Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

Search Results

You searched for: -

There are 203 results  for your search.  View and Refine Your Search Terms

  • In Ecuador, one woman has given shelter to over 8,500 Venezuelans

    Carmen Carcelen lives in northern Ecuador with her husband, eight children, and hundreds of Venezuelan migrants who are fleeing poverty, violence, and hyperinflation at home. Carcelen has been providing food and shelter (and even foot rubs) to over 8,500 migrants for two years now. Carcelen says that she is spurred to action by her Christian faith, but welcomes any donations because it is currently financed on her husband's small income.

    Read More

  • How giant African rats are helping uncover deadly land mines in Cambodia

    Cambodia is littered with unexploded land mines, posing a huge threat to people even decades after the conflict. In order to help locate and remove mines, a unique organization named Apopo trains rats to sniff them out. Rats have extremely sensitive noses and have found about 500 mines and more than 350 unexploded bombs in Cambodia since 2016. The drawback is the pace of the long, tedious, and dangerous work.

    Read More

  • In South Africa, a Call to Punish Rapists

    In Diepsloot, South Africa, a small office called Lawyers Against Abuse offers legal support for sexual assault cases in a violent city that traditionally does little to address the issue. The organization offers lawyers, victim advocates, legal counseling, and therapy as they go through the process. Since 2015, they have helped more than 800 women and secured 28 convictions.

    Read More

  • Video Helps Domestic Violence Victims — When Courts Have It

    In parts of five states and the District of Columbia, domestic violence victims can avoid the trauma and logistical hassles of seeking a restraining order in court by petitioning for court protection via video. Certain counties in Oklahoma, Oregon, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and D.C. allow victims to get help without facing their abusers in court. But a host of barriers have slowed the rollout of such services: limited court budgets, technical security concerns, lack of training, and poor internet connections in rural areas that could be helped by not requiring travel to courthouses.

    Read More

  • Outreach Teams Have Police Helping, not Arresting, Homeless People

    Embedded in Denver’s police department is the Homeless Outreach Unit, dedicated to building relationships with and providing access to services for the city’s population experiencing housing insecurity. They work closely with social workers and nonprofits in the city to work against the criminalization of homelessness, instead, taking a solutions oriented approach. The unit has helped build trust between those residents and police and has seen a 30% increase in referrals to homeless shelters.

    Read More

  • KCPD CIT provides alternative to jail for mentally ill

    Kansas City’s Police Department has created a Crisis Intervention Unit with the goal of broadening their outreach and engagement with individuals with mental illnesses. Rather than send them through the criminal justice system, officers involved in this unit instead help them access the care, support, and treatment they need.

    Read More

  • Campus Thrift Stores

    Recycling and repurposing second hand items helps to reduce a community’s carbon footprint. At Bard College in New York, the FreeUse Store collects second hand items from students and redistributes them free of charge to members of the community. Run by the university’s Office of Sustainably, the program provides a model for using campus bins to recycle textiles and other items to reduce landfill use.

    Read More

  • Homes to Heal Trafficked Children

    Miami is home to a special type of child welfare program called CHANCE (Citrus Helping Adolescents Negatively Impacted by Commercial Exploitation) that is designed specifically for youth in foster care that have been trafficked. CHANCE has an intensive curriculum that educates foster parents and clinicians about child sex trafficking and child trauma, and families are only allowed to take in one child at a time so that they are prepared for the child's unique health needs. Studies done on the program have found that the youth have significant improvement in many emotional and mental categories.

    Read More

  • Eskilstuna: how a Swedish town became the world capital of recycling

    Recycling provides an economic alternative to heavy industry. In the former steel town of Eskilstuna, recovery from economic decline has meant re-platforming into a model of sustainability. From the city’s second-hand article mall to state-of-the art trash sorting technologies, innovations in closed-loop economics have created new jobs and possibilities for longtime residents and new arrivals alike.

    Read More

  • The library of things: could borrowing everything from drills to disco balls cut waste and save money?

    From London to Vancouver, across the globe libraries of things are popping up to rent out common, but rare-to-use, household objects. Items include telescopes, lawn mowers, ice cream makers, power drills, you name it. These volunteer-led shops take reservations online and lease the items at no or low-cost to the user, all while strengthening the sharing economy and reducing waste.

    Read More