Smiley Movement
Diversifying the white male dominated tech industry is quite the task, especially outside major cities. But there are two kickass Australian women who’ve found neon-lit ways to start working on this, especially in regional areas.
Melbourne-based tech education startup Code Like a Girl has launched a mobile, pop-up classroom with the aim to provide coding workshops to young women, and diversify the tech industry in the long run.
Double Click, based in Shotton, is a service which used to be run by Flintshire Council to provide employment and training opportunities.
However, for the last two years it has been operating as an independent company and has turned a small profit.
Its success comes despite its base being targetted during 2017 by criminals who broke in and caused damage to the building and computers.
Mark Mutlow and Grant Jones, currently residents with Threshold Housing Link, are already supplying three varieties of fruit juice to early adopters among Swindon’s Businesses Against Homelessness. The project is proving so successful, they hope to expand into a shop at the Brunel Centre.
It started at Culvery Court, Threshold’s emergency hostel for homeless men. Threshold funding, along with donations of fruit and vegetables donated by local shops, were used to make healthy juices for residents each morning, to make sure they had a nutritious start to the day. Now Mark is hoping to develop the juicing operation into a business – called Fresh Health and Wellness Juices.
Many people with disabilities in the world’s poorest countries are unable to attend school or find work. Barriers such as stigma or a lack of support prevent them from realising their full potential.
Community projects, supported by UK aid, attempt to tackle these barriers by investing in, and improving, the lives of those living with disabilities.
Meet the people whose lives have changed through these programmes.
A new sanitary pad initiative is giving girls and women in Papua New Guinea a safe way to deal with menstruation while simultaneously providing economic opportunities for Aboriginal women in northwest Queensland.
Despite living in one of Queensland’s most disadvantaged areas, women from the community of Doomadgee have spent months sewing more than 1,300 washable sanitary pads and making hundreds of Moon Sick Care Bags for girls and women living in remote Papua New Guinea.
A British astrophysicist who was passed over for the Nobel prize for her discovery of exotic cosmic objects that light up the heavens has won the most lucrative award in modern science.
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a visiting professor at Oxford University, was chosen by a panel of leading scientists to receive the $3m (£2.3m) special Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics for her landmark work on pulsarsand a lifetime of inspiring leadership in the scientific community.
Veronica D’Souza is a social entrepreneur with heart and soul who strongly believes in using innovative business solutions to improve the world. In 2011, she co-founded Ruby Cup, which addresses the lack of affordable menstrual hygiene products for women and girls in poverty.
Since then she has been recognized as a ‘Global Shaper’ by the World Economic Forum and was designated as the youngest jury member at INDEX, an award honoring the best sustainable, life-improving designs. With an educational background in international business, politics, languages and culture, she founded CARCEL in 2016, a Copenhagen-based fashion label whose products are produced by women in prison and made from 100% natural materials.
“I believe in the power of sustainable business models to address societal challenges and scale these solutions. There is something very dignifying in seeing people as resourceful rather than as victims that need help. It is also my belief that if you provide opportunities for women, you help the entire family”