How little investments can lead to big community change

The law often traps offenders in a cycle of lawbreaking. LEAD allows for drug users to become committed to a program that helps them through the quitting process instead of throwing them into prison and isolating them from the help they need.

Poor neighborhoods in the United States lack quality play spaces for children, also known as play deserts. An organization is enabling communities across the nation to build their own playground.

Civic leaders in the U.S. struggle to effectively help their distressed neighborhoods. East Lake, Atlanta, created a replicable model that mixes residents of differing socio-economic status, and focuses on education and health in the area.

In Memphis, a creative blight-reduction initiative called 25 Square Blocks broke down the city into blocks. Inspectors were able to quickly identify all the violations and fix them, using the same amount of funding, but less time, as the old call-and-respond model.

Native American student graduation rates are much lower than that of any other demographic. The Red Cloud school teaches students on a reservation in South Dakota about the Lakota history to empower the kids and encourage resilience.

In a Pittsburgh food desert, the addition of a new supermarket increased residents' level of satisfaction with their neighborhood. Researching people's relationship with food and their community could improve federal efforts to fight food insecurity and poor eating habits.

Countries all over the world are creating community, diversifying relationships, and giving a purpose to people who felt useless through time banks, where people swap their services using time as the currency.

A hospital, university, and research center partnership is trying to encourage local Bronx students to become nurses and community health care workers and stay in the area to improve the health of the community.

Great solutions to common problems often already exist and have been implemented elsewhere. By crowdsourcing ideas and broadening the pool from which contractors are selected, cities across the world are improving their cities.

Ecological toilets that use natural composting to break down waste are simple to construct, waterless and are easy to fix. But as philanthropists are finding, getting these to those that need it most is harder than anticipated.