Author Archives: Jen Carter

Google.org Fellows help small businesses fight climate change

Helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) cut down their carbon emissions is a vital step towards tackling climate change. 90% of emissions from large corporations can be traced to SMEs that play key roles in the creation of products and services.

However, most SMEs do not have the resources to measure and manage their emissions. In a recent survey by the SME Climate Hub, 63% of respondents said they did not feel they have the right skills to take the appropriate climate action.

Normative, a company based in Sweden who has developed the world's first carbon accounting engine, has been taking on this challenge by helping businesses calculate their climate footprints. Over the past 6 months, a team of 12 Google.org Fellows, comprising software engineers, UX designers and product managers from different Google offices across the globe came together with Normative to help build a carbon calculator for SMEs.

The Business Carbon Calculator will be available for free, from today, to businesses through the UN-backed SME Climate Hub.

Gif of Business Carbon Calculator

With this tool, SMEs will be able to measure their carbon footprint and identify emission hotspots, including direct and indirect emissions. This data will give SMEs a great starting point to define their own sustainability plans and map appropriate actions to cut down on their emissions.

Prior to the official launch of the tool, 123 organizations have used the tool during a 2-week long beta program and tracked a total of 54,000 tons of CO2 equivalent. This is comparable to CO2 emissions from burning 26 tons of coal.

We first supported Normative’s work through a €1M euro Google.org Impact Challenge on Climate. The team and vision were so impressive that we decided to deepen this relationship by bringing our people alongside our philanthropy through a Google.org Fellowship — it felt like a natural next step.

And so a team of Googlers worked full-time on an area they were extremely passionate about. Gabriella Araújo, a Product Marketing Manager in London, shared,

“It was fantastic to work on climate tech. I had been involved in sustainability projects at Google on the side. And working full time on climate was an incredible opportunity. I worked across different areas of the launch- I was close to product development and loved thinking about different ways to bring a carbon accounting tool to SMEs. I'm very proud of what we've built and I know this will add real value for small businesses on their race to zero.”

The challenge of slowing down climate change is a large one. We hope that the carbon calculator, along with the resources on the SME Climate Hub, will encourage SMEs all over the world to start their journey towards making their businesses more sustainable and resilient.

Google.org Fellows help small businesses fight climate change

Helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) cut down their carbon emissions is a vital step towards tackling climate change. 90% of emissions from large corporations can be traced to SMEs that play key roles in the creation of products and services.

However, most SMEs do not have the resources to measure and manage their emissions. In a recent survey by the SME Climate Hub, 63% of respondents said they did not feel they have the right skills to take the appropriate climate action.

Normative, a company based in Sweden who has developed the world's first carbon accounting engine, has been taking on this challenge by helping businesses calculate their climate footprints. Over the past 6 months, a team of 12 Google.org Fellows, comprising software engineers, UX designers and product managers from different Google offices across the globe came together with Normative to help build a carbon calculator for SMEs.

The Business Carbon Calculator will be available for free, from today, to businesses through the UN-backed SME Climate Hub.

Gif of Business Carbon Calculator

With this tool, SMEs will be able to measure their carbon footprint and identify emission hotspots, including direct and indirect emissions. This data will give SMEs a great starting point to define their own sustainability plans and map appropriate actions to cut down on their emissions.

Prior to the official launch of the tool, 123 organizations have used the tool during a 2-week long beta program and tracked a total of 54,000 tons of CO2 equivalent. This is comparable to CO2 emissions from burning 26 tons of coal.

We first supported Normative’s work through a €1M euro Google.org Impact Challenge on Climate. The team and vision were so impressive that we decided to deepen this relationship by bringing our people alongside our philanthropy through a Google.org Fellowship — it felt like a natural next step.

And so a team of Googlers worked full-time on an area they were extremely passionate about. Gabriella Araújo, a Product Marketing Manager in London, shared,

“It was fantastic to work on climate tech. I had been involved in sustainability projects at Google on the side. And working full time on climate was an incredible opportunity. I worked across different areas of the launch- I was close to product development and loved thinking about different ways to bring a carbon accounting tool to SMEs. I'm very proud of what we've built and I know this will add real value for small businesses on their race to zero.”

The challenge of slowing down climate change is a large one. We hope that the carbon calculator, along with the resources on the SME Climate Hub, will encourage SMEs all over the world to start their journey towards making their businesses more sustainable and resilient.

How The Trevor Project is using AI to help prevent suicide

Suicide disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ youth. In the U.S. alone, more than 1.8 million LGBTQ+ youth between the ages of 13 and 24 seriously consider suicide or experience a significant crisis each year. Additionally, LGBTQ+ youth are over four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers, while up to 50 percent of all trans people have made a suicide attempt—most before the age of 25. Black LGBTQ+ young people are even more impacted as they hold multiple marginalized identities, and research shows that Black youth ages five to 12 are dying by suicide at roughly twice the rate of their white peers. 


To support this particularly vulnerable and diverse community, The Trevor Project takes an intersectional approach to crisis intervention and suicide prevention. The organization offers free and confidential crisis services that they provide 24/7 via phone, chat, and text. In this time of emotional stress, isolation and civil unrest, these services offer much needed support to LGBTQ youth experiencing fear, hopelessness, confusion, and race-based trauma. Sadly, the volume of callers sometimes outnumbers the available crisis counselors who are trained to assist. With support from Google.org, The Trevor Project is incorporating artificial intelligence into its crisis services to connect more people to the resources they need.  


Last year, Google.org provided The Trevor Project with $1.5 million and 11 Googlers from the Google.org Fellowship, a pro-bono program that matches teams of Googlers with Google.org grantees and civic entities for up to six months to work full-time on technical projects. Google.org Fellows assisted The Trevor Project in building an artificial intelligence system that could identify and prioritize high-risk contacts while simultaneously reaching more people. 


Here’s how it works. When someone first contacts The Trevor Project, they're asked a few intake questions like: "What's going on?” After that, they talk to a crisis counselor who assesses their risk using a clinical assessment model. Looking at anonymized historical data, the team used natural language processing (NLP) to train the system to learn which types of responses on the intake form were most likely linked to a particular diagnosis risk level. While some specific words or phrases are known to correlate with high risk, the NLP model interprets the entire sentence to determine risk level. Now if a person is identified as a high or imminent risk based on their initial intake questions, they are automatically placed in a priority queue and connected to a counselor sooner. 


To help accelerate this work, Google.org has committed an additional $1.2 million in grant funding and is planning to engage a new cohort of Google.org Fellows set to start in July to expand Trevor’s application of NLP to new contexts. This will include developing a conversation simulator to enhance and scale Trevor’s virtual counselor training program, and automating the moderation of TrevorSpace, the organization’s affirming international online community, to flag and address unsafe content. At the same time, Google.org is partnering with Google’s LGBTQ+ employee groups to build a pool of volunteer digital crisis counselors to help respond to Trevor’s increased need for crisis services due to COVID-19 impacts. More than fifty Googlers have signed up already. 


The Trevor Project is the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth. We’re honored to support their critical mission and stand with LGBTQ+ people of color, trans and non-binary communities, LGBTQ+ families, and so many more.