Equity, Equality, and Opportunity with Molly Anderson

“Students are the change, and we must listen to them.”

Powerful words from our newest Executive Board Member, Molly Anderson. Molly is an educator and trailblazer for student empowerment and success. She’s transforming science education as the Science Lead for Lighthouse Community Public Schools and is ready to bring her passion for student-led, project-based learning to #ICANHELP. 

As our Finance and Development Committee Chair, Molly will provide strategic guidance and planning support to help us scale our digital citizenship education efforts. She and her team will analyze our courses, resources, and workshops to create outreach materials and campaigns to fundraise and spread awareness about #ICANHELP. 

Molly joined the board because of the student leadership opportunities we provide through our internships, Digital4Good initiative, and digital citizenship training. Our programs are designed to empower students, be student-run, support mental health, and provide strategies to navigate online situations. And the time to scale these programs is right NOW. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “7.4% of children aged 3-17 years (approximately 4.5 million) have a diagnosed behavior problem. 7.1% of children aged 3-17 years (approximately 4.4 million) have been diagnosed with anxiety. 3.2% of children aged 3-17 years (approximately 1.9 million) have diagnosed depression.” The need for digital citizenship education and mental health support is higher than ever. It’s vital that kids and teens learn how to engage safely and thoughtfully with the digital world. To support that goal, Molly wants to ramp up and scale #ICANHELP’s programs to make them accessible to more schools and students. 

Molly believes that if we can build processes and programs that can scale, we can better identify students’ challenges and stressors when engaging with technology. From there, we can finetune and expand our programs, reaching more students and making an even bigger, more targeted impact. Molly shares, “This will help kids identify their strengths and weaknesses and to identify their abilities. By doing so we will be able to produce, identify, and improve equity sources to identify the systemic issues to be able to change them.”  

Having more people like Molly Anderson at #ICANHELP will inevitably inspire students to chase their goals and seek more opportunities to grow. Join the #ICANHELP community to help Molly and our entire team make the world a better place on and offline.