Athens's distinctive apartment buildings, known as polikatoikia, have unintentionally solved problems most cities grapple with. The housing complexes have given rise to a city that has socio-economic integration, decent living conditions, and well-lit apartments with ample outdoor space for fresh air. The varying heights of the buildings have allowed the city to avoid the austerity common for affordable housing projects and efforts to control costs resulted in a modernist design that gives Athens a unique roofscape. Additionally, the outdoor spaces foster a warm and welcoming sense of community.

In Australia, what came to be known as the Big Dry dragged on for 13 punishing years. By the time the rains finally returned in 2010, the country had utterly changed in ways that California — with a similar landscape and economy, struggling to cope after four years of its own epic drought — could learn from.

The European Qualifications Passport, could make it easier for refugees to access higher education. The document functions like an academic transcript and includes educational history, spoken languages, and professional experience. don't “We want to help and facilitate the integration of refugees at the earliest stage.”

Community development programs in cities around the country show how using connectedness and equity as focal points in sparking community change can be successful and sustainable in the long-term. From a Brooklyn grassroots environmental justice organization sustainably rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy to a coalition of nonprofits in Richmond fueling public participation in renewable energy awareness, these entities rely on relationships, equity and bonding over shared communities to foster solutions.

Providing patents with manageable, meaningful activities helps address issues of depression and cognitive impairment. The approach of Problem Adaptation Therapy (PATH) focuses on giving patients tools and small activities to modify their behavior. These can include things like creating checklists, or even just scheduling time for mindfulness. The approach is proven to help patients cope with their feelings, reducing anxiety and depression.

Painter and performance artist Charmaine Wheatley creates portraits with the goal of humanizing people with parts of their life that are misunderstood or stigmatized by others. For the “Humanizing is Destigmatizing” project, Wheatley is an artist in residence at the University of Rochester Medical Center creating portraits of people with HIV and mental health diagnoses.

In Afghanistan, where climate change is drying up previously productive farms, female education has taken on a new importance. A recent Brookings Institution study found that for "every additional year of school a girl receives, her country is better prepared for, and better able to recover from climate disasters."

Can we engineer buildings to prevent collapse in earthquakes? The answer is yes, and the Inquiry dives into how better building design can save more and more lives as urban density increases.

Kaleidoscope Connect is a curriculum program that helps middle school students build strong relationships with adults. The program helps students define what is important to them in relationships and helps them develop the skills to connect well with adults who support them. This curriculum is designed to help combat mental health problems before they arise, and give students a strong support system that they can seek help from if they need it.

The difficult Conversations Lab at Columbia University studies conversations between people with opposing political views. The researchers found that if both parties on opposing sides of an issue read a complex article before talking, they are sometimes more likely to be open to their partner's views.

Resilient infrastructure is one way to prepare cities for the unpredictable effects of climate change. In Staten Island, which was devastated by Hurricane Sandy, officials have secured millions in funding to build a seawall, which will prevent coastal erosion and decrease the risk of flooding. Seawells or any type of resilient infrastructure, however, need to be combined with other solutions for the best chance of success.

Living in poverty can impact brain functioning due to the consistent stress and can lead to difficulty with problem solving, decision making, and goal setting. A Boston-based project, EMPath, addresses this issue by assisting families with identifying goals and taking the steps to accomplish these goals.

Farmers in Bule, Ethiopia, are practicing agroforestry, a diverse cropping method that mimics natural ecosystems. A survey found a stunning average of 16 crop species, including 21 species of tree, on farms. The benefits of the practice are myriad: food security, improved soil health, carbon sequestration, diversified revenue streams, and new wildlife habitat, to name several. While the incentive to grow valuable monocultures can be high, many growers stick with agroforestry regardless.

In East Oakland, teens experience random violence, a lack of healthy food, and other sources of chronic stress. The consequences can be grave. At one school, the dropout rate is one in two. Learning to be resilient helps teens survive and even thrive. Multiple efforts are helping East Oakland teens to build this skill, including by connecting them with role models and mentors.

Drug users aren’t the only ones affected by the opioid crisis—first responders feel the effects, too. Critical Incident Stress Management is a program that gives them tools for coping with the emotional toll of working on the front lines of the crisis. The program offers training and peer groups so overworked responders can bear up under job stress.

A school in Ohio runs a program called Adventure Girls in order to teach adolescent girls resilience and creative problem-solving skills. The curriculum is borne out of research designed to build resilience, and it creates stressful situations and equips girls with the tools needed to get through them. Participants testify to how much the program has changed them, and the built-in role model system that employs high school girls to guide sessions also teaches valuable leadership skills.

Tallahassee is coordinating its youth development, violence prevention and climate adaptation efforts to help out-of-work and out-of-school youth earn their GED and secure jobs helping to shape the city's climate resilience plan. One of the ways the program works is by enrolling participants in apprenticeships within local public works departments and puts them on track to get the required licensing for employment. So far, 640 teens and young adults have participated in the program.

The Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw has long had a culture of cyclicality which is now coming in handy during the Coronavirus pandemic. Because they assume that hardship will come after periods of abundance, tribal members prepare for times of scarcity by making do with less, strategizing new ways to produce food, and regularly checking in with elders to ensure their needs are met. The tribe also lives on the coast of Louisiana, so climate change and environmental degradation remain an issue that they include in their future-planning.

The demand for food crops is increasing globally while the crop resilience is decreasing due to a warming climate and elevated CO2 levels. Scientists in Washington, DC are testing how to cross food crops with weeds, which have resilience against heat and many other environmental challenges.

Based off the Dutch initiative IMC Weekendschool, TADA is a program in Brussels, Belgium that helps younger kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods learn about different career paths. The weekend workshops expose children to a diverse set of professions and passions. The program is so popular that they haven't been able to meet demand. They hope to work with about 1000 young people by 2020.

Illegal logging and land clearing are destroying much of the Amazon forest which is impacting the livelihood of the indigenous people living there. The Guajajara tribe is taking an active stand against these activities by joining forces to stand guard against intruders.

Throughout the United States, an annual community science competition known as the City Nature Challenge (CNC), has brought residents together to document research-grade observations as a means of locating and identifying species with conservation needs. Although it's yet to be seen how this competition will fare during the coronavirus pandemic, in past years, thousands of observations have been made representing hundreds of species.

Schools with high percentages of immigrants and refugees face the particularly difficult challenges of language acquisition and cultural integration. One Brooklyn school succeeds by having students teach one another and incorporating English language lessons into every class.

In rural Bangladesh, the effects of climate change are felt acutely: For one, flooding prevents students from regularly attending school. A nonprofit started in the early 2000s has successfully overcome this seemingly insurmountable barrier by refurbishing boats as floating classrooms and libraries.

Research has found that physical movement, such as dance, can be an affective treatment and rehabilitation for people with Parkinson’s Disease. The Dance Well Initiative brings people with Parkinson’s, as well as community members, together to stage dance performances in gallery spaces as treatment and a creative response to the surrounding art.

“Yes, and,” encourages resilience. The Air Force Wounded Warrior Program offers injured service members and their caretakers the option of attending improv workshops as part of rehabilitation. Improv helps build social skills and help adopt to life after an injury.

Over the last two years, six seedbanks have been established in five villages in Odisha, India, with 72 men and women conserving 50 varieties of fibre and food crops seeds. This is a much needed shot in the arm for these districts which are plagued with hunger, poverty and insecurity.

Trauma-informed care and social support systems encourage resilience in the face of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). With evidence of strong links between childhood trauma and long-term health, behavioral, and even social issues in adulthood, programs like the Best Beginnings Children’s Partnership of the Flathead Reservation and Lake County in Montana and the BARR (Building Assets, Reducing Risks) curriculum promote healing and resilient thinking. Creating positive, supportive environments also reduces the likelihood of passing down inter-generational trauma.

For families who find themselves in transitional housing, interruptions can be especially difficult for children who have to move around and miss much-needed stability. In Nashville, the first Girl Scout troop for homeless girls is working to change that, providing stability and friendship.

At least five people who were paralyzed are walking, thanks to a pain stimulator and physical therapy. The stimulator, which is implanted in the body, sends electricity to the spine, and combined with therapy, can retrain the body to walk again. “The first day I took steps on my own was an emotional milestone in my recovery that I’ll never forget, as one minute I was walking with the trainer’s assistance and, while they stopped, I continued walking on my own.”

Rural communities need a multi-pronged strategy to improve resilience to wildfires. A method that combines forest treatment projects, education of homeowners, and community-level strategizing at the neighborhood level is the best approach to reducing risk, according to Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit organization. Other organizations, like the Watershed Center and the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network, are working to spread awareness and implementation of such resilience-oriented wildfire management strategies.