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

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  • People in Solitary Confinement and Volunteers Team Up to Garden, Imagine a World Without Prisons

    May 27, 2021 |

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    Response Location: United States, New Orleans, Louisiana

    The Solitary Gardens project started in New Orleans and has been copied in multiple other places as a combination art exhibit and therapeutic link between incarcerated people and the outside world. People on both sides of the prison walls collaborate in pairs to design a garden that grows flowers and herbs chosen by the incarcerated person. The gardens match the tiny dimensions of a solitary-confinement cell. The healing herbs are used to help others, and the exercise overall gives incarcerated people a sense of connection to the earth, part of the project's prison-abolition message.

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  • Young People Are Digitally Rebuilding Tulsa's Black Wall Street

    May 26, 2021 |

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    Response Location: United States, Tulsa, Oklahoma

    Urban Coders Guild provides STEM education opportunities to underrepresented communities and is working with local students to build websites for the businesses destroyed during the Tulsa Race Massacre. While none of the businesses operate today, the program builds awareness of the massacre while also teaching students coding skills to build websites. The course is also considered a “prep” course for the future because it teaches students how to interact with others as well as listen to and accept feedback from others. The group partnered with Tulsa Community College students to create the content and logos.

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  • In Nashville, Using Loan Guarantees to Fund Affordable Housing Preservation

    May 25, 2021 |

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    Response Location: United States, Nashville, Tennessee

    Urban Housing Solutions, a Nashville nonprofit housing developer, made a $19.2 million investment to preserve 165 apartments for people earning in the mid-30s. In a tight and expensive housing market where aggressive investors often outflank nonprofits seeking to provide lower-cost housing, UHS financed the purchase with a bank loan that will earn the lender state tax credits and that was secured by four philanthropic foundations' funds as collateral. The transaction was a first in Nashville for the use of community investment tools to preserve lower-cost housing.

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  • This Federal Program to Aid Restaurants and Street Vendors Is Working

    May 25, 2021 |

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    Response Location: United States, San Francisco, California

    In just its first few weeks of existence, the U.S. Small Business Administration's Restaurant Revitalization Fund approved more than $6 billion in aid to 38,000 restaurants and other food vendors suffering economically from pandemic shutdowns. The aid program's rollout was more effective than the Paycheck Protection Program in 2020, in that it successfully targeted businesses owned by women, veterans, and "socially or economically disadvantaged people." It was helped in outreach to businesses by organizations such as Mission Economic Development Agency and New York's Street Vendor Project.

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  • San Francisco's Filipino Cultural District Keeping Hope Alive After a Tough Year

    May 18, 2021 |

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    Response Location: United States, San Francisco, California

    “UNDSCVRD SF," funded by the SOMA Community Stabilization Fund and produced by the nonprofit Kultivate Labs, is a night market held once a month from July to November that features a range of Filipino vendors. There were over 35,000 attendees in 2019 and it generated $300,000 in sales. It also serves as a testing ground to select businesses for Kultivate Labs’ SEED Accelerator Program and grantees for the SOMA Fund. The former provides bootcamps and one-on-one support for Filipino-owned businesses that are located in, or would like to be located in, a permanent space within the SOMA cultural district.

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  • How to Start (and Run) a Bank That Puts People and Planet Over Profits

    May 17, 2021 |

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    Response Location: United States, San Francisco, California

    San Francisco-based New Resource Bank was launched with environmental sustainability lending as its niche. But it pursued easier profits for a time, risking its survival and mission until a new CEO turned its fortunes around with a laser focus on the original mission, bolstered by learning its borrowers' businesses intimately. The bank doubled in size and merged with a larger bank, making itself a model for mission-driven lending in such businesses as solar, wind energy, and organic foods – and by attracting institutional depositors and investors as interested in social change as they are in profits.

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  • An Initiative to Improve Street Safety through Public Art

    May 17, 2021 |

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    Response Location: United States, Kansas City, Missouri

    Street murals and innovative safety features have transformed a dangerous intersection. The Kansas City project not only improved the aesthetic, it also decreased noise pollution, pedestrian crossing distances, and vehicle speeds by 45 percent.

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  • ‘Solar For All' Brings Clean Energy to Low- and Middle-Income DC Residents

    May 14, 2021 |

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    Response Location: United States, Washington, District of Columbia

    An initiative to bring solar power to public housing in D.C. is helping residents of Jubilee Housing. Community solar, which shares the electricity generated amongst multiple households, makes solar energy an affordable option. Solar credits can provide a significant relief to households that need it most.

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  • The Pandemic Modernized School Board Meetings — Will the Changes Last?

    May 13, 2021 |

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    Response Location: United States

    School districts across the country from Miami, FL, to Richmond, VA, had to modernize their school meetings to follow safety precautions of the pandemic. To do this, school districts moved their school board meetings to online platforms, or allowed participants to leave comments through voicemail messages. While these solutions were not perfect, it made it easier and convenient for parents to participate.

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  • How Bakersfield, California Ended Chronic Homelessness

    May 11, 2021 |

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    Response Location: United States, Bakersfield, California

    Bakersfield became the first California city to all but abolish a category of homelessness using the Built for Zero campaign's tactics of combining the use of data with a sustained, communal effort. From 2017 to 2020, Bakersfield identified and then housed all but two of the 72 people it identified as chronically homeless. Working from lists of people, the Bakersfield Kern Regional Homeless Coalition met regularly to whittle down the caseload. The county housing authority helped by leasing a bloc of eight units to sublet, easing landlord worries about dealing directly with people experiencing homelessness.

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