Passage 2
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
A
[I] Wilson To was beginning his final year at school when he decided to get a school Facebook page started. Nothing unusual about that, you might think, but Wilson's motivation for setting up the page wasn't to discover the latest school gossip. [II] He believed that Facebook could help him take on a problem that was making life difficult for a few schoolmates: bullying.
Without mentioning his plans to his friends, Wilson launched 'A-tech compliments', a Facebook page which invited students to send in anonymous compliments about each other, their teachers and their school. [III] At first, Wilson wasn't expecting much of a response and he monitored messages closely in case unpleasant comments or racism appeared. However, Wilson needn't have worried. 'A-tech compliments' was an instant success and quickly had five hundred regular followers, all of them being positive. It seems that the students were just waiting for the opportunity to say nice things about each other and their school!
[IV] Although everybody wanted to know who had thought up this great idea, Wilson kept his identity secret until the end of the school year, when the school intercom asked the creator of the Facebook page to reveal himself. Wilson stepped forward to receive the applause and thanks of the whole school. He was also given one last job to do: train a new administrator so the page could continue after Wilson stepped down. Today, the idea has also spread to high schools across the country.
B
VOICE OF THE COMMUNITY
A teacher spotted Rene Silva's talent for writing when he was just eleven and encouraged him to set up a community newspaper. Rene accepted the challenge and took on publishing Voz da Comunidade (Voice of the Community), and he soon realised that the monthly newspaper could help his neighbourhood. Rene lives on the edge of Rio de Janeiro in a favela, a poor town that used to be controlled by armed drug gangs. Rene's newspaper quickly became a vehicle for protest about the poor conditions in the favela and gave a voice to local residents who were campaigning to make the community a safer and better place to live.
But one Saturday morning, Voz da Comunidade was transformed from a small local newspaper into Brazil's most popular source of information. The government had decided to force the drug dealers out of the favela and had sent soldiers onto the streets. Journalists from the mainstream media waited outside the favela for news, but Rene and his team of teenage reporters were in the middle of the action. Using their mobile phones to film and take photos, the Voz da Comunidade Twitter account suddenly had thousands more followers than usual and Rene's reporting was praised by the mainstream media. More importantly, it started a debate about how the government should help the inhabitants of Brazil's hundreds of favelas. Rene and the Voz da Comunidade brought positive change to the community.
(Adapted from Friend Global 12)
