Taking a new direction. Together stand whoo they came together for National Kick butts day, a day to raise awareness about the negative effects tobacco has on the teenage body. Students showed paintings, made posters, and did all kinds of communityservice projects. Its a tar jar. Its basically a years worth of tar from one pack a day of smoking cigarettes. This is how much tar will be in your lung. The plastic box is a bunch of cigarette butts, and what were showing is that cigarette butts are a huge problem, especially in parks. Theyre theyre extremely bad for the environment, and people litter them all the time, and so those are some of the the butts that we picked up at our local park. Those teens are trying to have Tobacco Products banned from public parks by getting their local government to pass legislation. I think young people are great. The group i was speaking to in particular has been in front of our city council in my city, uh, numerous times to talk about issues, and for them to come up to the legislature that is spectacular. I think youth involved in the legislative process is fantastic you know, the fact that they know the process, how it works, and are getting involved in their civic duties as theyre young is gonna lay a Good Foundation for them as they get older in staying involved in what happens in their area. At lunch, students were able to share personal stories with one another about how tobacco has affected their lives. One thing we know is that kids listen to each other more than they listen to people like me, and we can get that word out peer to peer. We know we can get a lot of action. In addition to sharing stories with one another, students got to spend some oneonone time with legislators and get a behindthescenes look at the state senate building. We were able to show them the house of representatives and the state senate and let them see that its normal folks that are here, and they could potentially be one of those normal folks in the future serving the state of arizona. I think young people can actually make the most change. Because were so young and were so passionate, i feel that that shows other people that we really do want to make Something Better in our community and that we do have a voice and that we also have a say in what goes on and its not just like, oh, this is happening, and then this is happening. No. Were actually being part of our society and putting, making an input, and that were not just going to let other people make the decisions for us. You know, their voices are just as important as adults, and so i think its really important for kids to get involved early and learn the process so that they can effect change thats positive, you know, as they get older and throughout their lives. Students from Red Mountain High School actually built a robot in support of kick butts day. Thats right a robot. Okay, thats straight. Do it. [ whirring ] oh so close this robot here was to promote the prevention of smoking tobacco in young teens. So, what is does is students are asked questions. As you can see, the first question is what percent of adult smokers started in their teens or younger . So, different questions like that. And youll answer them down the line what you think the correct answer is. And after you answer them, youll move right on to throw some frisbees. For every question a student got right, they were able to shoot a frisbee at certain targets. [ whirring ] [ cheers and applause ] they load it inside the hopper, and theyre able to control the robot going back and forth. They can either make an easy shot on the low, or they can try the try a little bit more of a challenge and aim higher. So, its not guaranteed to go in, but its a lot of fun for the kids. If that isnt amazing enough, this frisbeeshooting robot was built entirely by kids. The most challenging part would have to be the shooting, because it shoots every, like, so often, and sometimes it even shoots two frisbees, and so aiming it and shooting it correctly is really hard. If youre interested in helping your town or neighborhood to kick some butt, you can find out more information at kickbuttsday. Org. For teen kids news, im scott. Lets face it social media isnt always social. Between bullying and internet predators, you cant be too careful when you go online. Jacelyn tells us about a new website designed for kids by a kid. Its getting a lot of buzz and even some help from a celebrity. The name of the website is grom social. It was designed by 13yearold zach marks. And im sure you recognize whos sitting next to zach. Thats kendall schmidt, star of big time rush. Welcome to you both. Thank you for having us. Hello zach, you were only 11 when you came up with the concept for grom social. Thats pretty impressive. What gave you the idea . It kind of all started when i convinced my dad to let me go on facebook, and he didnt know too much about facebook, and i told him it was safe you dont need to worry about it. So, he let me on. You know, obviously, you know theres a lot of adults on facebook, so i was friending them and friending all these people. And, um, you know he deleted my facebook account, and i said, what if i create my own facebook for kids . And he said, good luck with that. And i sat down with my brothers and sisters and some Close Friends and started to draw out all the characters and came up with the basic concept of what we kind of wanted the site to look like. We launched the site. We have 440,000 signups and 167,000 members, and were in over 200 countries and territories, and everythings going great. That sounds great kendall, a lot of times kids and teens tune out warnings from adults, especially about the internet. But theres real dangers to be aware of, arent there . Totally, and i think the warnings are appropriate and especially at a certain age, i think they need to be really aware of what is all on the internet, and i think some of the things that you have to be careful of is there are people out there who obviously are using the internet for terrible reasons and theres also, you know, kids who are bullying other kids online, so you have to really be aware of whats out there before you go, cause especially if you dont have the biggest, you know, Defense Mechanisms against that kind of stuff, it can really get to some people, and it does actually affect them in a negative way, so thats why were both here promoting antibullying. So, zach, what makes grom social safer than other socialmedia sites out there . First of all, when you first sign up for gromsocial. Com, you are required to put the parent email in, so the parent gets a copy of everything the kid is doing. We have 24 7 live monitoring on the site. We actually hired teachers to monitor the site. Theres usually five to six teachers on at once monitoring the site, seeing if everything, you know, if everythings running smoothly, or if a bad photo gets through, theyll delete it within seconds. Another thing that we have is a grom social report card. Every two weeks, the parent gets a report card, and its a breakdown of what he or she is doing on the site. For example, every post, every message that that grom has sent, every section of the site that he or she has looked at, so it definitely keeps the parent updated on whats going on. That sounds very safe. What else does the site offer . Well, we have cool videos on the site. We have cool stories on the site. Its created by kids for kids. Another thing that we have like, exclusive content, for example. Theres this thing that we film called the grom spot, and its kind of like a webisode about my family or some of our friends and some, like, celebrities that we meet and cool stuff that we do around the house. And then we also have really fun games on the site. We kind of gromitize them, is what we call it. We swap out all the graphics and stuff. We put our characters in. So, kids really like that, you know, just theres a lot of cool stuff on the site, a lot of neat and exclusive cool contests you can enter on the site, so kids really like it. Kendall, as you said, a lot of bullying happens online. Is that why youre involved in getting the word out about grom social . Absolutely. I mean, theres an absurd amount of bullying that goes on online, and, i mean, i am experienced with it personally because its been at least once a show where i do a meetandgreet, i have a girl come up and say that she selfharms, and its usually because of being bullied or having image issues because of being bullied. And it just has really caused, like, this huge problem, and it needs to go away. So, im more than happy to spend my time promoting something good, and im happy to be part of zachs website. And not only that, he lets me promote my music on it, and i get to add to his list of content, so were definitely working together on it. Thats good. And hows the music career going . The music career is going great its i would like to argue my kind of job, with anybody else, as i feel really lucky to be able do it. And working on music right now, i have an album coming out this year and a single out called parallel, which is also on the website, and everything is going really great. Im really excited about the future. Wonderful zach, one last question. How did you come up with the name grom . Well, grom actually comes from australia, and we live in, i guess, a little surfing community, i guess you can say, and we get called grom a lot. Its kind of like, hey, grom, lets go surf. Hey, grom, lets do this. Hey, grom, lets do that. So, it kind of its kind of been a worldwide term, i guess, or word, so we thought itd be a good name cause we get called grom a lot. And you get called a grom up to the age of 16, and thats where our age demo stops, so we thought itd be a great name. Great. Kendall, zach, thanks so much for speaking with us today. Thank you. Thank you. Heres a piece of advice thats older than the invention of the computer, but its more true today than ever when it comes to social websites, its better to be safe than sorry. So, be smart and be safe. When we return, well meet two brothers who did something very special with their spring break. Well be right back. Spring breaks and summer vacations can be fun and exciting. And as harry reports, they can also be very rewarding. Tom and riley are brothers. Theyre a lot like other guys their age. They play a little hoops, do their homework, and toss the ball around with the family dog, so, as spring break approached last year, they figured it would be a lot like other spring breaks. Most of our vacations are taken to we go to, like, beaches and vacation spots where you relax and dont. Not actionpacked. This time, though, the boys mom had a different idea a very different idea. I wanted to do something where the boys would learn about how people live in other countries and learn about giving back. So she found this organization, orphanage outreach, and we went on the trip and helped orphans. The orphanage was located in the dominican republic, which is in the sunny caribbean. But the boys were not enthused. We were both disappointed because, on spring break, you dont necessarily want to be working in an orphanage and whatnot. You want to be out playing with your friends at the beach or playing baseball or playing outside. Things didnt exactly improve once they got there, either. First thing i saw when we arrived, or noticed, was how poor everyone was there. Where we were was pretty remote and definitely very poor, but we went even out into areas that were more remote, and there was no Running Water and, you know, just goats and chickens all over the place. We were in a tent, and we were supposed to set it up ourselves, and, actually, it rained. It poured rain one night, and the whole tent collapsed on us. To make matters worse, very few of the local children spoke english. It was very tough speaking to them, so a lot of things, we had to, like, make hand motions. But then, something very interesting happened. [ indistinct conversations ] [ bat clangs ] [ cheering ] the brothers began to discover how rewarding it was helping kids who had no families of their own. And they would lead them in baseball games and all sorts of other Different Things, and they had them singing, and it was amazing. Everyone that we met was so they were all very kind. When we would be walking home, people would run out in the street, they would say hello to us, they would drive by, they would offer us water. And as far as their concerns about finding time to relax . We had tons of time to relax. But, usually when we had that time, we would go hang out with the orphans because we liked having fun with them. We would go play basketball or we would go play baseball or wed play duckduckgoose or any other games. It was just fun in a different way. It was a new experience. It was a great experience. We met tons of new people, tons of awesome, funloving people who i just who i wont forget for the rest of my life. You just felt it changed your life. To find out how you can do Something Special on your spring break or summer vacation, check out our website. This Important Message is brought to you by the aclu, because Constitution Day is every day. From being nearly destroyed in a fire to being auctioned off piece by piece, this carousel has had its ups and downs. Ill have that story. In 1988, our dear friend paul newman had a vision. A place where kids with serious illnesses could just. Be kids. [bruce] so he founded a camp. And the joy of playing, laughing, and simply belonging had a profound effect [julia] freeing the children to reach beyond their illnesses and discover new strength. [bruce] from that one camp the Seriousfun Childrens Network has grown, serving 30,000 kids globally every year. At no cost to their families. [bruce] please help us continue pauls vision. Visit seriousfunnetwork. Org. Some people say history repeats itself. But katie found a place where history not only goes round and round, it also goes up and down. It was 1922. World war i was a recent memory. Warren harding was president. It was the same year the great gatsby was living the high life. 1922 is also when this carousel opened for business in the midwest. So, how did it wind up in a park near the famous Brooklyn Bridge . Because a woman named Jane Walentas and her husband wanted to give a gift to the city of new york. So, i looked at a lot of carousels all over the country, and this one was in an auction in youngstown, ohio. There was an Amusement Park that was being sold. There had been a fire at the park which burned their roller coaster, and the firemen saved the carousel, but some of the horses were singed. That was the beginning of a long labor of love for jane and her team of artists. So, could you describe the work you did on this carousel . Yes. The first thing i did was i scraped all the paint off it, down to the original paint, and we proceeded to repaint it all to the way it originally was. The painstaking work of repairing and restoring went on for 25 years. I was looking at some old footage that i had from the early days, and i thought, oh my god, i was so young when i started jane may have gotten older, but the carousel was looking brandnew. When the work was finally finished, the carousel was officially named what else . Janes carousel. So, tell me how the carousel works. Well, the inside row are the jumper horses, and they go up and down together. You can see these gears. One goes up, and the other comes down. Oh, so, when the gear turns, they go up and down. Up and down, uhhuh. Oh. And the outside row are standers. Those are the big horses, and theyre just stationary. So, they dont move . They dont go up and down, no. And heres Something Else i learned the whole platform floats on air a true carousel is not in the ground at all. Theres not a track. It all hangs off the center pole, which is what makes it a true carousel. The music is the real deal, too. This is the original organ from 1922. It survived that fire in the 1980s, but in 2012, the organ was damaged by superstorm sandy. Another round of repairs for jane and her crew do you want to see behind . Ill show you these instruments. Sure this is the snare drum, and when the organ goes, these beat on the drum. Wow. Its its its quite a piece of equipment. [ midtempo music playing ] the old organ has a modern twist the music is controlled by a laptop computer. Why is it that just about everyone loves a carousel . I think theres a fantasy about it, you know, being here on these horses and riding into the sunset, and the music and the lights and the mirrors it just creates a very happy environment. [ music continues ] no matter how old you get, going around in circles never seems to lose its appeal, and thats the special magic of a merrygoround. For teen kids news, im katie. [ music continues ] see how a passion for pastry can get you started on a tasteful career. It used to be that cakes for special occasions were pretty ordinary. But tv shows like cake boss and ace of cakes have changed that, elevating cake decorating to a new art form. So, how do you become a pastry chef extraordinaire . Nicole tells us that if you have the right talent, the job is a piece of cake. Ive made a skull cake, ive made a cake that looks like a bag all of those fun things. Part of it is just, you know, more and more people are looking for new and Different Things and realizing that cake artists can create almost anything in cake. Lindsey gamble is part chef, part artist, and seemingly part magician. Its hard to believe that she creates these tasty sculptures out of little more than frosting. There always is a little bit of structure inside the cake because, obviously, its cake, and you can only stack cake up on cake so much. But aside from that, everything is edible. Its all made out of sugar, gum paste, and fondant. All of the glitter is edible. All of the paint is edible. Watching lindsey work, youd think she was born with icing in her veins. But not so. I actually was in accounting a long time ago, and i hated it. I had always baked with my grandmother. Id grown up with my mother, whos an artist, and i was very passionate about those things but didnt think i could make a career out of it. But then, help arrived. Actually, it was an article about specialty cakes sent to her by her mom. Seeing how well art and baking mixed together inspired lindsey. So, i moved over to paris, and i went to the cordon bleu. Thats a Famous School for chefs. For those of you not studying french, cordon bleu means blue ribbon. I worked as a chocolatier and a pastry chef, sort of honing the baking side of things and was always doing my art on the side of that, and eventually just came into what we have here. Armed with a new recipe for success, lindsey started elegantly iced, where she creates custom cakes for all occasions. Sometimes, her artistic masterpieces look too good to eat. People say all the time, oh, how can you cut into it . Because its cake. Its delicious, and its meant to be eaten, and it should absolutetaste as delicious as it looks beautiful. So, what advice does she have for teens who may want to have their cake and eat it, too . If you want to be a cake decorator, practice. Practice, practice, practice, practice. And you have to realize youre not gonna get it right the first time. I didnt get it right the first time. And who knows . Maybe youll be the next person who makes the technique thats the most famous and everyone else wants to copy that thing that youre doing. Being a pastry chef isnt easy, but its all worth the effort for Sweet Success in the food business. Im nicole for teen kids news. That wraps up our show, but well be back soon with more teen kids news. Thanks for joining us, and have a great week. Jack hannas animal adventures, sea world and busch gardens. The world we share. To bath time. Animals of columbus, ohio. music