Handcrafted woodwork helps save an Amazonian reserve, one tree at a time

After Nepal's 2015 earthquake, many village women were left in financial devastation and struggled to support their families. The earthquake destroyed up to 90% of small enterprises and markets, so the United Nations Development Programme trained women how to weave. As a mode of recovery, the weaving industry has helped rebuild the economic and social structures through the Panchakanya group.

The USA has one of the highest rates of incarceration, and reoffending is a likely outcome after prison. 'The Last Mile' and similar programs are providing inmates with the opportunity to learn marketable skills and earn degrees while in prison, and then find jobs once their sentence is finished, in order to decrease the likelihood of reoffending.

A local energy cooperative in Colorado, Delta Montrose Electric Association, is spurring economic development through renewable energy. The program has allowed Delta County to diversify energy sources, and has become a tool for economic revitalization.

The opening of an ice cream shop in Butare, Rwanda is a small part of a larger effort to bring joy and personal health and happiness to communities who otherwise "ceased to believe they deserved it." A nonprofit based in Brooklyn -- and founded by owners of the popular ice cream shop Blue Marble -- pays for English classes and business training for the women running the shop as an effort to help the managers stay in the business of giving their neighbors joy.

Women in central India are being recruited and professionally trained as wildlife safari guides and naturalists. Government hiring initiatives and Pugdundee Safaris' ProNat program have provided rural women with stable, well-paying careers while improving the safari experience for tourists and increasing conservation compliance in tiger reserves.

A coordinated ward-level fertilizer distribution system in Madhesh Province reduced queues, favoritism, and black-market access for many farmers during the 2026 rice planting season. The system involved municipal committees, cooperatives, and stricter monitoring.

In Dandabazar, a community-wide shift to commercial cauliflower farming was supported by local government seed distribution and subsidies for modern tools. This transformed a food-insecure hill village into a recognized vegetable-producing hub, enabling individual farmers to grow their businesses.

After Boko Haram's insurgency deepened religious divisions in Adamawa State where Christians and Muslims had resorted to trading on separate market days, 200 women participated in a 2020 peacebuilding program led by the British Council and the Women and Youth Economic Advancement and Health Initiative. They received conflict management training and micro-grants to start or strengthen their businesses, and formed an interfaith group that established the Tumba Ra Ngabili community market, where Christians and Muslims now trade side by side.

Since 2015, the Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship, with support by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has worked to help dairy farmers transfer skills and opportunities to a new generation. Thus far, slmost 70 apprentices have graduated from the program as independent journeyworkers, and 59 farmer-apprentice pairs are currently active across the country.

Babban Gona is an agriculture company that helps smallholder farmers in Nigeria produce bigger yields and increase their incomes. The company offers training, fertilizer, herbicides, and seeds in exchange for some of the farmer’s harvest. When the produce sells, the farmers get some of the profit and a bonus if it sells for more than expected.