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Bella Black, 15, Bakes Up Big Ten Campaign To Raise $100K

Fifteen-year-old Bella Black is not only making a difference: she’s baking a difference.

Bella Black, 15, Bakes Up Big Ten Campaign To Raise $100K

By Nick Krewen

Fifteen-year-old Bella Black is not only making a difference: she’s baking a difference. For 10 years, she has been hosting Bella's Bake Sale in Toronto on her family’s driveway in their Beaches neighbourhood, selling cupcakes, cookies and other pastries in order to raise over $100,000 to build schools in developing countries, via WE Charity.


Now, she’s launching her most ambitious project: To commemorate her 10th year of philanthropy and being in Grade 10, the Malvern Collegiate Institute student has initiated The Big Ten campaign. Her goal is to raise enough money over a single school year to finance the construction of 10 schoolhouses, which cost $10,000 each.

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She holds her bake sale two weeks after the school year begins but continues to “sell” virtual cupcakes via donation on her web site, issuing a tax receipt for $10 or more.

“I want people to settle in first at school, then when I announce the bake sale and that I am raising money for kids who don’t have a school to go to, it hits hard,” Black, one smart cookie, tells Samaritanmag.

So far, Black, who only just turned 15 on Dec. 26, has financed the construction of four schools in Kenya (one through a program called Change Heroes), two in India, two in Haiti, one in Nicaragua and one in rural China. – Continue reading this Nick Krewen feature here.

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Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

TikTok

Tech

UMG and TikTok Strike Licensing Deal After Three-Month Standoff

UMG allowed its last TikTok license to expire on Feb. 1, citing unfair compensation for its catalog as well as AI and artist safety concerns.

Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok have struck a new licensing agreement which will soon bring UMG’s catalog of millions of sound recordings and songs back to TikTok after three months off the platform. Though it is unclear exactly when all of UMG’s catalog will return to the app, a press release about the new license says it will return in “due course” and the two companies are “working expeditiously” to return the music.

UMG’s last license with TikTok expired at the end of January after negotiations soured between the two companies. UMG announced that its music would be pulled from the app starting Feb. 1 in a letter to its artists and songwriters, saying that TikTok refused to pay the “fair value” of music and that it had concerns about TikTok’s stance on AI and artist safety.

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