For Rohingya Survivors, Art Bears Witness

Healing Hurt People, a hospital-based violence intervention program in Portland, embeds caseworkers in trauma center care teams to rapidly connect shooting victims and their families with counseling, housing assistance, job training, and emotional support. The program has been linked with Portland's decline in gun violence, though chronic funding instability continues to threaten its capacity and growth.

As a result of locals writing to their political representatives, the Nigerian government began a borehole intervention project to provide more than 2,000 residents with clean, easily accessible water. The project also provided a generator to address the village’s lack of power supply and residents pay N20 ($0.02) to access the borehole, which covers the cost of running the generator.

Several U.S. cities — and groups like the Clean Hands Collective — are obtaining funding to install public sinks to provide those experiencing homelessness access to better hygiene, thus combating the spread of disease. Some cities, like Portland, have even created portable toilets and other cities are installing public showers as well.

Esperanza Threads provides sewing training to refugees and immigrants so that they can find sustainable jobs and provide for their families. The students learn to make t-shirts, bags, and baby products, which are sold on the organization’s website. To emulate an actual job experience, the two-month long program pays the trainees a stipend for their time and their work. The group partners with resettlement agencies, shelters, rehabilitation facilities, and churches to reach new clients. The training has also had the effect of increasing hope and building self-esteem among the participants.

As a way to raise funds and awareness for stormwater education, some cities are turning rain barrels into an art exhibit. Rain barrels catch water as it runs off rooftops, which can be used later for watering plants. It also reduces the amount of water that picks up pollutants and is carried into waterways. The Ashland Soil and Water Conservancy District in Ohio featured 10 rain barrels painted by local artists, allowing residents to vote and bid on their favorite design. Their efforts were inspired by a similar event in Indiana where they’ve auctioned 100 barrels for residents to use at home.

Distilleries and pharmacies in Vermont have begun making hand sanitizer, in order to help mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. Although this does take away from the typical function of the businesses and doesn't result in revenue, the state is helping to cover costs of production so that all bottles can be donated to emergency responders, grocery store workers, and other at-risk people.

The Aravani Art Project is a project that works to raise the visibility and voice of the trans community in India. It does so by employing them to paint murals across the country (and even one in Sri Lanka) featuring slices of life as a trans person. It took time to build trust with the community at first, but eventually the people behind the project developed a system of idea conception to realization with their participants. Over time they have developed long-term relationships with each other, and the trans community is slowly becoming comfortable with having a public voice.

One Nigerian couple is committed to ending female genital mutilation, or the practice of removing a women’s external genitalia. Gift and Augustine Abu travel all across Nigeria to end FGM, which can sometimes lead to death. The couple has devised a master plan, has 84 volunteers, and offer workshops to cutters so they can find alternate sources of income.

Local agencies tasked with controlling disease-spreading organisms are releasing sterile male mosquitoes to help reduce the pest’s population and prevent the spread of dengue. This strategy has decreased the mosquito population by about 82% in parts of Southern California, marking the first time in eight years that the population has declined instead of increased.

DRASA Health Trust trains community members to be health champions, teaching them skills to prevent and control the spread of infectious diseases. Between March and April 2024, the group trained 2,089 people. As a result of their education initiatives, DRASA Health Trust saw a 43.2% increase in residents’ understanding of infectious diseases, as well as the implementation of prevention strategies and better hygiene protocols for both businesses and individuals.