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Kids: Everyone’s Growth Market
I have edited out the Internet statistics and kids materials because as
we know - it is a natural development of "media coherent" youth
- and kid specific programming is a top priority to education as well
as the marketplace. .
"The Kid’s Init" site has a new take on the Internet marketplace.
By targeting specific issues located within this domain, the effectivness
of both marketing and education are increased.
For example, "Kid on a limb," is a niche that
provides content on ecological and environmental challenges – Here's
a marketplace that displays all you’ll ever need to buy in the realm
of out door sporting activities: One can shop for books on adventure or
survival skills, trail maps, or freeze dried food, camping gear, hiking
boots, mountain bikes – any of the latest in toys or equipment –
even travel packages for the novice and/or professional - and even includes
the television programming directly relating to each sport.
With twenty segments of niche marketing serving the multiple needs of
this dynamic age group, The Youtopia web has more than a finger on the
pulse of the buyer, it has the loyalty of future consumers, whose progress
to financial security is firmly rooted in Youtopia soil.
An Empire of Creativity and Collaboration:
• empowers the productivity and purchasing habits
of a largely ignored, and increasingly influential age group.
• provides enhanced connectivity
between:
Families
Foundations/Fellowships/Grants
Social research studies
Government statistics
Radio and Television programming
Publishing
Corporations
Marketing
Educational Institutions
• has a matrix for feedback on the success of programs
for services to kids
• reviews valuable information accumulated by local
concerns
to a global range of users
• offers guidance, information, and mentoring to
an uneducated population
• builds bridges in communications
• increases self esteem
• broadens computer education skills
• encourages decision making abilities for character
development
Here are some of the reasons why a site like this
is so popular;
Kid in a Closet/ Sexual Identity
"Sara" is thinking about having sex with her boyfriend. She
is feeling pressure from within as well as without. She has grown up in
a media prominent culture that is saturated in suggestive behaviors, and,
without really knowing it is already in over her head. Who will give her
the answers to questions like, "What if I change my mind in the middle
of it all?" and, "What if he won’t wear a condom, and/or
"What are the best ways to say stop, let’s wait, or…."
Whatever!
She turns to the Kid’s Init; where she can get more than just the
facts about sex and sexually transmitted diseases. Sara can read true
stories as well as the facts, hear poems or songs written by peers that
touch her, turn her mind, and help her to see how she too can navigate
these troubling issues. Sarah might draw an image to share with the other
users, to let them know how isolated she has been feeling. She can get
information on local facilities for birth control, or talk in a monitored
chat room with other girls for immediate camaraderie and products that
might work for her. She can also relate privately with an on line councilor
if the subject matter is just too embarrassing….perhaps a previous
sexual encounter with a family relative comes into play, or a feeling
that she is far more attracted to her own sex.
Getting the facts, the story, and the place to exercise alternatives (in
a safe and judgement free environment) is the philosophy behind "the
Kid’s Init" web site, where high technology gets to hold hands
with the "reach one – teach one" philosophy that is saving
a lot of kid’s lives today. It’s a new take on peer to peer
communications fostering capabilities.
By the way, a "Seventeen" magazine editor saw Sarah’s illustration
online. (As a parent viewing the site in order to understand her own daughter’s
issues.) Though Sara is registered as only an anonymous number, through
the proper channels this artwork was purchased and featured in Seventeen’s
next publication for an article on alienation. The self esteem this kind
of activity can foster makes all the difference between Sarah’s feeling
at the affect of her problems, and finding other creative solutions for
feeling good about herself.
To Be or Not To Be: A Scroll and Kill with Purpose
David has no quest for earrings or extraneous style. And at seven years,
none of all this internet data means anything unless he can apply it to
his daily life: Will he be able to impress his friends, outsmart the teacher,
laugh at others problems while secretly learning from them, or act as
a master of the universe by offering his own experiences from afar.…
Will he play a game of scroll and kill that does more than increase joystick
dexterity?
Like most kids heading towards puberty, David wants experiences - not
"lessons". By the time he’s sixteen, he’ll be too
cool unfortunately, to ask for information on sex or drugs, drinking or
depression. Lucky for David that Kid’s Init has provided a jump on
the whole issue by offering a "trouble simulator" to kids of
the scroll and kill persuasion. The Kid’s Init.com is not just a
game and more than a simulation. It is a learning engine where kids can,
perhaps for the first time, freely experiment with their own decisions
(before they have to make these decisions in their real lives) and where
they can safely explore the consequences of their behavior. Players enter
a three dimensional world where "the enemy" is seen as a crisis/opportunity.
Issues are encountered, and decisions create a battleground.
By incorporating the real statistics of peer content as well as factual
data, the problem simulator becomes a road map with signposts that the
user will later recognize in their real world experiences. Can he test
his skills in a life and death balance with crack, or die a thousand times
just for the sake of making every wrong choice in the book? Can he emulate
an attitude (good, bad or ugly) just to see where it gets him? Real life
decisions about high risk behaviors are made easier with this kind of
practice.
Kid in a Bottle/This One’s for The Road
Amy is a typical 14 year old girl. She is one of the 51.6% of students
who have had a drink in the last 30 days. Her new boyfriend is one of
the 36.2 % males who could easily report episodic heavy drinking. So,
you think some of those late night escapades may include drinking and
driving? You’re probably right. Is there a way to stay out of an
argument, and still bring your kid home safely? In the struggle for independence,
how can a parent reduce the risks of drinking and driving without ensuring
further alienation?
Mastercard has created the first serious kid support system that works
on the streets as well as online; a smart card/pager for pre paid taxi
service home. Amy has to earn the "card" by reviewing the site
material on drinking and driving – there are many devastating facts
as well as stories from kids who know of blinded, maimed or lost friends.
She plays "the drinking game" and becomes "qualified"
as she now knows how important it is to get that safe ride home. Purchased
by concerned parents, with discount rates from taxi services, this effort
has created a social safety net for many who are at risk, whether they
are doing the drinking or not.
And yes, in time those same cards can have added buying privileges based
on parental guidance, family economy, and employment. Does Mastercard
gain a niche in the new market? If they do, they certainly have earned
that margin. A preliminary gateway for new e biz? Yes, perhaps someday
we will all invest this way….
The Kid’s Init is inviting everyone to the challenge: large corporations,
television networks, universities, and foundations can provide technical
support, databases, software, mentoring, and/or funds for management.
They can incorporate existing services to the site – leveraging their
contribution, and/or make a contribution that gives them some identity
at a fraction of the cost of doing so on their own.
The Fix - Working on what’s not yet broken
So many "role models" have made the "use and abuse"
of drugs popular, that we hardly know what’s wrong – the existence
of the lifestyle is a given. The drug/prescription/social environment
we live in is so full of duplicity that any argument for or against drug
use is available and palatable.
What is the best way to see that you are heading for a lifestyle of addiction?
How can we help kids to draw the line for themselves? By talking to kids
who have already crossed it.
Peer to peer learning – from kids who have been there and back to
those who are in the trouble already and don’t yet know it. A revolving
dialogue of this nature is a great learning environment. Particularly
for teens – because as you may remember...
"My Parents just don’t understand"
Listen in on the group discussions that teens generate in an anonymous
and monitored chat room. Bill Moyers PBS Special, "Close to Home"
illustrates how this can work...
Project Based Studies, Mentoring and Money
Rebuild our Schools:
As an example, Lets look at Peter’s independent study on chemicals
and the brain. His own preoccupation with smoking leads him to "Kid
in a Chimney," A place whereby examining images of tar filled lungs,
and listening to the breathless whispers of those who have lost the battle
with cancer leads him to an independent study on how smoking affects pulmonary
activity.
Monitoring his own heart rate as it is influenced by different quantities
of cigarettes, allows for a personal discovery to take place. It also
may spark a further interest in how other chemical additives consumed
in our daily diets parallel the affects of those chemicals in cigarettes.
Peter’s education is mentored by a local Health/Sports facility,
a Life Insurance company, or the culprits themselves – cigarette
companies. As long as he progresses, they’ll continue to foster his
developing interests in an effort to mature his employability.
Smart children get that way (smart) when they are allowed to follow their
own interests. In guided project based studies tailored to their own needs.
Students in this environment naturally allow a wider range of more pertinent
information to be processed. How one digests information, and takes positive
actions towards makes decisions truly is more effective in this way…(as
opposed to passively absorbing arbitrary facts) because we are starting
from a more powerful source – ourselves. Exercising this faculty
encourages what can be easily determined as a highly valued resource in
any society – active and responsible individuals.
Peter’s studies are valuable to everyone – so he places his
work on the KID’s Init network – and asks mentors or a favorite
local business to fund the creation of these web pages. Half the donation
goes directly to his school for students – not administration....
The other half is divided up to the KID’s Init service management,
equipment – etc. Schools that participate can then have these accumulated
funds matched by government programs. Templates for these opportunities
are available through the KID’s Init site for grant writers. Page
by page our schools are entering the twenty-first century.
"Over the next ten years, public schools will need $22 billion to
fix up decrepit classrooms and build enough new ones to meet enrollment
increases of 100,000 students each year. A bond for 6.2 million is on
the ballot for voters to decide how the seventh largest economy in the
world will invest in their future" (Greg Lucas, Chronicle Sacramento
Bureau, St. Patrick’s Day 1998.)
By investing money in the TKII project, we could provide a more efficient
use of these tax dollars.
Taking the Internet to a New Level
Crystalizes the Information of Existing Networks/Producing Smarter
Kids
As an archetype for future media entertainment venues, when television,
radio, and publishers first flirted with "media coherence" concerned
members of the 1998 World Congress were already synergizing their collaboration
between Internet, Inter networked media and the economy. "Creating
a new measurement of wealth based not on possession or power, but on knowledge."
Picture an "Upstairs/Downstairs" episodic television series
where actors living in a halfway house environment parallel the init/chapters
of the Kids Init web site. ("Trainspotting" meets "Power
Rangers in a "Friends" atmosphere".)
Content contributions from the site act as story lines for the program
writers. Alternatively, the web site picks up the slack on some very important
details of related issues, and encourages the repetition of vital information,
which is again reprocessed as the series matures. Viewers who want to
see (and perhaps vote on) what happens next will influence programming
development. And again, all of the above are seeds for thought on KWAG’s
Kid’s Init radio channel which features a live/call in talk show
on kids issues. Parallel relationships like these build "media coherence"
enabling both kids and parents in their own choice of subjects.
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