News We Can Appreciate

It’s a time of year when many of us gather and take note of things we’re thankful for. So the ProSocial team recently sat around a conference table, rather than a Thanksgiving table, and reflected on a few pieces of positivity from 2018 in the realm of social impact.

Record Civic Engagement
For the midterm elections, transportation companies such as Uber, Lyft, and Lime scooters subsidized rides to help get people get to the polls, crowdsourced pizza delivery sustained voters waiting on long lines, and record turnout resulted in the most diverse Congress ever. (Among the unprecedented number of women in this newly elected group is Georgia’s Lucy McBath, who became a leading gun safety advocate after she lost her 17-year-old son to gun violence; she was featured in the 2015 documentary “The Armor of Light,” for which ProSocial strategized a campaign to bring conversations about gun safety to communities around the country.) The year also gave rise to youth activism: Teen leaders emerged in the wake of the Parkland shooting, surveys show that students are demonstrating increased political engagement, and a lawsuit waged by children to spur the government to address climate change recently won Supreme Court approval to go forward.

Less Expensive Higher Education
NYU Medical School offered free tuition to all current and future students. And for everyone else still saddled by student loans, the newly launched Shared Harvest Fund has established a brilliant plan to enable people to reduce their debt by volunteering for nonprofits.

Diversity in Entertainment
A resurgence of box office success for documentaries was led by two films shining a spotlight on inspirational figures: “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”, about children’s TV icon Fred Rogers, and “RBG,” about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians” advanced black and Asian representation on the big screen. Warner Media (parent company of Warner Bros. and HBO) became the first Hollywood studio to adopt an “inclusion rider” policy to promote diverse hiring in all areas of production. The coming-of-age dramas “Boy Erased” (currently in theaters) and “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” (ProSocial conducted outreach for this film, now available on iTunes) helped bring the harm of conversion therapy into the news; meanwhile, LGBTQ+ characters on TV reached a record high (8.8 percent), according to an annual survey by GLAAD. And for the first time, the People’s Choice Awards featured a People’s Champion Award, created in partnership with “Erase the Hate,” NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment’s social impact campaign, to recognize people taking action against hate, discrimination, and bias. (The winner, Bryan Stevenson, civil rights advocate and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, is someone ProSocial’s CEO has admired ever since seeing him speak at the TED conference.)

Hope for Our Planet
Plastic straw restrictions are a small but noteworthy ecological step. (The city of Santa Monica, where ProSocial’s offices are headquartered, went even further to ban all single-use plastics for prepared foods.) And a site launched in May, The New Climate, is devoted to sharing the latest positive environmental news.

Healthier Habits
The smoking rate among U.S. adults is at an all-time low—14 percent—since 1965.

What other recent developments are improving our collective well-being? Tell us your thoughts on Twitter or Facebook.