Belarusian Diaspora Helps Victims of Repression

The lack of access to healthy food has always been a problem for the financially unstable. Food stamps can now be used to buy fresh produce at farmers markets, but greater success could be achieved by getting grocery stores involved.

With child obesity on the rise, public school students have lacked the motivation and access to eat healthy food. Different programs around the country aim to improve student diet in public schools, including Real Eats for Academics and Life in Los Angeles and Cornell’s Smarter Lunchrooms Movement, by emailing nutrition report cards to parents, presenting the healthy food with aesthetic pleasure, and the arrangement of the food for access.

The militarization of police forces in cases such as Ferguson, Missouri’s riots has led the state of Utah to question what can be done to prevent such an overuse of force from happening. Utah expanded upon a law passed by Democratic legislature in Maryland, which Utah’s ACLU reworked with some libertarians, to require the police to provide data about SWAT team usage. Utah’s success demonstrates that demilitarization bills passed with bipartisan support are not impossible.

New crowdfunding options can help even the smallest donor's contributions to have a meaningful impact, bolstering a sense of personal involvement, maximizing knowledge about causes, and inspiring greater participation.

In an agricultural system designed for big-industrial growers, many farmers struggle to bridge the relationship between their produce and consumers, as well as strengthening local economies. The food hub is a collection of buildings that process and distribute the sale of local food. Eastern Market in Detroit is an example of a food hub that makes local produce accessible to low-income neighborhoods.

America is the world’s main supplier of food aid to impoverished countries; however, food aid has the problems of long-distance transportation, the cost of the transportation and storage, and the navigation through dangerous zones. Different programs around the world are experimenting with alternative forms of aid, including vouchers and cash for work.

Asian cities are over-crowded and many residences are kitchenless, causing families with children to consume unhealthy food from the street vendors. Mercy Corps, a non-profit organization that advocates nutrition, has initiated some for-profit businesses in Jakarta that provide healthy food to underserved neighborhoods. The food carts are marketed at serving poor children a healthy meal.

A positive transformation in a Mississippi prison has become a focal point for a growing number of states rethinking the use of long-term isolation. Humanitarian groups have long argued that solitary confinement has devastating psychological effects, but a central driver in the recent shift is economics. Some officials have also been persuaded by research suggesting that isolation is vastly overused and that it does little to reduce overall prison violence.

The San Francisco Unified School District is piloting a collaboration with the design firm IDEO to re-imagine the school food system and help combat childhood obesity by better designing the space and the experience of how children eat, as much as the type of food they consume.

For most well-meaning donors, it can be difficult to calculate which charities are most effective with their funding - that is those that aim to solve the most serious problems, use interventions that work, employ cost-effective strategies, are competent and honest, and can make good use of each additional dollar. Organizations like GiveWell are part of a new and welcome trend toward rigorous evaluation of social change programs, and helps people best decide where to donate based on what causes matter to them most.