Saving business and upgrading the city: how entrepreneurs get relocation help in Ivano-Frankivsk

Following the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, a group of women took the initiative to ensure that the food they consume meets radiation standards twice as strict as the government's. The Seikatsu Club formed in 1965 and has since built itself up to 400,000 members (about 90% of whom are women) and works with 200 producers. The group is highly productive: they run their own milk factory, join with worker collectives to sell goods like jam or cookies, operate a fund for farmers whose products are tainted, offer child and elder care, and much more. Seikatsu is a success due to its local citizens' control.

After learning that the number of lesbian bars across the U.S. was dwindling, two filmmakers launched the show “The Lesbian Bar Project” which spotlights the bars’ significance to their communities. Along with the show, they crowdfunded $300,000 to help financially support the surviving bars.

In Nigeria, the Center for Environment, Human Rights, and Development is improving response time and documentation of oil spills by providing training and smartphones to local volunteers. The locals take photos and capture the coordinates of spills, upload them to a digital monitoring platform, and then send them to a Whatsapp group to ensure immediate action is taken.

Local art businesses, like dance studios, record stores, and tattoo parlors, that have historically served as community centers for local creatives are working with community members to help rebuild their facilities after catastrophic flooding.

Volunteers, hotlines, community supporting families, these are the basic principles of rapid response networks. A rapid response network is a community led, volunteer response to immigration crackdowns that is being replicated in cities around the country. When people are getting detained, the rapid response networks are activated, volunteers receive a text that a neary neighbor is getting deported and they rush to the house. They take notes, and record with their cellphones. “I feel hopeful that there’s something I can do rather than sitting worried and angry, and I feel like I can be part of something that

Cooperatives in Morocco, like Biosalim Cooperative, help women farmers access capital and provide training in agricultural methods, personal development and entrepreneurship to help them achieve financial stability and greater representation in their communities. Since launching in 2018, Biosalim has helped more than 4,000 women.

The SAB Foundation is an independent trust set up by South African Breweries (SAB) as part of the government’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment scheme. It helps businesses — particularly underserved entrepreneurs like women and people with disabilities — grow and thrive. Since 2010, the Foundation has backed more than 6,400 social impact businesses in their early stages.

Leaders in North Carolina’s Transylvania County are investing in home-based childcare by creating a network of caregivers and providing them with financial and technical assistance. The program gives parents affordable options in a rural community where it can be hard to find openings at childcare facilities.

The Mar a Mar association is slowly improving the 174-mile hiking trail, Camino de Costa Rica, with new infrastructure to attract more tourists. The path was built to bring tourism profits inland to the local communities that need it. The association is also helping members of those communities develop small businesses around the trail.

From Google's India-focused app Neighbourly to the wellknown Nextdoor app, social media specifically targeted at connecting neighbors is gaining ground. Whether being used to rate neighborhood attractions, encourage borrowing or sharing of resources, report suspicious neighborhood activity or simply to find a way to make connections, these apps are aimed at decreasing social isolation and increasing community interactions.