In collaboration with our growing community of educators, we have gathered and developed teaching materials built on solutions journalism stories. From story collections and assignments, to syllabi and course design toolkits, these resources are here for you to adopt, contribute to and develop further. We invite you to build a new collection, create an assignment or share your syllabus!
If you have or plan to incorporate solutions journalism into your teaching (or even if you are just considering the possibility), this is your community. Please Join Us
“SolutionsU has unlimited potential: for students developing project ideas, in providing leads for field research on solving intractable social problems, and for helping educators with well-vetted and organized teaching content and materials.”
Robert Lyon, Assistant Professor
NYU Stern School of Business
“My students are definitely more engaged and more inspired. They connect these stories to their own lives and many of them express interest in wanting to be more involved, perhaps by volunteering or donating to organizations that are featured in the articles.”
Judit Torok, Director of Teaching and Learning Commons
Berkeley College
“When [my students] learned that a community already exists that they can be a part of, and that they can learn from, that made all the difference. Solutions journalism stories can help deliver this powerful message.”
Marcy O'Neil, Assistant Professor
Michigan State University
“A great tool to prime the moral imagination. It enhances the ability to imagine the world that does not yet exist.”
David Bornstein, Co-Founder
Solutions Journalism Network
“SolutionsU provides a wide lens through which to explore the world of social change. The resources are not only excellent tools for the classroom, but I predict they will become a 'go to' resource for our students in their apprenticeships at social change organizations.”
Lisa Jackson, Co-Founder & Managing Director
College for Social Innovation
Help us grow our database of solutions stories! Please enter the following information. Our staff will review the story, and if it meets our criteria (see below), it will be added to the Solutions Story Tracker™.
It may take a few weeks to see your piece in the Solutions Story Tracker™, as we have a backlog of submissions longer than Ben Hur that we’re diligently working to eliminate. We appreciate your patience.
Add stories directly from your Favorites, or Search for stories in our database.
If you come across a story you want to add to a collection, click the Collection icon and follow the instructions on your screen.
Your collection has been updated. Check it out on your profile page.
Your collection has been created. Check it out on your profile page.
Our issue area taxonomy was adapted from the PCS Taxonomy with definitions by the Foundation Center, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International License.
Photos are licensed under Attribution Non Commercial 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license / Desaturated from original, and are credited to the following photographers:
Fondriest Environmental, David De Wit / Community Eye Health, Linda Steil / Herald Post, John Amis / UGA College of Ag & Environmental Sciences – OCCS, Andy B, Peter Garnhum, Thomas Hawk, 7ty9, Isriya Paireepairit, David Berger, UnLtd The Foundation For Social Entrepreneurs, Michael Dunne, Burak Kebapci, and Forrest Berkshire / U.S. Army Cadet Command public affairs
Photos are licensed under Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license, and are credited to the following photographers:
Ra'ed Qutena, 段 文慶, Fabio Campo, City Clock Magazine, Justin Norman, scarlatti2004, Gary Simmons, Kathryn McCallum, and Nearsoft Inc
Photos are licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons license / Desaturated from original, and are credited to the following photographers:
Burak Kebapci and SCY.
If you want to get unlimited access to the Solutions Story Tracker™ and also get alerts when new relevant stories are posted, please register now.
Registration takes about two minutes, and is completely free. We'll never share your email address outside of SJN.
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Solutions journalism...
To learn more about SolutionsU and how it is connected to the Solutions Journalism Network and Solutions Story Tracker™, visit our FAQ page.
Success Factors are the tactics that are critical to a response’s success or failure. What social change strategy did this solution use that made it work (or not work)?
We developed this in-house. It was a long process, headed by Tina Rosenberg, Taylor Nelson, and Matthew Zipf, which involved reading hundreds of stories to see what tactics were critical to making a response work. Much solutions journalism tells the story of a response that succeeded where others had failed, and seeks to identify how — what did this response do differently? We tried to identify, name and classify all these different tactics.
The same Success Factor can power all kinds of social initiatives. For example, “addressing underlying issues” or “building trust” can lead to successful responses in education, health, criminal justice and many other fields. People working in all these fields can benefit by learning how successful programs use these tactics. And using the focus of Success Factors to make these connections helps people to understand the systems that create social change.
Click here for our full Success Factor Guide, which breaks down our Success Factor tags and their definitions.
We invite you to use, adapt and share these resources in your teaching and research. All resources are licensed through the Creative Commons. Please review the Creative Commons License and attribution guidelines, and provide appropriate attribution when you find something you like!
To get access to these teaching resources, you need to join the SolutionsU community.
What does this mean? You will get access to all of the educator and student resources. You will also be included in the SolutionsU newsletter.
You can register here or log in here here.
Our issue area taxonomy was adapted from the PCS Taxonomy with definitions by the Foundation Center, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International License.
Photos are licensed under Attribution Non Commercial 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license / Desaturated from original, and are credited to the following photographers:
Fondriest Environmental, David De Wit / Community Eye Health, Linda Steil / Herald Post, John Amis / UGA College of Ag & Environmental Sciences – OCCS, Andy B, Peter Garnhum, Thomas Hawk, 7ty9, Isriya Paireepairit, David Berger, UnLtd The Foundation For Social Entrepreneurs, Michael Dunne, Burak Kebapci, and Forrest Berkshire / U.S. Army Cadet Command public affairs
Photos are licensed under Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license, and are credited to the following photographers:
Ra'ed Qutena, 段 文慶, Fabio Campo, City Clock Magazine, Justin Norman, scarlatti2004, Gary Simmons, Kathryn McCallum, and Nearsoft Inc
Photos are licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons license / Desaturated from original, and are credited to the following photographers:
Burak Kebapci and SCY.
Photos are licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) and are credited to the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Conference attendee listening to speaker, Jenifer Daniels / Colorstock getcolorstock.com.
Photo Credit: Kevork Djansezian via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Sonia Narang
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