Right after the tornado hit the small Massachusetts town of Munson, high school senior Laura Sauriol logged into Facebook and noticed that residents’ questions about who to help, how to get help, and where to get information started flying. Seeing her town needed an information clearinghouse, she created the Monson Tornado Watch 2011 page on Facebook, the Hartford Courant reports. “Over the next few days, Sauriol’s two older brothers and her classmates headed out to clear debris in this small town of 8,560 or so while Sauriol stayed at her computer to answer questions, direct volunteers, and serve as the glue. She took a few hours’ break to attend her high school baccalaureate, then returned to so many emails and messages that she was up until 3 the next morning to answer them all.” Now she’s encouraging peers to hold fundraisers and telling them where the funding needs are. And “a teachers at a nearby technical school” is using her project on an exam as an example of how to make a positive impact with social media (see also “‘Top 5 things parents should know about youth online’: Study”). [Thanks to Det. Frank Dannahey in Connecticut for pointing this story out.]
[…] About young people who are leveraging the revolution here, here, and here […]