Story Search Results

Advanced Search

There are so many ways to search the solutions journalism stories in this database. Explore our searchable fields:

Search Results

You searched for: -

There are 2388 results for your search. View and Refine Your Search Terms

19 Volunteers Sharing an iPhone Are Trying to Support Incarcerated People Through COVID-19

Celeste Hamilton Dennis

August 13, 2020 |

TalkPoverty.org |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Portland, Oregon

Beyond These Walls launched a crisis phone line to provide emotional support for LGBTQ+ people who are incarcerated and to hold prisons and jails accountable for their virus-containment practices. Trained volunteers have fielded 369 calls so far, more than a quarter of which concern fears that reporting virus symptoms could land people in solitary confinement. Beyond These Walls and its coalition partners can provide safety by letting jailers know their practices are being monitored.

Read More
Go to Original Story
Challenge of archiving the #MeToo movement

Colleen Walsh

August 11, 2020 |

The Harvard Gazette |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library’s digital services team gathered and archived all the virtual material they could find related to the #MeToo movement. The social media-driven movement is now represented in the library’s online archive that contains more than 32 million tweets, 1,100 webpages, and thousands of articles. The team created a largely automated system to capture the content, including 71 hashtags, and a steering committee of historians, lawyers, and data experts helped work through the challenges of capturing a digital footprint. The data has already been examined to study aspects of the movement.

Read More
Go to Original Story
Short on Money, Cities Around the World Try Making Their Own

Peter Yeung

August 07, 2020 |

Bloomberg CityLab |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Tenino, Washington

Complementary currencies are local alternatives to national currencies that help local economies when budgets are tight. Tenino prints “wooden dollars” and residents in need get up to $300/month to spend at local businesses from grocery stores to day cares. Cities across the US have reached out for advice on starting their own local currencies, which can take many forms including digital-only. There are 3,500-4,500 local currencies in 50 countries, including Brazil’s Maricá where it helped the under-resourced city build schools and hospitals. These currencies have no value outside of the local economy.

Read More
Go to Original Story
COVID-19: NC rural mental health outreach gets creative

Liora Engel-Smith

August 07, 2020 |

North Carolina Health News |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Asheville, North Carolina

Mental health agencies in North Carolina have partnered with a mobile phone carrier to provide data-enabled smartphones to individuals who lack access to technology during the pandemic. Because this doesn't provide a solution to all, however, mental health experts are also meeting with patients outside in social distanced settings.

Read More
Go to Original Story
Could Mecklenburg County learn from a New Jersey city's contact tracing success?

Nate Morabito

August 07, 2020 |

WCNC-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Paterson, New Jersey

Paterson, NJ became a national leader using contact tracing to slow the spread of COVID-19. Health department employees persistently and “aggressively” tracked down as many people as possible who were potentially exposed to the coronavirus. To reach those who hung up on contact tracers or wouldn’t return calls, the health department coordinated with community police officers who left letters at their homes or workplaces urging them to return calls and take precautions. The program is credited with significantly reducing the virus’ spread and is seen as a model for other locations to achieve success.

Read More
Go to Original Story
In San Diego, ‘Smart' Streetlights Spark Surveillance Reform

Sarah Holder

August 06, 2020 |

Bloomberg CityLab |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, San Diego, California

A smart-streetlight program has helped businesses and residents by collecting a wealth of data to make parking easier, monitor air quality, and inform drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists of traffic patterns. But its use by the police to collect evidence of suspected crimes has prompted a privacy backlash. Police officials say the videos have been used only in serious crimes and have both incriminated and exonerated suspects. Critics say mission creep has led to improper surveillance of protests and racially disparate enforcement in minor crimes. City legislators are considering ways to regulate the practice.

Read More
Go to Original Story
The world has shown it's possible to avert Covid-caused election meltdowns. But the U.S. is unique.

Ryan Heath

August 06, 2020 |

Politico |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Several countries successfully held elections during the Covid-19 pandemic and can offer insights for how the U.S. can hold a safe presidential election. These include providing more funding for additional polling places and poll workers, expanding ways for people to vote so that it is easier, requiring protective equipment and social distancing at the polls, allowing officials to process mail-in ballots before election day, and informing the public about any changes to contradict misinformation campaigns. It could be harder in the U.S. due to its size and the complexity of electoral laws across the states.

Read More
Go to Original Story
Searching with the Mothers of Mexico's Disappeared

Ana Karina Zatarain

August 05, 2020 |

The New Yorker |

Text |

Over 3000 Words

Response Location: Mexico, Culiacan, Sinaloa

Las Rastreadoras de El Fuerte is a group of about 200 members, mostly mothers whose children are among the more than 73,000 people who have disappeared and presumably were murdered in Mexico's long drug war. Las Rastreadoras search the countryside for the unmarked graves of the missing, hoping to find their own children, often finding others'. In six years, they have found 198 bodies, 120 of whom were identified. What began spontaneously as one woman's search, then a group effort, has become a way to heal from the pain of what a psychologist calls "ambiguous loss" as well as an act of political activism.

Read More
Go to Original Story
The ‘solar canals' making smart use of India's space

Kalpana Sunder

August 03, 2020 |

BBC |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: India, Gujarat

Covering canals with solar panels has allowed Indian communities to save land, water and carbon emissions, and even bring electricity to rural villages. The solar panels are suspended on metal structures over the canal, which can generate electricity for farmers and be fed into the state grid or sold to public utilities. While these canal-top solar power plants can be expensive to build, so far, eight Indian states have commissioned canal solar projects.

Read More
Go to Original Story
The growing global movement to end outdoor advertising

Steve Rushton

August 03, 2020 |

Equal Times |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: France

There are 29 Resistance to Advertising Aggression (RAP) groups working in France to ban outdoor advertising such as billboards. The groups worked with the mayor in the city of Grenoble to cancel a contract for 326 outdoor ads. While not all contracts can be changed, RAPs are particularly focused on stopping digital signs because the energy required to run them is harmful to the environment. Groups in the United Kingdom, São Paulo, New Delhi, and Tehran have won campaigns to remove billboards and other outdoor ads, which research shows reinforce sexist and capitalist ideologies.

Read More
Go to Original Story