Three Guanacaste Organizations Take on Role of Schools As Teachers Remain on Strike

A Mumbai school located in a remodeled shipping container meets kids on the street where they are at. Signal School results from a collaborative effort between the city and a non-profit, and focuses on bringing education to migrant children, so that they are less likely to be forced into child labor or street begging. Signal School does more than just teach, it also provides meals, works with families to change the cultural perspective that education is an amenity for the privileged, and helps migrant families find permanent housing.

A weatherproof tent for homeless families performed well in a pilot, winning design awards and public praise, even before becoming commercially available. The tent requires no tools to set up and can fit two adults and three children. For one family, it was their first home together after six years of living separately in single-gender shelters.

Since 1995, Pragnachaksu has paved a path to empowerment for blind women in India, offering academic and vocational classes in addition to braille instruction. The school provides free housing and tuition for girls looking for primary and secondary education, a service that is usually unavailable to the country's eight million blind citizens, and to visually impaired women in particular.

Paul Sinton-Hewitt, founder of the charity Parkrun, never set out to create a revolution. All he wanted was a low-pressure space to run. Now, his organization supports over 1,600 community running events around the globe, with an expected one million participants by 2023. This is part of a trend of “people’s innovation,” or the idea that innovation can come from users rather than just executives. Parkrun exemplifies the inclusive spirit of people’s innovation and the positive impacts it can spread all around the world.

Georgia State University's predictive analytics system has helped students graduate by flagging at-risk students using a variety of factors, including college and high school grades, financial aid statuses, and more. While other universities attempt to scale the program to increase retention at their universities as well, serious concerns about privacy and surveillance persist, as do hesitations regarding the cost of expanding advisory services as Georgia State has done.

The Kansas City school district and a group of local nonprofits are implementing a new software management system that will allow partners to access student data from a range of sources. The data-sharing agreement will paint a more holistic picture of students and, in the future, allow teachers and others to make informed interventions when appropriate.

In several small rural towns in Texas, mental health professionals from Texas Tech are offering telemedicine counseling to make up for a lack of counselors available in local middle and high schools. The Governor's office has now asked the successful school districts to develop a training program for teachers in other Texas districts in order to scale the model.

Activists in Berkeley, California, are filling in what they say is a gap in homeless services during the coronavirus outbreak. Volunteers are safely delivering food and other supplies to those without shelter.

The Romani Education Fund in Slovakia is helping children from the Roma community, which has a history of social and economic disadvantages as well as being subject to ethnic discrimination, overcome challenges to finish high school and pursue higher education. The REF works by providing qualifying students with a stipend to pay for educational supplies, as well as providing school guidance and personal mentorship to help both students and parents overcome the social hurdles that impede the student's desire or ability to fulfill their potential.

With an influx of COVID relief money, the Russellville school district began hiring and certifying more local, Spanish-speaking staff to help teach English language learners. Districtwide, the percentage of students who met their language proficiency goals increased from 46% in 2019 to 61% in 2022.