With Shootings on the Rise, Schools Turn to 'Active Shooter' Insurance

Around the world, students borrow money to pay for college, but, in the United States, students are more likely to fall behind on loans. Australia may offer some lessons: borrowers in Australia only start paying back their loans once their earnings reach $40,000, and beyond that they pay four percent of their income until the loans are repaid. The system does not penalize borrowers when they face economic hardship.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, necessity has bred an interesting kind of financial invention for the New York MTA: the world’s first “catastrophe” bond - a reinsurance for the insurer - designed to protect public transportation infrastructure, specifically against storm surge. These bonds privatize risk for public gain, creating a kind of tool that may protect economic development against all kinds of natural and man-made disasters around the world.

The Flint crisis displayed the deficiency of knowledge by medical doctors to environmental health concerns. In response, the national medical community is bringing more awarenesses and education to current and future doctors about the importance of long-term effects of the environment on health. More research in this area is necessary as well as more classes in medical schools. Universities across the U.S. are now developing such courses to change the future of patient care and crisis prevention.

Since July 2019, New Zealand has held gun buybacks across the country and collected over 10,000 firearms. After a mass shooting at Christchurch mosque, the government rushed through legislation to ban semi-automatic and automatic firearms, offering owners of such weapons cash and a no-questions-asked policy. Such legislation has been implemented in other countries as well, including Australia, who in 1996 collected over 600,000 weapons.

In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, where more bears and more people are increasingly occupying the same general space, the Montana Bear Education Working Group is prepared. By holding workshops and events to teach locals how to interact with bears, carry bear spray, and adopt habits to minimize potential conflict, the group reached over 20,000 people last year and continues to educate more people.

A growing number of states have started to require financial education in high schools. Studies have shown that in states that mandate financial literacy classes as part of the core curriculum, students have less credit card debt and less expensive student loans.

To protect the Mesoamerican Reef from the effects of climate change, key stakeholders in Mexico created the world’s first insurance policy to protect a natural asset. The policy provides an immediate infusion of cash in the event of a damaging storm, allowing hotel owners and local governments to quickly repair the reef and prevent further degradation. A volunteer corps of people called the Guardians of the Reef make those repairs. While the insurance policy doesn’t cover pollution or overfishing, this mechanism could work for reefs in other countries to restore and protect threatened ecosystems.

Crime-tracking mobile apps give millions of Brazilians crowdsourced data on urban violence, alerting people to dangerous places and filling gaps in government data on shootings, robberies, and other risks. But apps such as Fogo Cruzado (“Crossfire”) and Onde Tem Tiroteio (“Where There's a Shooting”) offer statistically crude glimpses of crime, distorted by media and racial biases that one expert blames for myths about the risks people actually face.

A coalition of groups advocating for young girls of color succeeded in winning new policies and financial support to combat sexual harassment on public transportation. By surveying middle and high school students about their experiences, the groups behind the "Not One More Girl" campaign convinced Bay Area Rapid Transit system officials to install posters, make reporting of incidents easier, and pay for non-police "transit ambassadors" and crisis intervention specialists to patrol trains.

Rwanda has a unique program that allows farmers to insure their livestock, such as dairy cows, productive pork, and chickens, against Rift Valley Fever. When animals die of the disease, farmers are compensated at a rate of 5.5 percent of the animal's value.