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How to Make Public Transportation Safer for Women

Christine Ro

February 08, 2017 |

How We Get to Next |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

From gender-segregated buses in Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro, to more lighting and staff on Washington, D.C.’s metro system, cities around the world are taking steps to make public transportation safer for women. Some of these methods are contested – especially ones that place the responsibility on women or don’t take into account transgender and genderqueer individuals. Yet, there is a growing body of research suggesting that responding to this problem requires two key elements: a larger, cultural shift regarding harassment and listening to women when they describe what they need.

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School funding reform: Ideas and challenges aplenty

Jacqueline Rabe Thomas

February 06, 2017 |

The Connecticut Mirror |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Hartford, Connecticut

Schools in Connecticut are facing serious challenges with allocation of finances and resources that have dramatically affected their ability to provide programs such as after school curriculum to students, disproportionately in poor neighborhoods. There are several potential solutions, including more just distribution of funding and increased transparency in the system.

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The costs of growth and change in Nashville

David Plazas

January 29, 2017 |

The Tennessean |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry is developing a comprehensive strategy for affordable housing to help address the challenges of rising property prices and gentrification for the city's poor and minorities. The city is helping influence more inclusive growth patterns through financial incentives like the Barnes Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

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In Kansas City, a lesson in transforming closed schools

Kalyn Belsha

January 24, 2017 |

Chicago Reporter |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Kansas City, Missouri

When public schools close, what can communities do with the buildings? Kansas City hired an urban planner to help repurpose school buildings to better engage the community and enabled non-profits a chance to purchase the old properties. This school reuse excelled from increasing the transparency of the decision-making process and “creative financing.”

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Japan: Gun Control

Fi Glover Henrietta Moore Martha Lane Fox

January 04, 2017 |

BBC |

Radio |

Over 15 Minutes

Response Location: Japan

Japan’s annual gun deaths are in the single digits, thanks to tight regulations on firearms. Even police defuse violence using martial arts rather than guns. Criminals use knives instead and find ways of illegally importing guns, but overall the near-taboo reduces deaths.

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Changing the Face of National Parks

Tik Root

January 02, 2017 |

National Geographic |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Oakland, California

At the vanguard of initiatives to increase diversity among visitors to the National Parks are groups like Oakland-based H.E.A.T. (Hiking Every Available Trail), which uses social media and group expeditions to increase minority groups' awareness, use, trust and enjoyment of the outdoors. Emerging alongside changes in policy, such as the Park Services' creation of a Diversity and Inclusion Office, H.E.A.T. demonstrates how local organizers in minority and, often, urban regions around the United States are moving the needle on diversity within the National Park system.

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How To Make Hydropower More Environmentally Friendly

Matt Weiser

December 20, 2016 |

Ensia |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Dover, Delaware

Dams make for complex and often controversial infrastructure. While hydropower generated from large dam projects is currently providing the bulk of the planet's renewable energy, dams can also cause major environmental and social damage by interrupting animal migrations, displacing indigenous communities, and collecting toxins. A number of solutions are being implemented, however, to address the various issues caused by dams, to help make them a more eco-friendly and viable source of clean energy.

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Costa Rica modernized without wrecking the environment. Here's how.

Nathanael Johnson

December 15, 2016 |

Grist |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Costa Rica, San Jose

Unlike other countries suffering with an impoverished population, Costa Rica has not destroyed the environment while modernizing its economy. Costa Rica has created a coffee alliance, a collective effort between the government and local farmers to grow and cultivate sustainable coffee agriculture through public policy and land distribution. The coffee alliance has given economic empowerment to the people, while being environmentally green.

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15 countries, other states use social impact bonds, too

Kristen Jordan Shamus

December 13, 2016 |

Detroit Free Press |

Text |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: United Kingdom, Peterborough

A project launched in the United Kingdom uses social-impact bonds to reduce recidivism among prisoners, bringing together public and private resources to implement more effective and cost efficient social programs. Their success is inspiring other countries to follow suit.

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How Ontario's vision of equity for schools contrasts starkly with Pennsylvania's

Kevin McCorry

December 13, 2016 |

Keystone Crossroads |

Multi-Media |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Canada, Toronto, Ontario

Part 1 of the "Equity or Bust: Are Ontario's Public Schools a Model for Pennsylvania" Series: Ontario has become widely lauded for its education system, celebrated for both high performance and relatively smaller achievement gaps between wealthy and poor students, thanks to the concept of "equity." This manifests, in essence, as more funding per-pupil to the school boards that serve students who face the greatest obstacles. The model contrasts starkly to the school system in Pennsylvania, regarded as "the most inequitable in the nation.”

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