After finding nothing to educate parents and kids on a wide range of topics from an early age, Cabral enlisted the help of experts and friends and began developing MASK programming, starting from kindergarten and going all the way through college. The approach was to educate both children and families. So MASK would present at schools or clubs but also try to reach parents, grandparents and caregivers — sometimes to disheartening results. “We would present to 1,000 kids and offer the parent version of it. Maybe 5 or 10 parents would show up,” Cabral said. Desperate to get life-saving information into families’ hands, MASK regrouped and in early 2011 launched MASK , the magazine. The quarterly publication homes in on a topic from cover to cover, offering tools, advice and expertise on how to discuss it with children in a positive way. Launched at a historically bad time for print publications, MASK magazine nevertheless created buzz right away. In November 2011, a call came from New York saying the magazine had been named one of the year’s 15 hottest launches. “None of us had a magazine background at all, and we didn’t know what was going on,” Cabral said. “We went to New York and were in the same room as Bloomberg, HGTV Magazine and People .” “WE WANT TO DO THAT HEAVY LIFTING FOR PARENTS. IT TAKES EDUCATION AND STAYING UP TO DATE ON THIS EVER-CHANGING LANDSCAPE THAT WE ARE RAISING CHILDREN IN TODAY.” For the MASK team, the award validated the work they were doing. “In the beginning, it was a grassroots effort that literally started in my closet. But I knew that this is a national or even a global need,” Cabral said. Open an issue of MASK magazine and that ambition is clear. Though Cabral remains the only full-time employee, the publication is polished and contains interviews with thought leaders and celebrities. “MASK is really about people and family, and nobody is immune to our topics. It can happen to any demographic — any social or economic position. It comes down to family, and who doesn’t want to support family?” Cabral said. SEPT/OCT 2020 | 22 | FRONTDOORS MEDIA

D espite MASK’s success, Cabral felt the organization was becoming something of a one-and-done for schools. MASK would go in and do a program about bullying or drug prevention but not truly make change. “Five years ago, I went to my board and said, ‘Listen, I do this to save a life, and this isn’t working.’” As a result, in addition to the magazine, they created the MASK E3 Institute, a comprehensive, multi-year program designed to engage, educate and empower. With content provided in a video-based format, the Institute offers preschool to college-age kids tools to cope with a number of issues, including peer pressure, technological challenges, self-esteem and boundaries. Built to meet educational standards, the E3 curriculum has been in a pilot phase for three years at Norterra Canyon, a K-8 school in the Deer Valley Unified School District. “The teachers love it,” said Mary Smitten, a teacher at the school. “The lessons come for us laid out beautifully. So we start at the beginning of the book and work our way through.” Smitten recounts an incident on a school bus last year as evidence that the lessons are taking hold. “A middle-school student was bullying another student and her friends stood up and spoke out — that was the language they used. That’s the MASK language: ‘stand up, speak up’ about what is wrong.” Naturally, middle-schoolers being middle-schoolers, eye-rolls are common during MASK’s lessons, but Smitten says they are changing the school’s culture. “If you watch students on the playground or hear them in the cafeteria, you can see them using the tools they’ve learned. In their own teen way, they’re absorbing the information,” she said. Which may have life-saving consequences. A lesson on cyberbullying opened students’ eyes to the information they share online. MASK told the story of a stalker who tracked a girl down in person after seeing her school sweatshirt in her room while Facetiming with her. “It was eye-opening for them to learn they need to be careful about the images they show and what stalkers and cyberbullies pick up on. They were shocked,” Smitten said. The students aren’t the only ones learning new things from the E3 Institute. An older, very conservative teacher had to broach the topic of sexting with her class during the first weeks of school. “She’s from a generation where you don’t even say the word sex and she struggled with the lesson,” Smitten said. “But it shocked her how much the kids needed the information. It also created a great bond because they got through that tough topic right off the bat and she had the best conversations with her students for the rest of the year.” Those kinds of bonds allow teachers to impact students’ lives in tangible ways. MASK taught one teacher the warning signs to look for in students from vulnerable populations. When she noticed a middle- schooler struggling with his sexual identity, she knew from MASK lessons that there are resources for kids that are easy to access. She helped him do just that. FRONTDOORS MEDIA | 23 | SEPT/OCT 2020