Home in Mooresville opens its doors to offer hope to women and children without a home

Refugee camps save lives in emergencies – but often refugees languish there for decades. Two columns on programs that allow refugees to live normally in cities, with an ATM card taking the place of a camp.

By partnering with cities across America, the 100,000 Homes campaign is going directly to the streets to end homelessness - and it’s working. With roughly 700,000 people in the United States experiencing homelessness, this organization seeks to address that using a tiered system that considers individual health needs as well.

Through the Burbank Senior Artists Colony - a community created by EngAGE - low-income seniors learn how to become artists. The recreational classes hosted by the community keep people feeling phsyically and mentally young, allowing them to focus on recreation instead of financial hardship.

The Canadian federal government has identified bullying as a national problem. Roots of Empathy, based in Toronto, encourages empathy in elementary kids by having them interact with babies.

To educate and prepare new mothers, Centering Pregnancy and Centering Parenting sites in the United States offer community-based patient-centered care in low-income areas. Centering offers interactive learning, check-ups, and social support, so that women can take charge of their health.

Latin American women in San Francisco have suffered from post-partum depression, social isolation, and chronic stress at the time of their pregnancies. Run by midwives, the Centering Pregnancy program at the San Francisco General Hospital provides patient-centered care, an environment to speak in Spanish, and a nurturing community for women’s group appointments. The results boast fewer c-sections and pre-term births, and an improvement in emotional support and overall prenatal health.

A lot of research backs the notion that parents play an important role in the academic success of their children, and their children’s schools. While too much parent involvement can cause problems, as happens in some high-income schools, many other schools struggle to foster any ties with most of their families — especially in the growing numbers of neighborhoods where teachers and students don’t share a language, a culture or a ZIP code.

In Houston, TX, many individuals with mental illnesses cycled in and out of emergency care while arrested or incarcerated. Houston’s police department has decreased the number of incarcerated who have mental illness by opening a division to mental health called the Chronic Consumer Stabilization Unit. Now Milwaukee seeks to replicate Houston’s results.

Milwaukee County’s mental health system put more resources in expensive emergency care rather than invest in programs that offer continual care. As a result, Milwaukee County identifies nine solutions from other cities that have had success in repairing mental health systems. Solutions include the ending of reliance on emergency care, expand community support programs, change laws, and supportive housing.

The Homeless World Cup is the premier soccer tournament for homeless players. Programs around the world use soccer as a means of building a sense of community, sublimating negative energies, and encouraging personal growth.