Married off to an abusive older man at age 9, Akkatai Teli could not read or write. But she recognized how the rural India justice system neglected women like her in a misogynistic society with high rates of domestic violence, creaky legal machinery, and social pressure to cover up abuse and stay in awful marriages. Teli built a sisterhood movement throughout 50 villages that has helped more than 1,000 women fight for their rights by agitating for attention from police and courts.

Fresh Hub was created by twin high school sisters to address food insecurity and the environmental impact of food waste. Volunteers collect unsold food from grocery stores and bakeries and give it to residents living in “food deserts.” They use a smartphone app and automated messages to alert residents when food is available, which is distributed at community centers. Partnering with Second Servings, a nonprofit already doing similar work, allowed them access to vans, equipment, and important insight. Since 2017, they have led 23 events, kept 15,200 pounds of food out of landfills, and served 1,900 people.

A mother and daughter in North Carolina have helped launch a successful vaccination events and campaigns without much aid from the local government. Both took to grassroots awareness campaigns and took to walking around trailer parks and other places where Spanish-speaking workers live in order to increase the number of vaccinated workers.

After taking care of her own parents, Paula Duren started “boot camp” sessions for caregivers to share available resources, tips for self-care, and support. Drawing on her experience as a psychologist, Duren started the nonprofit Universal Dementia Caregivers to build and run the workshops, which have moved to zoom sessions because of the COVID-19. The all-day sessions provide information ranging from financial advice to how to access state and local services to stress-reduction tips. The overarching message throughout is that caregivers must take care of themselves to take care of their loved ones.

A startup in California called Crop Swap LA is converting unused front yards into community gardens that can grow crops like kale, rainbow chard, and tomatoes as a way to feed neighbors. Community members can pay for subscriptions for up to $43 a month to receive a bundle of greens and vegetables from the microfarms and homeowners get a share of the profits. Each garden needs to have the proper maintenance, which can make it difficult to scale, but these gardens can help provide access to food to those who don’t have a grocery store in their area.

At the Los Angeles County Jail, two men incarcerated on pending murder charges created a homegrown approach to improving the care and conditions of confinement for people with serious mental illness. Their approach is simple: showing love and care for people whose illness makes them feel like outcasts. By helping fellow incarcerated men attend counseling and other programs, and by tending to their personal needs, the initiative has contributed to a significant drop in people harming themselves. Fewer restraints are needed, and the pods where the program operates are notably cleaner and calmer than before.

A nursing station in Foleyet, Ontario has remodeled its annual flu outreach as part of a campaign to help those who have had trouble scheduling their Covid vaccination appointments. Similar efforts are underway in other remote and rural parts of Ontario, which has helped most of these areas remain on par with the larger region's vaccination rate.

An imported strain of bacteria is threatening to destroy olive trees in Italy that produce about 12 percent of the world’s olive oil. An agronomist is working with other scientists to graft trees — taking a different kind of tree that could be resistant to the bacteria and inserting it into the trunk of an older tree. After years of trial and error, they’ve found some success. On one farm, 70 percent of the grafts used have survived. But conspiracy theories and financial difficulties have made it a challenge to have a coordinated response to the problem.

An annual flea market in Cincinnati is honing the entrepreneurial skills of children. The City Flea Kid’s Market allows young vendors to sell a variety of goods, learn about business and gain confidence in themselves.

Rev. Scott Hardin-Nieri of North Carolina works with the Creation Care Alliance to better connect his Christian faith with climate action. Over the years they have developed a toolkit for congregations on how to get involved in the climate discussion. They also host eco-grief meetings that are very popular. They would like to reach more conservative or evangelical members of their community that are more skeptical of climate change, but they have had some success in reaching a wide audience.

As a way to help train frontline health workers in developing countries about childbirth practices and child health, a nurse practitioner launched a video production project to offer short instructional films. In the 10 years since launching the project, the films have overall been viewed "more than 450 million times on YouTube, and they've been downloaded more than 200,000 times in 200 countries."

An ingenious use of LEGOs has resulted in colorful wheelchair ramps around the German town of Hanau. The ramps are constructed using thousands of tiny LEGOs that are glued together and are able to withstand the weight of electric wheelchairs, strollers, and walkers. Although the ramps don’t comply with official building and safety codes, they’ve proven to be helpful and have remained in use in Hanau.

A Spanish chef piloted a project to start a “marine garden” — cultivating eelgrass and obtaining grains it produces to be used in different recipes. The grain has healthy benefits, including 50 percent more protein than rice, and growing the seagrass can transform salt marshes into biodiverse ecosystems that can also capture carbon emissions. They are working to scale the project to understand the ideal conditions to grow the plants.

Knitters are using social media, crowdsourcing, and spreadsheets to make the knitwear industry more inclusive of different body types. Designer Sarah Krentz offers patterns using an interactive spreadsheet where knitters fill in key measurements like bust, waist, and bicep circumference and the pattern automatically populates with the correct number of stitches and rows based on a pre-set formula created by Krentz. Fat Test Knits connects designers to plus size knitters who will test the patters. The site also serves as a bulletin board where moderators have vetted and shared over 500 patterns since 2019.

A man who lost a cousin to cancer built a phone booth with an unconnected rotary phone to imagine conversations with his loved one. It became "the phone of the wind," used by thousands across Japan who lost family in the 2011 tsunami and others whose longing for contact with lost loved ones turns the "conversations" into a deep form of relief and grieving. People in Poland and Britain plan to adopt this approach for survivors grieving losses in the COVID-19 pandemic.

A community effort to help provide food to those who are food insecure during the pandemic has brought together local bakers to bake bread for food banks. The initiative, known as Community Loaves, has amassed 700 volunteers and donated 15,000 loaves to 11 food pantries across the Seattle area, and is now also gaining momentum in Oregon.

During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, volunteers across Belarus worked together to collect and deliver personal protective equipment to frontline workers, despite the Belarusian government denying the spread of the coronavirus. Using social media to organize, the volunteers "served as a kind of SWAT team able to bypass the bureaucracy to obtain the necessary equipment."

The Fayette County Traveling Museum collects, preserves, and shares Uniontown’s Black history. The owners sift through archives, libraries, and donated boxes of materials, which are displayed as educational resources. The museum, which before COVID-19 was set up at schools and churches, details the early history of African Americans, both enslaved and free, the town’s Underground Railroad stop, prominent Black community figures, and the area’s Klu Klux Klan presence. Video and oral histories of older residents also encourage young people to explore their history and make the information more accessible.

Molly Burhans, a young cartographer and environmentalist, is using GIS technology to map out the Catholic Church’s global property holdings to encourage them to improve the environmental impact on the lands they own. Burhans’ organization called GoodLands has been working with various parishes and dioceses to help Church leaders — including Pope Francis — understand their vast landholdings. While finances and COVID-19 have impacted her progress, Burhans’ maps have been used for other purposes like mapping Catholic radio stations in Africa and tracking the whereabouts of priests accused of sexual abuse.

A pop-up library is highlighting books written by Black women and has over 3,000 books in circulation with books from every genre. Founder Ola Ronke Akinmowo also travels to other states with several hundred books and does presentations on Black writers. The initiative has inspired similar projects in Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, and Los Angeles.