How this clinic has changed a nation's view of family planning

The Centre for Family Health Initiative aims to improve sexual and reproductive health for young girls by bringing educational programs into the schools and connecting students to important health services through primary health care providers. Its year-long education program, Dreams Girls, covers everything from puberty and menstrual health to STI prevention and discussions of consent. The program has been offered in 22 secondary schools so far and partly credits its success to building relationships with community gatekeepers who can help encourage community buy-in.

Churches in Appalachia are installing solar arrays and encouraging their communities to make energy-efficient upgrades and renewable-energy swaps, too. The Shepherdstown Presbyterian Church in West Virginia purchased its array with donations that community members raised from the money they saved on energy after installing free smart-control devices in their homes that reduced energy use during peak hours.

A pastor in Blue Island, Illinois, closed his satellite campus church and turned it into a community service center. Named the Hope Center, it aims to address community needs through a garden, automotive garage, and technology services department. Each program has a director and volunteers who run workshops to teach community members new skills.

Rev. Scott Hardin-Nieri of North Carolina works with the Creation Care Alliance to better connect his Christian faith with climate action. Over the years they have developed a toolkit for congregations on how to get involved in the climate discussion. They also host eco-grief meetings that are very popular. They would like to reach more conservative or evangelical members of their community that are more skeptical of climate change, but they have had some success in reaching a wide audience.

In Kenya's Siaya County, community-selected individuals known as nyamrerwa are trained "to address healthcare issues of individuals and communities in their respective localities." The initiative is part of a larger strategy that is helping to localize care and empower community members to "take control and responsibility of their own health achievement efforts."

Kenya's overcrowded and poorly maintained prisons offer some educational and rehabilitative programs to inmates, but the nuns of the Dimesse congregation provide something else to try to transform the lives of those who committed crimes: religious instruction, with a side helping of basic humanitarian supplies. Along with food, underwear, and sanitary pads, the nuns use regular visits to men's and women's prisons to hand out bibles and give faith-based instruction aimed at reintegrating shunned citizens once they return to their communities.

Around the United States, small-town institutions are shuttering and communal ties are weakening, all less than positive signs for the fate of democracy. But in Orange, New Jersey, Mindy Fullilove and other congregants at the First Unitarian Universalist Church used a crowdfunding platform called ioby and asset-based community development to keep the doors of their church open and their community flourishing.

When a group of middle school girls got tired of having their periods treated as a stigmatized issue, they decided to start their own podcast in order to educate their peers and start a conversation around this natural process. "When I heard we were gonna talk about periods, at first I was disgusted and uncomfortable because that's just how I am," says Kassy Abad. "But once we got to talk about it, and I learned that what happens to me happens to all these other girls, it made me feel more comfortable. It made me feel safe."

For undocumented youth who commute between El Paso, Texas and Juárez, Mexico for school, finding a community to connect with and feel safe in is especially challenging. The Christian youth organization Young Life is there to fill that gap in immigrant students' lives by offering emotional and spiritual guidance as well as a support system that deals with any and all issues that arise, whether citizenship-related or not. The group has mentored hundreds of high school students whose lives straddle the border over the years, and many of those credit the group with helping them make sense of their "messy" lives.

Cooperation between state public health and religious institutions expands access to family planning resources for women. In areas of Rwanda where the Catholic Church operates some of the only healthcare centers, the Rwandan government has circumvented the prohibitive cost of building new facilities by partnering with the Church. Although the Catholic institutions refuse to provide access to birth control, they have agreed to refer women to small governmental health clinic outposts that supplement the Church’s care by distributing birth control.