This past summer, I discovered the NGO Orange Duffle Bag. When a foster child turns 18, they are pushed out of care and encouraged to start their lives outside the system. Orange Duffle Bag provides mentoring and life-building skills in an effort to help foster children navigate a new chapter in their lives. Without a self-directed plan, many teens who age out of foster care are at high risk of becoming homeless, forced into prostitution, drug or alcohol addicted, or in jail by the time they’re 25. Only 3 percent go on to higher education and only 3 percent of that number graduate from college. Because so many people have access to their files, many become victims of identity theft. Upon trying to get a job or take out a college loan, they are greeted with the fact that someone has run up debts in their name.
After talking with Orange Duffle Bag, I was struck by the fact that some of the stories sounded as if they where a premise for a science fiction story.
Flash-forward to Columbia University, where I teach a course called “Building Storyworlds: The art, craft & biz of storytelling in 21c.” This graduate class is centered on the concept of purposeful storytelling.
My theory is that storytelling in the 21st century has an opportunity to be transformative in a way that enables those formerly known as the audience to become collaborators. Thanks to the democratization of tools to create and distribute media, the formerly top-down entertainment industry is now bubbling up with new stories and business models. So at Columbia, we are working to build a Story Design lab that mixes narrative design, game mechanics, and design science to tackle social problems.
Last week, we concluded a pilot for the Story Design lab. Columbia students and former foster kids (one being filmmaker Lydia Joyner) worked together to build an immersive storytelling experience. Participants came to realize that this was not just a sci-fi tale, but a story rooted in the experiences and feelings that our collaborating foster kids went through when they aged out of care.
By designing with instead of designing for, the students and former foster kids built an experience that created emotional connections and empathy for those who age out of care. The results were so strong that the framework for the experience is being considered by organizations like the Brevard Family Partnership as a way to help potential foster care parents. The hope is that by placing someone in an immersive experience, they will be able to understand on an emotional level what it is like to be a foster child.
Who can you design with?
My wish for the future:
How can we design with, instead of for, in order to build better social services?
This is part of a series of posts examining the idea time and imagining our collective future. Go here to tell us your wish for the future.
Reddit user Girlfriendhatesmefor’s three-year-old pitbull, Otis, had recently become overprotective of his wife. So he asked the online community if they knew what might be wrong with the dog.
“A week or two ago, my wife got some sort of stomach bug,” the Reddit user wrote under the subreddit /r/dogs. “She was really nauseous and ill for about a week. Otis is very in tune with her emotions (we once got in a fight and she was upset, I swear he was staring daggers at me lol) and during this time didn’t even want to leave her to go on walks. We thought it was adorable!”
His wife soon felt better, butthe dog’s behavior didn’t change.
Girlfriendhatesmefor began to fear that Otis’ behavior may be an early sign of an aggression issue or an indication that the dog was hurt or sick.
So he threw a question out to fellow Reddit users: “Has anyone else’s dog suddenly developed attachment/aggression issues? Any and all advice appreciated, even if it’s that we’re being paranoid!”
The most popular response to his thread was by ZZBC.
Any chance your wife is pregnant?
ZZBC | Reddit
The potential news hit Girlfriendhatesmefor like a ton of bricks. A few days later, Girlfriendhatesmefor posted an update and ZZBC was right!
“The wifey is pregnant!” the father-to-be wrote. “Otis is still being overprotective but it all makes sense now! Thanks for all the advice and kind words! Sorry for the delayed reply, I didn’t check back until just now!”
Redditors responded with similar experiences.
Anecdotal I know but I swear my dog knew I was pregnant before I was. He was super clingy (more than normal) and was always resting his head on my belly.
realityisworse | Reddit
So why do dogs get overprotective when someone is pregnant?
Jeff Werber, PhD, president and chief veterinarian of the Century Veterinary Group in Los Angeles, told Health.com that “dogs can also smell the hormonal changes going on in a woman’s body at that time.” He added the dog may “not understand that this new scent of your skin and breath is caused by a developing baby, but they will know that something is different with you—which might cause them to be more curious or attentive.”
The big lesson here is to listen to your pets and to ask questions when their behavior abruptly changes. They may be trying to tell you something, and the news may be life-changing.
Throughout history, women have stood up and fought to break down barriers imposed on them from stereotypes and societal expectations. The trailblazers in these photos made history and redefined what a woman could be. In doing so, they paved the way for future generations to stand up and continue to fight for equality.
While conspiracy theories are not limited to any topic, there is one type of event that seems particularly likely to spark them: mass shootings, typically defined as attacks in which a shooter kills at least four other people.
When one person kills many others in a single incident, particularly when it seems random, people naturally seek out answers for why the tragedy happened. After all, if a mass shooting is random, anyone can be a target.
