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

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  • Jail or Bail? There's a New Option

    Between the opposite extremes of jailing too many people unnecessarily before trial or releasing too many unsupervised, New York City judges in 2016 began to use a "supervised release" option. In the first three years, the program's 11,000 defendants showed up for court dates 89% of the time while 8% were rearrested for new felony crimes. The program, which requires people check in regularly with a case manager, helped reduce the jail population by more than a third. The approach tries to balance the needs of public safety with the reality that even a short jail stay carries its own social harms.

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  • You Flushed the Toilet. They Made Some Bricks.

    A civil engineer at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in Australia is converting biosolids, or disinfected leftovers from the water treatment process, into bricks for building. He claims they look, smell, and work the same as conventional fired clay bricks, but with an added benefit of saving land and energy and reducing carbon emissions.

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  • Fighting the Stigma of Mental Illness Through Music

    Engaging with music stimulates brain activity and improves mental health. The Me2/Orchestra, a nonprofit organization, offers its volunteer musicians a stigma-free environment to reconnect with their passions and harness the healing power of music. In addition to empowering musicians who have encountered challenges due to mental illness, the Me2/Orchestra encourages community engagement to dispel misperceptions about mental illness.

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  • The Magazines Publishing One Another's Work

    Publishing various perspectives fosters civic discourse. In Poland, Projekt Spiecie addresses the challenge of ideological isolation by creating a network of magazines across the political spectrum that all agree to publish each other’s work. By providing their readers with competing points of view on topics of national debate, these publishers aim to reduce the opacity of individual media bubbles and to lessen polarization.

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  • Charity Finds Success in Work With At-Risk Children, but It's Costly

    Friends of the Children pairs a cohort of about eight students, identified as some of the most at-risk in a city or neighborhood, with well-paid mentors who stay with the kids from kindergarten through the end of high school. Currently in 15 cities, the national organization allows cities to adapt their program to their unique context while still providing data tracking and marketing support. Researchers and donators credit the organization's focus on a limited number of kids over a long period of time for its success.

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  • With Paid Leave, Gates Foundation Says There Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing

    In the United States, parental leave is set at 12 weeks, but many companies have begun pursuing other possibilities such as paid time and more time for both mothers and fathers. Most recently, however, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has decreased their parental leave from one year to six months while adding in a financial stipend based of what they've learned from past failures.

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  • The Art of Humanizing Social Systems

    For social service agencies, prioritizing well-being requires new procedures and a framework for understanding holistic wellness. The Full Frame Initiative has partnered with agencies in the states of Massachusetts and Missouri in an effort to bring categories of well-being into their purview. The Initiative uses five metrics—safety, mastery, social connectedness, and access to resources— to help align social systems, ranging from courts and juvenile corrections to homeless housing services, with social needs so that agencies can better assist their communities.

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  • No Tuition, but You Pay a Percentage of Your Income (if You Find a Job)

    At Lambda School, students pay nothing up front, with the understanding that they will contribute a set percentage of their future salaries to the school's operating costs. Now, Lambda is experimenting with expanding the Income Share Agreement model from its current coding focus to a broader range of disciplines, such as nursing and cybersecurity and traditional four-year college majors.

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  • It Takes a Mosquito to Fight a Mosquito

    Australia has a major mosquito problem which has resulted in a rise of dengue cases, but adding more mosquitos to the ecosystem may be the solution. The city of Townsend has been experimenting with the release of bacteria-injected mosquitos into the area in order to directly combat the dengue-infected mosquitos. So far, this approach has seen significant positive results and is now being implemented in a variety of different ways in other parts of the world.

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  • ‘When I Skate It Just Feels Free':Figure Skating in Harlem helps young women of color see themselves on ice

    Figure Skating in Harlem is a group working to help young girls of color in New York learn teamwork, dedication, and hardwork - and the art of figure skating, a sport that is often perceived as inaccessible and overwhelmingly white and Asian-American. But the program doesn't just stop there; the program also includes academic and leadership development.

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