Satélites, mapas e trajeto do boi: saída para reduzir desmatamento já opera no Brasil

The city government of St. Paul, Minn. partnered with Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit organization that buys up and forgives personal medical debt. Leveraging pandemic relief funds, the city was able to forgive more than $100 million in medical debt through the partnership.

The ALERT California system is a network of 1,000 cameras using machine learning to identify wildfires in remote, high-risk areas. When a fire is detected, the system sends an alert to operators and emergency responders monitoring the technology. AI helps detect fires sooner, improving firefighting efforts and improving disaster recovery.

The Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona is a key part of the city’s growing climate shelter network, which has expanded from 70 locations in 2020 to 368 last summer. The climate centers are integrated into the city’s public infrastructure — libraries, parks, museums, etc. — and have expanded to the point where 98% of the population is within a 10-minute walk from a shelter.

New York City’s “small purchase” program allows the city’s Department of Transportation to offer government contracts up to a certain spending limit specifically to minority- and women-owned businesses, with the goal of diversifying the city’s pool of contractors and suppliers. In fiscal year 2024, 32 percent of the department’s contract spending went to these businesses, compared to 24 percent in 2023 and 11 percent in 2022.

As flood risk and severity increase, homeowners are lifting their houses to avoid catastrophic damage. Hydraulic lifts raise the structure several feet up in the air, though it’s an expensive process, costing $75 to $200 per square foot. For some eligible families, low-interest disaster loans from FEMA are available to cover 75-100% of the costs. The organization has already raised nearly 22,000 homes nationwide since 1999.

Several projects in the U.S. are proving beaver-inspired structures could limit flooding and benefit wildlife habitat, but state permitting is arduous.

The Next California project, a collaboration between AgLaunch and WWF, is helping transform the Mississippi Delta into a sustainable and prosperous agricultural economy. Working with local farmers across Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi, the organizations are helping agricultural operations incubate projects, diversify assets, and grow distribution networks.

To help address low school attendance and retention among girls, Kano’s state government launched a transportation initiative with buses that bring students to and from school for N50 per trip, a much lower cost than arriving by commercial rickshaw. Both students and teachers report that the program has made it easier and less costly to arrive at school on time.

Giving Circles allow average people to make a larger impact with their philanthropy by pooling donations from members for larger gifts to chosen causes and organizations. Between 2017 and 2023, there were nearly 4,000 of these groups in the United States, with total donations totaling $3.1 billion.

Richmond’s Office of Community Wealth Building acts as a hub for connecting the city’s many anti-poverty programs and organizations, with partnerships that holistically tackle everything from job training and guaranteed income initiatives to community health programs. Since 2014, the city’s poverty rate has dropped from nearly 27 percent to 17.1 percent.