After School, the fastest growing social networking app for teens in the United States, announced today a teen empowerment partnership with DoSomething.org . The partnership will engage teens in social causes and campaigns to create positive change. The company also announced the close of its Series A round of funding of $16.4M, which will be used to further the company's mission to improve the quality of life for their users through safety features and unique opportunities.

After School App allows high school students to safely and privately share text based posts with students within their schools, and is maturing into the safest private social network for teens. Cofounder and CEO Michael Callahan created After School as a way to give teens a safe haven that Callahan did not have in high school, having been a victim of bullying and abuse.

'Growing up, I dealt with my girlfriend's attempted suicides, being bullied because I was different, child abuse, and being taken advantage of sexually as a child,' said Michael Callahan. 'I want to empower those who are not able to speak up,' Callahan continued. More of Michael's story can be found here.

Students will be able to register for and participate in DoSomething.org campaigns with friends; giving millions of students the chance to volunteer and get involved in social causes while creating and strengthening friendships in just a few seconds.

The first DoSomething.org campaign to be implemented into After School is Mirror Messages .The Mirror Messages campaign encourages students to post positive messages to boost the selfesteem of their peers and helps them find ways to do so, including posting sticky notes on bathroom mirrors. 'I love that DoSomething.org and After School are able to figure out how to use social media and technology in a positive way,' said Aria Finger, CEO of DoSomething.org.

'After School was created with the end goal in mind to create a significant and measurable social impact in a safe environment , ' said Cory Levy, cofounder of After School. 'We're excited to partner with DoSomething.org and take another giant step in that direction,' he said.

After School is also further enhancing its safety programs to provide a safer and more supportive environment for high schoolers. The company is announcing a new safety feature called Double Check, which utilizes technology to instantly conduct quality assurance on its team of human moderators.

'Double Check is a sophisticated program that monitors all of After School's reviewers and forces them to doubleconfirm any suspicious content,' said Michael Callahan, cofounder of After School. 'Adding Double Check to our current three levels of moderation and advanced threat detection we are raising the bar on safety,' he continued. 'Today they're the teens of America, but in the future, they will be the adults of America. They will be our doctors, lawyers, businessmen and women. If we can make a positive impact on their lives now, it will translate into the country being a better place tomorrow,' Callahan said.

After School recently closed their Series A round of funding, which raised $16.4 million. The round was led by Accomplice, formerly known as Atlas Ventures, Tikhon Bernstam, and Naval Ravikant, Founder of AngelList, with participation from investor Lee Linden, Cowboy Ventures, and others.

Investor Naval Ravikant said about the fundraise, 'After making a small initial seed investment from my fund The Hit Forge, I upped my commitment 20x due to their ability to tackle any challenge. They are becoming ubiquitous amongst teenagers while going above and beyond industry standards when it comes to building positive communities.'

The funding gives the company the ability to help more teens by integrating opportunities like DoSomething.org campaigns and access to trained counselors. 'It's really tough being a kid, and when kids come up against serious issues, they don't have many places they feel comfortable going for support,' said Levy. 'We designed After School to speak the language of kids and create a community that is filled with positivity, that gives kids an outlet for the things going on in their lives, and that helps boost selfesteem,'he said.

Other safety programs and features that After School has implemented include:

24/7 Text Helpline: Teens posting messages that are cries for help or warning signs are offered free, anonymous support from trained Crisis Counselors with Crisis Text Line.Teens can text HI TIGER to 741741.
The Text Helpline feature has helped over 57,000 teens to date.
Single User Report Removal: Students in their school feed have the ability to remove posts that are a misuse of the app's community guidelines with a single report.
FIRST Threat Detection: Using FIRST (Fastest Internet Response System for Threats), After School alerts schools and local authorities of potential threats while analyzing the threat and launching an investigation into the posted threat.
Safety Board: After School has created an active safety board with experts and community leaders that will help address issues teens face including cyberbullying, suicide prevention, mental health, and sexual orientations. Board members include:
David Zhao , CoFounder of 'End to Cyber Bullying'

David D. Luxton, PhD. , Clinical Psychologist at the University of Washington

Robin Kowalski, PhD. , Author and Psychology Researcher, Cyber Bullying Expert

Hemanshu(Hemu) Nigam , CEO of SSPBlue , Former Chief Security Officer of MySpace

'It's unusual to find cofounders of an online company who have safety in their core DNA,' says Nigam. 'After School has already raised the bar in online safety for the entire industry, and I look forward to helping them get to the next level,' he said.

After School will continue to release new programs and features empowered by its new funding to create unique opportunities for users not available on other social networks. The After School team believes that its efforts to build the most positive social media channel for teens has resulted in its exponential growth, which now includes millions of teenagers.

About After School

After School, a private social network built to create social change and enable communication among high school students, is the largest social network for teenagers. After School aims to improve the lives of users and their communities while providing an enjoyable and safe place to share with others.

Now serving millions of teenagers in over 75% of U.S. high schools, After School has turned the battle against cyberbullying and threats into industry leading innovations that provide users withunique opportunities, including 24/7 access to live counselors.

About DoSomething.org

DoSomething.org makes the world suck less. One of the largest global orgs for young peopleand social change, our 4.8 million members tackle campaigns that impact every cause, frompoverty to violence to the environment to literally everything else. Any cause, anytime, anywhere. *mic drop