Big Ideas in Social Change, 2014

Evidence continues to build that humans are contributing to a climate change issue that is nothing but bad news for the planet. Hopeful stories from seven countries, including India, Indonesia, and China, show that efforts to combat climate change might finally be working.

In combatting poverty, a giant informal economic system has quietly emerged in Africa. Women participate in micro-finance organizations that loan money in order to allow them to create businesses and become self-managing.

For-profit companies are making good private schools available even to Africa’s poor. They can do it – and can do it on an enormous scale – by hiring neighborhood residents to teach, and scripting out every word of every lesson on an e-reader.

Many subprime borrowers in the United States are financially unable to buy a home themselves. An unconventional lender is trying to make it easier for low-income people to buy houses despite the tighter requirements that other lenders adopted after the mortgage bust.

As kids and teachers head back to school, we wanted to turn away from questions about politics and unions and money and all the regular school stuff people argue about, and turn to something more optimistic — an emerging theory about what to teach kids.

A overview of 2014's Fixes columns - connecting the dots between 60 or so ways that people are trying to change the world.

A 2006 report noted that Ohio and Kentucky were lagging behind other states in college attainment rates - community leaders were concerned about remaining competitive in a global economy. A group of leaders in the Cincinnati area are improving school systems by using data for progress, not punishment.

The breakdown of the ozone layer is one of the most well-known effects of climate change. Citizens enact different ways to protect the atmosphere from a build up of methane gas.

York schools are considering changing public schools into charter schools, following the example of New Orleans and Michigan, in order to help their crumbling school system. The privatization of these schools can help the facilities become more financially stable, in turn preventing school closures and instability for their students.

54 million people in the United States, and 4.5 billion globally, have no credit to their name - making it nearly impossible for them to buy homes, apply for jobs and receive loans. Investors and lenders make an effort to help those with 'invisible credit' scores in financing essentials like homes or cars.