April Franklin

Studies show that close to 100 million tons of food goes to waste in the U.S. each year. A state program on the RIT campus has developed a toolkit to help reduce food waste in municipalities throughout the state.

Charles Ruffing is the director of the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I). He says the toolkit provides strategies to design and implement a food waste recycling program.

People who incurred funeral expenses aftering losing a loved one to COVID-19 may have some of their expenses recovered. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced applications are open for COVID-19 funeral assistance. The program is funded through pandemic relief legislation. 

Colleges and universities across the state may need to adjust their commencement plans now that the state has updated its guidelines around graduation ceremonies.

The guidelines announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday allows a limited number of guests for indoor and outdoor events of various sizes.

Here are the updated state guidelines:

Outdoor events:

Resisting Gentrification: Then & Now is the theme for the fourth annual Gentrification Conference hosted by 540 West Main and City Roots Community Land Trust. The two-day event will be held virtually and in-person with a focus on the history of Rochester’s housing segregation and activism.

Calvin Eaton, founder of 540 West Main, says the event will educate the people who will be directly affected by community development.

Justin Ortiz started Generation Outreach 10 years ago to give students in Rochester early exposure to tech careers.

“In the minority community, we’re underrepresented in a lot of these tech industries because it’s simply not presented to us,” said Ortiz. “Kids who have these careers presented to them usually excel in them, and people are going to make money out of these careers and why not it be our kids?”

 An annual event dedicated to raise awareness and celebrate the contributions of transgender people is being observed around the world today. 

Locally, advocacy group Next Generation Men of Transition organized a balloon display from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park to mark the International Transgender Day of Visibility.

Wikipedia is used as a resource by millions, but compared to the total amount of its users the site has a small number of mostly male contributors. A 2010 study by the Wikimedia Foundation found that at the time only 13% of its contributors were women. RIT Libraries' Women on Wikipedia-edit-a-thon events are geared toward changing that imbalance.