Portland's Bybee Lakes Hope Center: A jail no more

A novel way to help young men growing up in communities in which concentrated poverty, violence and unemployment are well-documented barriers to health and longevity: male youth of color are trained to be the emergency response team to help stabilize street victims before doctors or nurses begin procedures.

For young people, learning the social norms of the office is crucial for survival in the new economy. Year Up is an organization that is unusually successful at preparing young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds for jobs in big companies.

There are many other adults beyond teachers who regularly interact with children — and who are often overlooked as potential contributors to the educational mission. Hartsville, South Carolina, uses school bus drivers as a resource and extra set of eyes to observe how students are doing.

Half of U.S. farm workers are Hispanic, but few make it to leadership positions. A historically white non-profit, FFA, is creating equal education programs in California to increase leadership opportunities for minorities in agriculture.

The California prison system is overwhelmed after adopting tough-on-crime laws with no improvement. New York adopted more tolerant policies and has decreased the state's crime rate and its prison population.

Two Iranian brothers worked as doctors to reform how Iran tackles HIV, moving the country toward the harm reduction approach. By providing clean needles and methadone, the doctors were able to lower infection rates, even in prisons.

In Tanzania, mapping of water points showed that nationally, less than half the existing rural water points were working—of water points that were less than two years old, a quarter had already stopped functioning. British charity WaterAid sets up workshops in poor countries like Tanzania and India to train mechanics in order to have a local fix for these problems. The mechanic position offers employment opportunities for women, fixes pumps for an average of 100 rupees (roughly $2.00), and repaired more than 1,100 pumps in the first 14 months.

Prisons in the United States are overcrowded with many non-violent offenders and the cost to keep them in jail consumes public budgets. Criminal justice reform has attracted bipartisan interest with diverse proposals to aid adjust the incarceration rate. The Urban Institute has developed an interactive “prison population forecaster,” which helps citizens to assess the impact of different policies.

When adults want to return to school, they face many challenges including the experience of long waitlists for classes, and poor relevance to the job skills they need for future employment. The Washington state community college system has started a program known as Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) that instead teaches in two parts: academic content and basic soft skills.

Bangladesh has often struggled maintaining safety in the workplace. But a new effort ensures that Bangladeshi workers are trained about how to better follow security and safety restrictions to create a safer working environment.