In rural Alabama, where the nearest grocery store can be more than 20 miles, residents are finding that robust community gardens are helping to improve general wellness. Even beyond offering free and healthy meals to ...

In Kentucky, sex education offerings in rural districts is often inconsistent across schools. The “Sexy Sex Ed” workshop aims to provide students with information and resources about consent, safety, and anatomy. “If ...

When big box stores shutter, communities can suffer: vacant buildings deter investment and sites can encourage vandalism and other crimes. Because demolishing the stores can prove prohibitively expensive, three cities...

In northeastern Papua New Guinea, community leaders and the government set aside 360,000 hectares of the Managalas Plateau as a protected conservation area in 2017. The project has strong local support. But facing des...

Following decades of oil companies contaminating the water, indigenous groups in Ecuador’s Sucumbíos province have built systems for rainwater collection and filtration. These systems have provided people with clean w...

As climate change has led to more frequent droughts and volatile weather in Australia, climate-dependent jobs like farming are increasingly imperiled. In response, the Australian state government of Victoria launched ...

Tosepan Titataniske, an indigenous cooperative in Mexico's Sierra Norte mountains, emphasizes local control at the heart of solar programs. Over the last four decades, the organization has incorporated 410 community-l...

Rural communities need more than medication to deal with the opioid crisis; in one rural region of northern Wisconsin, a specialist doctor is able to prescribe Suboxone, but the programs he advocates for take a more c...

In Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, where 54 percent of the world's mountain gorillas reside, NGOs and locals are combining efforts to stem human-gorilla conflict. By funneling tourism dollars into communit...

A school district in North Carolina is at the cutting edge of a new teaching model - to multiply the impact of the most effective teachers and draw them to underserved districts, schools are paying these teachers more...

The UN's Green Climate Fund is a mechanism through which money for climate adaptation and mitigation is distributed globally. But funding for renewable energy goes overwhelmingly to wealthier nations. Without more fun...

Uganda is known for its dangerous, and often violent, anti-LGBT culture. But for those identifying as LGBT, living in a rural area can make acceptance surprisingly easier. Due to smaller community sizes and more close...

High tech innovations are making agriculture more productive while creating skilled jobs. In Ghana, tech startups like Acquah Aviation and TROTRO Tractor offer technology-sharing services to farmers. With urbanization...

To restore degraded lands in Tajikistan, farmers are turning to agroforestry, a traditional cropping method that more closely mimics natural systems. An estimated 45 gigatons of carbon is sequestered by agroforestry s...

Gus the Bus, Magic Bus, El Busesito, and other traveling classrooms are working to fill the persistent preschool gap in Colorado's childcare deserts. Most days the mobile preschools park near apartment complexes or mo...

Hashtags and chat apps can notify users when items of vital necessity become available during times of severe shortage. Despite the Zimbabwean government’s pushback against social media, Zimbabweans are turning to pla...

Although only 16 percent of residents in Onalaska, Washington hold a bachelor's degree, all 43 seniors in the class of 2017 were accepted to college. Even as more students are college bound, in the past five years, th...

After “the shock” that laid off many coal miners in Delta County, Colorado, the area is experiencing a resurgence. Population is growing, finally, and a fiber optic internet company has stimulated the economy with new...

Small towns in West Virginia are a natural oasis for adventure lovers from urban and rural areas alike; towns like Davis and Fayetteville are succesfully capitalizing on their natural resources to increase tourism and...

The Clark Fork River in Montana has recently undergone a significant revitalization process and is now bringing in greater recreational opportunities and interest in rural housing development. This change has spurred...

Over the course of her tenure, a third generation Oklahoma teacher transformed the way students at her school engage with STEM education, opening the door for rural white and American Indian students to join the natio...

In rural communities, firewood extraction hurts both human health and wildlife habitat. In India, a group of conservationists are helping villages switch from wood-burning to liquified petroleum gas. While logistics a...

Canada and Australia have both used targeted immigration policies to grow their rural populations. But Canada’s more holistic approach seems to match the long-term needs of migrant and local populations better than Au...

One in five Americans lives in a "higher education desert," at least twenty-five miles from the nearest college. To fill the gap, rural counties have created higher education centers or pop-up satellite campuses - one...

To combat the shortage of rural doctors, Alabama universities are offering rural medicine programs or helping fund the studies of students who commit to rural practice after graduation. Admissions staff also keep in m...