Counties use high school students as poll workers to shore up staff

In Colombia, students in classrooms make decisions democratically. The result has been higher rates of student involvement and achievement.

B. Godihal is one of the thousands of communities in Karnataka that have worked to hold clean elections, stirred by a confluence of awareness campaigns by nongovernmental organizations and rising public frustration with candidates’ broken promises.

Neighborhood Centers, a Houston anti-poverty program has a simple philosophy: “The people are the asset, the source of potential solutions, not the problem.” The non-profit has scaled nationally, employing its bottom-up approach to disburse funds in poor communities.

At UC Berkeley, the Blum Center for Developing Economies and the Center for Effective Global Action are working together to formalize development engineering as a field of research - a new generation of engineers committed to making a social impact.

Crises and problems are well-covered in the media. When the media focuses instead on organizations that are doing social good, it has a better effect because then these organizations are more likely to receive support and expand their access.

In Iowa, the “redistricting” of the state’s legislative and congressional boundaries is done by mapmakers who abide by nonpartisan metrics that all sides agree are fair — a seemingly revolutionary concept in the high-stakes decennial rite of redistricting.

The Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies provides a "blueprint" for peaceful and democratic revolution, busting myths about the process of nonviolent revolt and helping dissidents in countries around the world to accomplish political goals, such as fighting corruption or protecting the environment.

Low voter turnouts, populists offering half-truths, corporate interests, and the blurring of facts in the media are signs that democracy around the world is in turmoil. Internationally, citizens have assembled different programs and initiatives that arm ordinary people with information about policy and their elected officials, as well as distinctive ways to reform the electoral system.

A correlation exists in Cuyahoga County between the idle youth rate -- base on teens who are neither working nor in school -- and the youth violence rate, according to an analysis done for The Plain Dealer by Claudia Coulton, co-director of the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development at Case Western Reserve University and a professor of urban social research.

The Islamic State's recruitment of women draws big attention. But less noticed and more important are efforts in Islamic countries to raise the number of women in religious leadership, despite a long tradition against it, as a potential, effective antidote to the IS recruitment efforts – preventing young women (and men) from joining radical groups.