Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Kalamazoo police look to violence intervention program and community partnerships to halt shootings

    In their Group Violence Intervention program, Kalamazoo police use "custom notifications" to intervene before street violence erupts. Working in tandem with community groups, the police tell likely shooters that more violence will get them arrested and imprisoned, but stopping now will be rewarded with job help and other services. Progress is slow. It gets measured one by one as young men get jobs and stay out of trouble. The pandemic disrupted the program, followed by a surge in violence. Community members praise the approach as an alternative to overly aggressive policing, but want more services programs.

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  • With unemployment hotline overloaded and stimulus on hold, PA boosts chatbot 90x

    Accessing information about unemployment compensation online just got easier for residents of Pennsylvania. The current chat box capacity is 500 but will be increased to 50,000 by the end of the year. The phone hotline currently receives about 20,000 daily calls and has been difficult to get through since the unemployment benefits began in the wake of the coronavirus shutdown. The website also features a virtual assistant, which answers hundreds of commonly asked questions.

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  • How will Lithuania's contact-tracing app work?

    Lithuanian officials are launching a contact-tracing app to better trace the path of coronavirus cases and alert people when they have potentially been exposed. Although there have been delays in the roll-out of the app, other countries have already released the technology and have seen success in people downloading the app as well as quarantining when alerted that they've been in contact with the virus.

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  • Equality of Opportunity

    Legal challenges have protected Native voting rights since the 1980s, when districts diluting native votes were ruled unconstitutional and redrawn. In 2012, three tribes sued to increase access to registration and polling sites. The county settled, agreeing to open offices on two reservations two days a week. In 2018, tribal leaders challenged a law limiting the number of ballots someone could collect on behalf of others. A judge agreed that, by disproportionately suppressing Native votes, it was unconstitutional. The legal challenges increased voter turnout and helped elect more Native representatives.

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  • Fruits of shared labour: the Indian women joining forces for food security

    A grassroots organization in Tamil Nadu, India has helped women farmers throughout the region to create "small informal farming groups" so that they can collectively lease land for their agriculture businesses. This collective farming venture, which has culminated in 89 collective farms with nearly 700 members, ensures "nutrition and food security for landless women at the household level."

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  • Illinois advocates work to ensure ballot access for jail voters during pandemic

    Many people who are currently incarcerated still retain the right to vote, and as the 2020 election approaches advocates in Illinois are making sure that those who are in Chicago’s Cook County Jail have access to ballots. Under a newly implemented law, Cook County Jail was designated as a polling place, which increased access for pretrial detainees and those serving certain misdemeanor convictions, and ultimately resulted in a higher voter turnout for the March primaries.

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  • How a #Litterati army on Instagram sparked a global fight against litter

    What started as a small group of people taking pictures of waste in their communities and tagging it on Instagram with the hashtag #Litterati, turned into a global effort, and even an app, to map and dispose of trash. Users can upload to the app an image of trash and machine-learning algorithm can tag it location, material, and company who made it. The city of San Francisco asked the makers of the app for help documenting cigarette butts and tobacco products on its streets and ended up winning a legal victory over the tobacco industry to increase the taxes on their products.

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  • What smaller Texas communities can learn from startups about COVID-19 economic recovery

    Since the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses in Texas are struggling to stay afloat. A university-sponsored crash course might help struggling businesses find solutions catered to their community. Fifty-eight communities participated in the Regional XLR8 program sponsored by the IC institute at the University of Texas at Austin. The “secret sauce” for innovation the institute has used for decades involves getting people to work with one another as opposed to working separately.

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  • Grieving Murdered Children During A Pandemic

    The nationwide surge in gun violence during the pandemic has forced support groups for grieving survivors to persevere in their work using different tools and strategies in a process that depends on intimate forms of counseling. In Durham, one "grief circle" associated with the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham still hosts anti-violence vigils after each killing. Its support group for parents and grandparents of victims, led by fellow survivors for maximum effect, shifted to Zoom and telephone calls. Among the beneficiaries of the support: the organizers themselves, whose work gives them purpose.

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  • Akron wants to help small business owners grow, but officials say they need more help from banks

    Motor City Match is an entrepreneurial development initiative that provides grants for historically marginalized business owners in Detroit. It also matches minority entrepreneurs with empty retail space in addition to providing business coaching and planning services. The program depends on nontraditional lenders to provide the funding. Motor City Match inspired the formation of Rubber City Match in Akron but that program has faced financing hurdles due to a lack of nontraditional lenders in the city.

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