IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2017 - 42

started to play songs they knew, and
they were really thinking about the
intervals," recalls Waltz. "But it's also
fun for kids who haven't been exposed
to music because they don't think in the
linear way or about the absolute notes.
Instead, they just hit buttons and are
open to all these other ideas of how to
play music."
While most kids at the World Science Festival demonstration were under
the age of ten and thus had little concept of how the technology behind the
kidChillian works, Gruenbaum says,
"We had some very intelligent questions
and suggestions of how to improve the
instrument" from the young audience.
"I think it's great that kids see us merging art and technology and learn about
the concept of relative pitch," he continues. "Maybe someday one of them will
apply relativity to something completely
different, like driving a vehicle."
In the meantime, Waltz and Gruenbaum are collaborating on updates to
the kidChillian and the development of a
product line using the Chillian technology. For the kidChillian, there are additional sounds designed by Gruenbaum
that the pair would like to make available. They're also looking into experimentations with notation, based on a
suggestion from the audience after they
demonstrated the instruments at Tufts
University in Massachusetts.
"We're coming up with a way to enable
notation, so that kids can play entire
songs based on the representation in front
of them," says Waltz. "This would allow
them to play songs by looking at the colored dots and hitting the corresponding
color buttons on the kidChillian."
In addition to the samChillian and kidChillian, the pair are working through a
miniChillian, lilChillian, iChillian, drumChillian, and euroChillian. "The overall idea is to take the original concept I
developed and apply it to other forms that
are accessible or of interest to different
groups," explains Gruenbaum. Adds Waltz,
"it seems to me that the Chillian technology is a perfect home for a variety of product ideas." And while that might someday
include vehicles or other innovative ideas
of which these early-adopting kidChillian

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

players could conceive, at the moment,
the product plans center around music-
leading Gruenbaum to say he and Waltz
are "basically a touring band" of products.
-Leslie Prives

Youth Leading Youth

Fighting for the environment
By the time Charles Orgbon III was in
college at the University of Georgia, he
was running Greening Forward, an environmental organization led by young
people for young people. If you get youth
leaders involved in substantive ways, Orgbon believes, you are not only addressing
environmental issues but also the large
racial diversity deficit that exists within
the environmental movement.
Greening Forward didn't happen all
at once, Orgbon says. One thing led to
another, and more people kept climbing aboard.
The truth is that Orgbon became an
environmental activist because his middle school required community service.
He decided to pick up litter around his
school's campus, and because he's the
curious type (and he really wanted to
earn an A), he discovered a lot in the
process. The more he learned, the more
questions he had. One question he kept
coming back to was: what can I do to
share what I'm learning?
There was an awakening as he realized that all around him were not just
environmental issues but also all of
these tools for investigation available
online free of charge. Most people knew
little about either. Orgbon wanted to
connect people to these resources.
Take Google Earth. Online platforms
like Global Forest Watch, built off of
Google Earth, provide the before-andafter effects of deforestation. The National Snow and Ice Data Center uses Google
Earth to show 30 years of changing sea
ice extents for both the Arctic and Antarctica. It's all available to the public.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2017.2746364
Date of publication: 8 November 2017

DECEMBER 2017

Orgbon says the Greening Forward website grew from there as "what
started as me just learning about these
issues, other people saw as an opportunity for young people to really speak
about these issues."
Soon Orgbon found himself with a
staff of youth volunteers, and the mission of Greening Forward expanded.
One of its first tasks was to create written how-to guides for young people
that focused on different environmental issues. The team also crafted lesson
plans for teachers to use in their curriculum. Before long, Greening Forward was partnering with companies,
raising money, and giving out grants
that have allowed many young people
to put their ideas into action. Since its
inception in 2008, Greening Forward
has granted in the neighborhood of
US$70,000 toward projects that allow
youth of all ages to monitor rivers and
streams, coordinate clean up events,
and educate the public regarding recycling plastic bottle usage.
Grant-winner Hannah Testa was featured on CNN International for her creation of a plastics pollution awareness
day. Cornell student Dejah Powell used
her grant to fund a project back in her
hometown of Chicago called Get Them
to the Green. This two-week summer
camp introduces lower-income children
to environmental stewardship through
beach cleanups, design projects, mentoring, and field trips where they learn
about urban sustainable agriculture.
Bonner Scholar Iesha Baldwin is
working on plastics pollution awareness
at Spelman College in Atlanta. Her initiative, #RefillNotLandfill, encourages
fellow students to make a commitment
to forego use of all disposable plastics.
This is Baldwin's first foray into
environmental activism. She was in the
audience for a roundtable discussion
in Atlanta with a panel of young environmental activists under the age of
15 that was convened by the Captain
Planet Foundation with Greening Forward's partnership. Inspired, Baldwin got
involved. "This is what the organization
is about," Orgbon says. "Lifting up those
young people who are already doing the

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2017