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United Nations Crowdsources the Future of Youth AIDS Prevention - Health - GOOD »

What is crowdsourcing? It’s asking the public via social media tools to perform a task or function traditionally performed by one individual or agency. In this case, the UN is asking youth around the world how they can effectively reach youth for AIDS prevention.

Through CrowdOutAIDS, under-30 activists around the world can participate in casual “awareness raising” by spreading news of the project to their social networks. Others can engage more seriously by joining the forum discussions, where participants are asked to help the UN “develop strategies, solve problems, or propose relevant and fresh ideas.” Each forum is staffed with “community mobilizers” to help moderate the discussions and reach out to new participants. Down the road, members of the community will be elected to form a “virtual drafting group” to synthesize those ideas into action items for the U.N. to apply toward its ambitious prevention goal: reduce sexual transmission of HIV by 50 percent by 2015. - GOOD.is

Read the article and let us know at youth [at] wfuna [dot] org if you would like to learn more about using effective crowdsourcing for your youth association!

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We could not be married in Israel because of Erin’s official lack of Jewishness, despite the fact that we are observant Jews who keep Shabbat and a kosher home. (Our marriage certificate is from the state of Illinois.) Likewise, our daughter could in the future be legally barred from marrying the person she loves in Israel. If the laws continue as they are, the two of us will not be able to be buried in the same state-run cemetery, and our daughter would be excluded from burial in a Jewish cemetery when her life is spent. She’ll be a citizen, just as we are, and she’ll serve in the army, just as Ariel did. But if the status quo persists, she will go from cradle to grave knowing that in the eyes of the government of the state of Israel she is not a Jew.

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Raising a Daughter in Israel Is Newly Challenging – Tablet Magazine

This is a powerful piece by Erin Kopelow and Ariel Beery. They’re a couple who married in the US, moved to Israel — which recognizes same-sex foreign marriages — and are now worried that their daughter might be legally barred from marrying the person she loves, and that they won’t be able to be buried together.

It reads like a sadly common story of lesbian couples around the world. But here’s the thing: while Erin Kopelow is a woman, Ariel Beery is a man. Israel, it seems, is increasingly discriminating against non-orthodox Jewish married couples in much the same way as other countries discriminate against gay married couples. Which I probably wouldn’t even have noticed, had Ariel not been a relatively common girl’s name.

(via felixsalmon)