Investing in Local Business to Get an Even Break

In Alabama’s largest city, a story of economic confidence in an unlikely place.

Neighborhood Centers, a Houston anti-poverty program has a simple philosophy: “The people are the asset, the source of potential solutions, not the problem.” The non-profit has scaled nationally, employing its bottom-up approach to disburse funds in poor communities.

At UC Berkeley, the Blum Center for Developing Economies and the Center for Effective Global Action are working together to formalize development engineering as a field of research - a new generation of engineers committed to making a social impact.

For years, one of Cleveland's poorest neighborhoods seemed unalterable no matter how many government programs and well-meaning philanthropies got involved; a place where abject poverty, joblessness and crime reinforce the racism in a city long divided, and where infants still die at a higher rate than almost anywhere else in the country. But a former CIA executive and a new breed of lettuce are transforming the poorest parts of the Rust Belt city.

Like their for-profit counterparts, charities are starting to embrace Big Data as a means to perform more efficiently and share that performance with potential donors. Data gathered is used both to measure successes and to highlight areas where program structure could be improved.

Raton, a town once surrounded by eight coal mines, now has a main street of boarded-up buildings. There is reason for optimism as the town diversifies its local economy, betting on "a mix of small manufacturing businesses, health care and specialty services, and hospitality for travelers" to endure the sudden decline in mining revenue. Its calculated revitalization may hold lessons for other towns.

The Islamic State's recruitment of women draws big attention. But less noticed and more important are efforts in Islamic countries to raise the number of women in religious leadership, despite a long tradition against it, as a potential, effective antidote to the IS recruitment efforts – preventing young women (and men) from joining radical groups.

RedTire is a program operating in Kansas that helps coordinate the selling and buying of businesses. The service has proven critical in rural areas that often only have a single key entity, like a pharmacy, and would suffer greatly if it were to shut down. RedTire serves as a "matchmaking" service to assist these communities in finding new owners to take over at a fair price.

With homicides up 50 percent last year, the D.C. Council is backing a controversial new crime bill aimed at stopping the violence. It’s modeled in part on a 9-year-old program in Richmond, California. Each year, 50 young men at risk for violence are paid to put down their guns. (1st of a 3 part series)

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.