The Upside Highlight: The Global Village Project

Every once in awhile, The Upside would like to bring your attention to a cause that we know about, we are working with and that we strongly believe in and stand behind. This week we’re bringing you a school in Decatur, Georgia called The Global Village Project.

The Global Village Project is a nonprofit transitional school for refugee girls displaced by conflict around the world. Their mission is amazing. They take refugee girls who have had interrupted education and take them through a middle school program designed to fundamentally prepare them for American high school.

Kazoo Magazine Wants To Show Girls They Can Do Anything

There’s good news for little girls who want to read awesome magazines about awesome things written just for them. Good News! Now there's Kazoo Magazine! Kazoo is the brainchild of Erin Bried and her five-year-old daughter Ellie. They were looking  for some cool magazines to read together and just couldn’t find one. So, they decided to make their own.

2017 shapes up to be a GREAT Year For The Future Of Melanoma Treatment

Melanoma is a cause near and dear to our hearts over here at Allegory. Often undetected until it’s too late, the rates of Melanoma are rising quickly. Too quickly.  There are over 232,000 new cases of Melanoma recorded every year and nearly 55,000 reported deaths every year worldwide, making it, undoubtedly, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

Enter 2017, the year scientists have begun to crack the melanoma code.

Girl With Prosthetic Leg Is Overwhelmed With Joy When Her New Doll Looks Just Like Her

Watching this little girl open her new doll had us breaking down in tears for all the happy reasons. Sometimes you don’t realize how much a kid needs to see themselves represented in their everyday life. For some of them it means the world.

Happy Upside Everybody!

Woman Walks To Raise Money And Awareness For, Well...Hope

Every time you open your browser or pick up a newspaper these days, anxiety inducing headlines virtually slap you in the face.The world seems to be literally turned upside down. It’s overwhelming and it’s difficult to know what to do or how to help. But for one woman, the answer was simple. Put one foot in front of the other.

Clare Kramer: Actress, Mother, Film Director, Awesome Human

We're not sure when Clare Kramer finds time to sleep, but she is clearly making the most of every day. As Founder and CEO of Geek Nation, she has become a strong voice in "geek culture," as a contributing writer, podcast host and sought-after panel moderator at the big conventions. We'd even go so far as to call her a Darling of the Cons.

10 Breakthrough Technologies of the Year

The MIT Technology Review's annual list of breakthrough technologies includes some major game-changers. By way of explanation of their choices, the Review has this to say:

"These technologies all have staying power. They will affect the economy and our politics, improve medicine, or influence our culture. Some are unfolding now; others will take a decade or more to develop. But you should know about all of them right now."

Minds Matter is Closing the Achievement Gap

Minds Matter aims to transform the lives of accomplished high school students from low-income families by preparing them for college. Through a comprehensive 3-year program that includes intensive mentoring and academics, they empower young people from families with very little financial means to achieve college readiness and success.

New Zine Aspires to Deliver Hope

Theo White is determined to inspire readers with his new zine. He feels that now more than ever is the time to encourage hope and solidarity. “Hope to me is never giving up, never giving in,” says White, aspiring to appeal to the outsiders, regardless of gender or ethnicity.

A Lifetime of Recycling By A Georgia Man Does Good For More Than Just The Environment

Recycling started off as a lesson about healthy money habits that Johnny Jennings wanted to teach his son, Brent. Back in 1985, they started collecting and selling paper and putting the proceeds into a savings account. By the time Brent Jennings was old enough to go to buy his first house, he and his father had recycled so much paper and other waste, that he had enough money saved up for a down payment.

Being Focused And Fearless Pays Off For 37 Year Old Woman Running National Non-Profit

Last Year, Lisa Lucas took over as the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, a national nonprofit whose mission is bringing books to children. It’s a tough gig for anyone to get, and especially tough for someone so young.

Dancing Changes Lives At Any Age

Kristina Hayes is a Los Angeles-based actress who stumbled (or samba-ed) into her life’s work: teaching the elderly to dance.

In this beautiful (get your hankies out) short film about Kristina's work, Waltzing Through Life by Mary Matthews, Kristina explores the ins and outs of teaching dance in nursing homes. The impact it’s having on the students lives is obvious. Some are newbies, some are coming back to dance and some have been dancing their entire lives. Kristina’s students talk about the impact dancing has made on their well-being and Kristina tells us the impact teaching classes to the elderly has had on hers.

So You Wanna Change The World?: 5 Steps to Starting Your Own Non-Profit Organization

Starting your own charitable cause is going to be a lot of hard work, no doubt about it. But, like they say, "Nothing worth doing is ever easy...and you’re going to want folks to be able to make tax deductible donations to you..." We’re not positive they say that last part, just FYI.

But regardless of the hard work ahead, here is a realistic list of first  steps you can take to start making your nonprofit a reality. And having incorporated a non-profit ourselves recently, we felt like we could share some of that experience here.

Allegory Media: We Tell Stories That Matter.

Today we thought we would share our story: the story of Allegory Media Foundation.

Allegory’s mission is to make entertainment and media content that furthers the missions of other charitable organizations and causes by telling the stories they live every day. Stories are important. They matter. Telling the story of your life or your business gives you agency in the world. It offers others a way to relate to you in a way that statistics and data just touch.

In Times Like These, What Can One Kid Do?

What can one kid do? A LOT, as it turns out! Kids are amazing. They have no fear and a very perceptive sense of right, wrong and the power of change. Meet Khloe. Khloe is a 9-year-old kid (although she was 8 when she became an activist) who noticed the differences between her particular privileges and the decided lack of privileges for some folks living around her and she decided to do something about it. So, she started her own organization called Khloe Kares. Khloe Kares is on a mission to engage in various types of community service and educate other kids on what’s going on in the world.

Women Artists Helping Other Women Artists

Los Angeles-based book publicity firm Jack Jones Literary Arts is holding its very first writer’s retreat this October at the Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, AR.

What’s exciting about this is that the retreat is open exclusively to women of color. And what’s SPECTACULAR about this is that celebrated authors like Roxanne Gay, Angela Flournoy and Natalie Diaz are providing fellowships for writers to cover the price of the retreat and, in some cases, travel costs. There are also fellowships named after literary greats like Lorraine Hansberry (oictured above) and Zora Neale Hurston.

Toddler Just Won’t Let Mom Use The Bathroom

Spoiler Alert: It’s Adorable!

This woman has the patience of a saint!

But, then again, if this little girl was showing up in our bathroom every day, there’s not a chance we could turn her away.

Happy Upside, everybody!

Give These Guys A Hand!

If there’s something we love here at The Upside, it’s putting the skills you already have to work for the greater good. And that’s just what these two University of Washington undergraduates have done: Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor have invented a pair of gloves that translate sign language into spoken English, giving hearing impaired people the opportunity to express themselves and to literally be heard.