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

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  • Creative Freedom

    New York-based nonprofit, Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), runs theater programs for individuals experiencing incarceration as a way of improving mental health and reducing recidivism. While the United States’ criminal justice system has been focused on punitive measures, there’s been a trend toward rehabilitation across the country in recent years. Participants in RTA have shown a rate of recidivism of just 5% – compared to a 60% national average – but funding and sustainability remain a consistent hurdle.

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  • Pennsylvania will no longer hold death-row prisoners in endless solitary confinement

    Following an ACLU-led civil-rights lawsuit, the Pennsylvania Department of Correction has implemented huge changes to the treatment of death row inmates. In prisons across the state, individuals who have been sentenced to death no longer have to undergo strip searches, are allowed to have contact visitations with family and friends, can apply for prison employment, and socialize with others in their unit.

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  • Chicago Police Hope To Build Trust With Experiment In Community Policing

    Chicago police have rebuilt some of the trust they lost in one part of the city, where the police department has used private funding to launch a community-policing program. In the department's 25th district, residents get to know their neighborhood officers and can call them directly, something they did 20,000 times in just the first nine months of the pilot project. "Community ambassadors" serve as liaisons between officers and neighbors who are leery of connecting with the police whose department's brutality and misconduct strained relations over many years. The city is working to expand the program.

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  • The failed American Dream: Lessons from Flint's Civic Park neighborhood

    Flint, Michigan's Civic Park neighborhood struggled to make a comeback after the auto industry collapsed in their community. But the city didn't simply accept their failures; they learned from past mistakes and have begun to refuel the economy by incorporating equity, diversity, and several stable economic drivers into the town.

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  • Housing initiative for LGBTQ young people strives to create a ‘family bond'

    For LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness and/or with a foster placement history, barriers to education, work, health, and general safety are a common experience. The Quads on Lancaster supportive housing program in Philadelphia offers a small amount of transition housing for LGBTQ youth who have aged out of the system, establishing personal connections and providing services to help participants prepare for adulthood.

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  • Rwanda invests in model villages to tackle poverty

    Rwanda is taking a controversial approach to tackling poverty within its borders—literally moving people from rural areas into model villages. On one hand, it alleviates the first markers of poverty: having a roof over one's head, access to infrastructure, running water, etc. But on the other hand, the people moved do not have a choice in the matter and now have to figure out how to build a life in a new community. Some villages have turned out to be more successful than others.

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  • In Borneo, healthy people equals healthy forests

    Those who live on the island of Borneo understand that their well-being comes from the Gunung Palung National Park, but logging remained rampant because it was the only way to make money to pay for healthcare. Thus, an organization named "Health in Harmony" was borne through "radically listening" to locals to find out what they needed. This organization accepts creative forms of payment for healthcare and offers incentives to cease logging, including a chainsaw buyback program. As a result, ten years later they saw a 90% drop in logging households and a re-growth of 52,000 acres of forest.

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  • Safer at sea: The unexpected benefit of traceability for small-scale fishers

    Efforts to reduce illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing also make fishermen safer at sea. Vessel Monitoring Mechanisms (VMM) and electronic catch documentation (eCDT) track the origin of fish headed to market, part of an international effort to ensure sustainable and equitable practices. Data transmission also makes fishermen safer, relaying their locations from hundreds of miles out at sea. In the Philippines, a partnership between Futuristic Aviation and Maritime Enterprise (FAME) and USAID Oceans and Fisheries Partnership helps cover subscription fees for FAME radio transmitter service.

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  • Free the Floodplains!

    There is a unique, homegrown local flood buyout program in Charlotte, NC that helps homeowners on floodplains relocate safely and with financial security. This came as a result of the city and county of Charlotte forming a joint storm water utility in the 1990's, which generated money by fixing aging pipes and other storm water needs—funding the local “Quick Buy” program. This gets the aid to the homeowners much quicker than FEMA money does and has since relocated 650 families and saved $25 million in losses.

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  • The boys learning anti-sexism in India

    A program launched by the Equal Community Foundation (ECF) in 2011 called Action for Equality (AFE) educates more than 5,000 teenage boys in Pune, India about violence against women. They spend 43 weeks learning curriculum designed to help them spot gender-based violence, how to intervene and be a model for change, and how to disrupt gender norms. The program is especially effective, because it is coordinated by young men in their 20s whom the teenage boys look up to. About 80% of participants graduate, and many families testify to their son/brother/nephew's changed behavior.

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