Tech-Focused Ideas Drive Mario Armstrong’s #More4Bmore Initiative to Help Baltimore

The events in Baltimore after the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray–whether you labeled them as protests or riots–may have left you feeling rage, hopelessness and/or frustration, and wondering what you could do about it, especially if you live in the city.

[Related: How to Handle the Emotions of Racial Injustice While at Work]

Mario Armstrong, a digital lifestyle expert on the Today show and a contributor to Black Enterprise, is hoping to transition some of those feelings into action with the #More4Bmore campaign.

“The whole idea for the hasthtag #More4Bmore was the ability to … put something positive out there–we want more for B-More. I wanted to create a positive hasthtag that people could get behind,” Armstrong says, noting the positivity happened on its own without prodding users to focus on the good.

Having grown up in Baltimore not far from where some of the most high-profile footage was filmed during the city’s unrest, Armstrong felt compelled to set the hashtag free during the height of the conflict, spreading it through social media ahead of launching the accompanying website.

Within less than 24 hours, nearly 200 people had signed up through the site to voice their feelings on the incidents taking place, including the state of emergency, and others suggesting things needed to improve Baltimore, such as beautifying  decrepit areas, building recreation centers and fixing up parks.

But given the role technology played in Armstrong’s personal brand, ideas poured in from those who work in tech and STEM-related fields eager to mobilize. Among them: setting up a program to teach youth how to build houses; teaching agricultural techniques to grow food; a combination website, app and physical space to address the distribution of wealth; “reclaiming the political process in a Snapchat world,” and other ideas related to social justice and job creation.

“We need to target a specific need in order for tech engaging the community to work,” Armstrong says. “Right now, the first phase is to listen and be here for the

community, and identify that largest need from the community. Second, (we need to) connect physically not digitally–go into the community, ‘Here’s what we’re hearing, are these things spot on, what are the top five?’ And third, what would make significant impact? We want to create small local partnerships and convert chatter into conversation, and conversation into action.”

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Armstrong hopes this kickoff will get Baltimoreans to come together to begin repairing the landscape–physical and emotional–of his beloved city, and says the hashtag was the call to action that could be aggregated and tracked in addition to collecting ideas, and eventually lead to more tangible projects. He also says he wanted the tech scene to be involved with non-techies to come up with actionable solutions.

“We wanted to build tech with the community, not for the community,” he says. “W

ith lots of civic tech, (you get), ‘We’re the technologists, we identify problem, we’ll attack it.’ It’s too top-down and in a tech world, it should be bottom-up and crowd-sourced. Non-techies add growth and impact to discussions.”

But he shrugged off a hackathon (“Somebody should, (but) I don’t want to do  a hackathon”) in favor of reaching out to Kimberly Bryant of Black Girls Code.

“We have to get BGC in Baltimore City. Regardless of this protest that’s taken place, it’s just a powerful program that is successful, has measurement, has the ability to impact young black girls in an incredibly positive way,” he says. “(It) exposes young girls who normally wouldn’t be exposed to technology from a creation standpoint and not a consumption standpoint.” Armstrong hopes to get the chapter active by summer and notes that Black Boys Code will debut in 2016.

He also hopes to introduce an after-school program with a digital curriculum to expose more Baltimore youth to technology. And for now, #More4Bmore videos are popping up on Instagram and Armstrong is toying with the idea of Periscope Parties to encourage residents to show Baltimore in a positive light through community interviews.

“I think that people are taking ownership over the hashtag #More4Bmore is a great thing to see, because it’s not about Mario Armstrong–I have no agenda other than wanting to figure out ways to help this community grow,” he says.

Indeed, Armstrong sees the long-term effects of this campaign leading from the screen to in-person action, which he hopes will also extend to entrepreneurship.

“One of the things that I see from the responses were getting is the ability to empower people to push their ideas forward and find sustainable ways to monetize those ideas,” he says. “If we could help more people–not everybody can be an entrepreneur and not everybody wants to be–but certainly a lot of people (now) don’t even believe that they can be.”

That’s something he hopes the hashtag campaign will inspire. Armstrong says More4Bmore.com will be updated in a few days to help move those eager to help into some tangible next steps.