultimately, my inspiration to start VideoOut, an LGBTQ+ education and advocacy nonprofit.

As the population of openly LGBTQ+ people increases around the world, VideoOut aims to shepherd people from a place of limited exposure to a place of expanded understanding.

I’m queer trans nonbinary. Not long ago, queer was a derogatory word — it’s what the bullies used when they weaponized their language against me. As attitudes and society evolved, so did our language and our understanding of the power words have to uplift or disparage people.

This year, VideoOut launched The LGBTQ+ Learning Project. It includes multiple phases, including a comprehensive educational resource and live community events that ladder up to our long term goal of building a museum on the National Mall. The Google News Initiative has supported us every step of the way during the first phase – the LGBTQ+ Language and Media Literacy Program.

Partnering with the GNI gave VideoOut the opportunity to work with a team of PhD linguists from the LGBTQ+ community to research the origin, evolution and current usage of 100 words and phrases that range from clinical terminology, like HRT and dysphoria, to slang terms used in niche communities like drag and ballroom. We will continue to expand the data visualization, designed by Polygraph, and employGoogle Trends technology to show the popularity of search terms over time.

This tool guides journalists through the complex world of LGBTQ+ vernacular. It shows who should be credited when using words that belong to marginalized communities. Most importantly, it arms reporters with knowledge, helping them to use LGBTQ+ terminology respectfully and accurately.

The program aims to inform people who are less familiar with the LGBTQ+ community, with the hopes of warming attitudes and fostering allyship. To that end, we’ve partnered with Men’s Health magazine to help contextualize the research and data in the program. We hope to reach a new audience and model how sharing information makes the most impact when it’s done across lines of difference.

The tool will be accessible through the Men’s Health website.

Queer and trans people are not new, but increasingly people are beginning to feel safe about living authentically. According to a recent Gallup poll, “One in six [U.S.] adults in Generation Z identifies as LGBT.” At the same time, a GLAAD report found 45% of non-LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. say they’re confused by the different number of terms to describe individuals who comprise the LGBTQ+ community.

Thanks to the efforts of queer and trans people on the forefront of the liberation movement, things are better now than they have ever been — but they are still fragile. The news media can help. Journalists can reference this tool to ensure they are using language appropriately. They can also interact with members of the community in their process. For example, if there is a story written about trans rights, VideoOut believes the writer should interview trans people, particularly ones who are active in the movement for trans rights.

The LGBTQ+ Language and Media Literacy Program is more than a glossary, though at its simplest, it can function that way. It’s a way to understand the LGBTQ+ community, and hopefully, it will transform the way journalists — and all of us — write and talk about LGBTQ+ people.

When I was growing up, my Misho (my grandfather) was the chief of our tribe (Prairie Band Potawatomi) and would often tell my brother and me stories and tales sacred to our Indigenous history. When I was in second grade, I asked my Misho to come into my class to tell his stories for show and tell. I was immensely proud of him, and grateful for the opportunity to share my culture with my classmates. But after he left, my classmates started calling me names like “Pocahontas,” and war-whooping at me on the playground. After that, I didn’t mention my tribe or Native affiliation to classmates or colleagues again until I was in my 20s.

When I got pregnant, I realized I wanted to reconnect with my culture. I wanted my son to know about the powerful, strong history of the Prairie Band Potawatomi, and about his family and my Misho. I threw myself into trying to learn the language, the history and our stories again. I bought my son children’s books written by Indigenous authors, and watched every film and movie I could about Indigenous culture — even if it wasn’t about the Potawatomi.

As part of reconnecting with my heritage, I also joined Google’s Aboriginal and Indigenous Network (GAIN) to stay up to date on any native-focused events at work. I’d been a member of other employee resource groups at Google before, like Women@ and Pride@, but I wanted to find a group of other Native and Indigenous people. I was thrilled to discover GAIN and see that there were not only other Indigenous Googlers like me, but that there were enough of them to organize their own group.

During this time reconnecting to my heritage, I watched a film about the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement. According to the United States Department of Justice’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Initiative, “American Indian and Alaska Native people suffer from unacceptable and disproportionately high levels of violence, which can have lasting impacts on families and communities.” In Australia and Canada, Aboriginal and First National Australian women are six times more likely to be victims of homicide than non-Native women. In the U.S., a Task Force was recently created with the purpose of working with tribal governments and developing protocols for the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples, among other things. I remember feeling completely gutted after listening to the stories of Indigenous women disappearing from their Indian reservation, never to be seen again. This is particularly traumatic for many Indigenous tribes as funeral drum and burial ceremonies are critical for the spirit to move on to the afterlife, and for those of us behind to mourn.

After seeing that film, I reached out to GAIN leadership and asked what we could do to raise awareness for MMIW. The next thing I knew, we had a working group of more than a dozen people raising awareness and resources for MMIW organizations. We’ve even held 10 events with Googlers, including panels with Black and Indigenous women to discuss the intersectionality of murdered and missing women of color, began a podcast listening group, held a 5K run and hosted other fundraising and awareness events. This experience has made me feel more connected to my tribe and my culture. It’s empowered me to share more of my whole self at work — I’ve introduced colleagues to my language, for instance, and I’ve felt like I have a space to identify as Native American. I’m proud to be a member of GAIN, and appreciate how much they help to raise awareness not only about Indigenous culture but also MMIW.

There is a saying in the Indigenous community about MMIW: “When an Indigenous woman goes missing, she goes missing twice — first her body vanishes and then her story.” With help from Googlers and GAIN, and through the work of MMIW organizations and their volunteers, I hope these Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit peoples do not go missing forever. You don’t have to be a Googler to take part: You can educate yourself about MMIW, look into policies meant to address this issue, or find ways to support organizations that advocate for MMIW. These missing people are not just faces on missing posters. They’re family — and we are all connected.

COP26 wrapped up last week, and world leaders and industry experts headed home with commitments made to work together to further reduce emissions. You can learn more about Google’s commitments in this blog post.

Even for climate negotiators, transparent and trustworthy data around emissions can be hard to come by. Historically, there has been a limited push to build the kind of data sets and models needed to create a shared fact base for everyone. So we asked ourselves: How can we help advocates, citizens, governments and businesses take action on climate, faster?

We believe philanthropic dollars can play a critical role in creating important public goods, like transparent data sets and accessible digital tools, that might not otherwise exist. The world urgently needs a solid foundation of data and tools to monitor and verify our progress to make better decisions. That’s why much of our sustainability-related philanthropy is now focused on funding the creation and organization of data and the tools to make this data easily usable.

Three of our grantees launched tools around COP26 that are examples of this in action. Climate TRACE, the world’s first independent, comprehensive, near-real time greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring platform uses large-scale data and AI models to provide neutral, accurate data for everyone. On the small business side, the work of Normative is hugely promising. They’re building out emissions estimates for SMBs and helping companies automatically compile detailed carbon reports so that they have actionable data to make better decisions around reducing their footprint. And for consumers, there’s Open Food Facts, an open-access food products database where users can see the eco-score of food products with a simple scan of the barcode from a mobile device.

We’re proud to support these organizations and look forward to more opportunities to combine philanthropic funding with technology to help everyone take action on climate change.

In case you missed it 

Here’s recent progress our grantees have made to close these data gaps.

• BlueConduit is mapping out lead pipes across the U.S, for remediation.
• Open Food Facts expanded to 50 countries — you’ll hear more on that from their co-founder Pierre Slamich below.
• Normative debuted their Industry CO2 Insights carbon emissions accounting engine for small businesses at COP26.
• Restor launched an open data platform built on Google Earth Engine that allows anyone to select an area around the world and analyze its restoration potential.
• Dark Matter Labs launched their first version of TreesAI (Trees As Infrastructure), an open source platform to make it easy to map, monitor and forecast ecosystem services. The tool helps local authorities attract funds to develop and maintain urban nature-focused tools to fight climate change.
• Climate TRACE, supported by $8 million in funding from Google.org and a team of Google.org Fellows, talked about their emissions tracking project in this video.

Hear from one of our grantees: Open Food Facts

Pierre Slamich is the co-founder of Open Food Facts, a collaborative effort to create a worldwide database of food products, thanks to mobile apps that also empower citizens to make more informed food choices. Last spring, Open Food Facts received a $1.3 million Google.org grant and support from a team of 11 Google.org Fellows.

A few words with a Google.org Fellow: Astrid Weber

Astrid Weber is a UX Manager on the Google Assistant team and currently working with Normative for a six month Fellowship.

Women of color are doing incredible things online. They are creating educational and inspiring content, and making their marks as influencers in fashion and beauty, health and wellness, business, and more. They’re making a living building their brands and presenting their authentic selves . And they’re creating strong communities around their shared experiences.

Today, on Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, we’re launching The Conversation — a new YouTube series to share and celebrate the experiences of women of color creators. Each interview will feature a new woman of color creator talking about her background and journey, including her struggles and successes. Guests will share how they’ve built brands that resonate with others, and how they’ve turned their passions into full-time careers. They’ll also discuss how gender, race and culture have influenced their paths, the ups and downs of getting to where they are today, and what they hope to share with the world. No topic is off the table, including how to handle haters and overcome creator burnout.

Our first episode features creator Tyla-Lauren Gilmore. In 2015, after many years of straightening her hair, Tyla-Lauren decided to embrace her natural curls. She began documenting her personal transformation on Instagram and YouTube, and almost immediately, other women took notice. Today, more than 150,000 subscribers follow her beauty and lifestyle posts across her social media channels. Tyla-Lauren continues to share her personal stories in the hopes of inspiring other women to embrace their natural beauty and feel comfortable in their own skin.

Next month, we’ll hear from beauty and style influencer, fashion model and creative director Hannah Mussette. Hannah started creating content at the age of 12. Now, at 21, she’s a popular social media personality sharing modeling, fashion, makeup and hair care tips on YouTube and Instagram, and inviting candid discussions on topics such as self-care and social justice. She also co-founded a line of hair care products for natural Black hair called JuMu. The youngest creator interviewed in our series, Hannah shares what it’s been like to grow up online in front of an audience that supports and occasionally scrutinizes her content, which has evolved over the nine years she’s been posting.

The goal of The Conversation is to pull back the curtain on creators like Tyla-Lauren and Hannah so you can get to know the women behind the brands. Visit the Google for Creators YouTube channel to watch the first episode of The Conversation, and share what you thought in the comments.

Editor’s Note from Ludovic Blecher, Head of Google News Initiative Innovation: The GNI Innovation Challengeprogram is designed to stimulate forward-thinking ideas for the news industry. The story below by Amos Gelb, publisher of D.C. Witness and Baltimore Witness, is part of an innovator seriessharing inspiring stories and learnings from funded projects.

Violent crime is surging across America while cities scramble to reform their criminal justice systems. This is especially difficult because there is no single American criminal justice system. Every jurisdiction has its own practices, methods and even laws. What they all have in common, however, is a lack of reliable, up-to-date information that could drive local change by providing transparency and accountability.

Starting in 2015, D.C. Witness developed a new approach to criminal justice journalism to try to address this issue. Traditional crime reporting can give an incomplete and warped view of what’s really going on, often based on only the most salacious cases. Instead, D.C. Witness reports on every step of every homicide from act to judicial resolution. This offers a distinct perspective across the entire criminal justice landscape.

Since launch, the D.C. Witness team reported on more than 1,300 homicide cases in Washington, D.C., wrote stories and gathered data. The journalism was strong, but the website was clunky and the data a mess. The result: D.C. Witness was having little impact.

The team realized they needed a better way to manage and present the data. But this would require resources beyond the existing budget. So D.C. Witness applied for support from the Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge. D.C. Witness was selected by the GNI with the goal of reengineering their systems. The result was nothing short of a reincarnation.

The GNI process, which requires drawing up detailed project milestones, forced D.C. Witness to tear everything down, reviewing how each process worked, how and why. The team realized they were getting in their own way. They’d committed the cardinal journalist sin of falling in love with their own work, losing sight of its potential value and the audience it served.

Further proof came almost immediately after the database and website were relaunched. As court activity has picked up after the peak of the pandemic, D.C. Witness’s audience has been using new functions developed to provide readers with better, customized case information.

Data and reporting work on violence reduction programs called “violence interrupters” was also effective. D.C. politicians were promoting the programs, boosting funding by $10 million, but there had been neither evaluation nor oversight. The GNI-remade platform enabled D.C. Witness to provide the first public data showing the programs were not working as claimed, dispersing rather than reducing homicides. The resulting public outrage brought critical scrutiny.

Having realized the impact that making the data visible was having, the team launched a second website out of Baltimore, MD. There, the court that dealt with violent felonies routinely held back crucial public case information. In response to Baltimore Witness reporting, the court changed its procedures making more information accessible to the public.

The new website has also brought success in viewership with its audience growing 50% month-over-month since its launch.

While GNI helped D.C. (and now Baltimore) Witness better understand how they can reach people and serve their communities, this is just the beginning for the reporting teams. Now, D.C. Witness and Baltimore Witness can focus on maximizing their impact for everyone’s benefit.