This collection was curated by the Solutions Journalism Network for you, the students in the Environmental Leadership Learning Community at Villanova University. The stories in this collection serve two purposes: to provide you with knowledge and insights about how indigenous peoples are contributing to solving the climate crisis, and to introduce you to a new type of reporting that shifts the focus from doom and gloom to what's working. 

First, about the stories. 

Scroll down to read a story published in Mongabay about how indigenous-led conservation initiatives in Canada and Australia are both protecting the land and empowering local communities. The second story is from The Narwhal and it explores how the Indonesian villagers of Wae Rebo have turned from agriculture to ecotourism, securing a more stable and sustainable income. Finally, this collection includes a story from NPR on how Native American tribal leaders in California and government officials are coming together to facilitate “cultural burnings” or controlled burns.  Each of these stories aligns with Project Drawdown's Indigenous Peoples' Forest Tenure solution to climate change.

So what is solutions journalism, and why is it important?

More and more people around the world say they are tired of so much negative news, and in fact, in the United States, about 66 percent of respondents to a survey say they’re experiencing news fatigue. This trend is not surprising given how much journalism focuses on society’s problems and what’s going wrong, and how little journalists report on solutions.  Solutions journalism strives to flip that narrative on its head and instead focuses on responses to social and environmental problems.  

You can find solutions journalism stories on the websites of many news organizations (check out more about that here), and we encourage to see if your favorite news outlet does this type of reporting.  And if you want to quickly find stories on an issue you care about, you can do that by searching the Solutions Story Tracker, a resource that is available to you as a college student for free. 

Finally, if you want to add stories you find to this collection, or create a new collection on another topic, you can do that, as well.

Here's how:

1. With this collection open, click on the LOGIN/REGISTER button in the upper right corner of the website and select Register Here.
2. In the "Join Today" box, select that you are "Not a journalist, but I want to learn about solutions." 
3. Fill in the rest of the information -- that you are a student, your name and email, create a password (anything will do, we're not picky), and in the referred by box, please add your professor's name.
4. Now, open the collection again and this time, click on the "Copy and Customize" button to the right. Now the collection is yours to add to as you'd like. When you want to come back to it, you'll find it saved to "My Collections" under your name in the upper right corner of the page.
5. When you find a story you'd like to add to the collection, simply click on the bullet icon in the story detail page and select this collection to add the story. 
6.  To create a new collection from scratch, just click the bullet icon in the story detail page and instead of adding a story to an existing collection, select "create a new collection." 

Here's a custom search link in the SST of stories that focus on solutions to climate change to get you started!