Dare to Repair helps people repair broken electronics, small appliances, and other items instead of throwing them away. Its Tool Library has diverted 7,779 pounds of waste from landfills and amassed a collection of nearly 5,000 tools available to community members. There are more than 3,000 repair cafes around the world and Buffalo’s Dare to Repair has nearly 1,500 members and processes more than 14,000 tool loans a year.

Private landowners in Borger, Texas, are hiring certified burn managers to do prescribed burns on their land that remove excess vegetation and help prevent wildfires. The landowners are legally liable for any issues that may arise and front the initial cost, but they can be reimbursed by the Texas A&M Forest Service, which is working to encourage adoption of the practice.

In California, four-year-olds who don’t meet the traditional kindergarten cut-off requirement can attend transitional kindergarten, which can help improve their kindergarten readiness and help educators identify English language development and special education needs much earlier. Oakland Unified School District’s transitional kindergarten program has become so popular that it has added about 10 new classes each school year.

To help address falling enrollment and families’ lack of child care, Brooklyn Charter School extended the school day to twelve hours, providing before- and after-school activities and meals. So far, 80 students have signed up for the expanded hours and the school’s enrollment has rebounded from pandemic lows.

The SAB Foundation is an independent trust set up by South African Breweries (SAB) as part of the government’s Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment scheme. It helps businesses — particularly underserved entrepreneurs like women and people with disabilities — grow and thrive. Since 2010, the Foundation has backed more than 6,400 social impact businesses in their early stages.

The Early Childhood Service Corps recruits retired adults to fill vacancies in preschools and daycares, allowing retirees to work part time while also helping to address staffing shortages in the industry. So far, the program has trained 110 older adults as part-time substitute teachers, and a few have gone on to take full-time positions.

Product Hub Africa (PHA) empowers people interested in tech by providing education, support, professional network connections, mentorship and community to help people blossom in the tech industry. PHA has partnerships with local secondary schools where they mentor youth directly. Outside of their school partnerships, PHA has 5,000 members with plans to continue expanding.

The Surge Project and EmpowerED Birmingham uplift local youth by providing mentorships, tutoring, healthcare resources, workforce development programs and educational opportunities in various fields. In the program's 2023 pilot partnership with the National Training Institute for Healthcare technicians, 32 of the 40 participants graduated with a phlebotomy or EKG certification, and 19 of them were local high school students.

The Rent Smart renter’s education program helps people who face barriers to finding housing gain the necessary skills and knowledge to have a successful renting experience. The program teaches participants their rights and responsibilities as a tenant and in a six-month follow-up survey, 92% of participants said they found safer, more affordable, better-quality housing after finishing the program.

Red Rabbit provides nutritious, culturally diverse lunches to students at two local schools. The program promotes cross-cultural exchange among students by exposing them to different dishes from various cultures while ensuring they’re getting healthy meals that hit all the major food groups, as most students get the majority of their meals at school.

After chronic absenteeism rates spiked during the pandemic, staff and administrators in Ashland CIty Schools emphasized building strong relationships with students and their families, making it easier to intervene in cases of significant absences. School leaders say it’s part of a strategy that has helped chronic absenteeism rates drop by roughly 14 percent year over year.

The National Home Grown School Feeding program provides food to schoolchildren to support their health and education while simultaneously supporting local cooks and farmers. During its operation, the program reached millions of students across 3o states and led to a 20% increase in primary school enrollment.

A specialized software called AttendanceK12 helps school secretaries, attendance counselors, and administrators more easily track student absences so they can intervene with families sooner, even offering options to automatically send parents an email when students reach a certain threshold of missed school hours. School leaders consider the technology an important element of a strategy that has helped reduce chronic absenteeism rates.

The ReachWell app helps break down language barriers by allowing teachers to text in English and parents to receive messages in their own language. Translation apps like ReachWell allow parents to be more engaged in their child’s education. The app is currently used in several school districts and is also beginning to partner with emergency service agencies to provide alerts in other languages besides English.

ourBRIDGE for Kids is a school-based program that helps English language learners improve their language skills. Since the pandemic increased rates of chronic absenteeism among English language learners, ourBridge shifted its focus to also provide family services to provide comprehensive support, like secure housing and grocery delivery, that helps keep youth in school.

In an effort to increase language fluency and preserve the Indigenous culture, public schools in Oklahoma are offering Indigenous language programs to teach a variety of languages, like Cherokee and Choctaw, to interested students. In the 2022-2023 school year, 3,314 students from elementary through high school participated in an Indigenous language program.

Denver Public Schools’ Community Hubs provide wide-ranging support for students and their families, from language classes and GED programs for parents learning English to food pantries, financial education courses, and mobile medical appointments. The hubs have served more than 4,000 families since launching in 2022, with roughly 600 migrant families being served this year.

The Bay Area Urban Debate League serves students in low-income communities by providing debate opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access or afford. Teaching debate and participating in tournaments teach students valuable life skills like argumentation, critical thinking, research and logic. In 2023, the Bay Area Urban Debate League served 300 middle and high school students.

After Colorado limited tax deductions for high earners to help fund free school meals, participation in breakfast programs rose 35 percent, while schools saw participation in lunch programs increase by 31 percent. However, the tax changes did not provide enough revenue to fully cover the cost of the free meals, and lawmakers are now considering whether to limit eligibility for the free meals.

A Bessemer Elementary School, a telemedicine program launched in 2021 is combatting high rates of absenteeism by providing health care in school. Students can log into a computer at school and receive care, then head back to class rather than having to miss school for doctor visits or sick days. Since the program launched, absenteeism at the school fell from 49% during the 2021-2022 school year to 37% last year.

The SecureCycle initiative collects jeans that would otherwise be discarded and turns them into backpacks for low-income students in rural communities in Nigeria. Having access to a sturdy bag to carry their school supplies encourages students to attend school and keeps them from losing their books so they stay engaged in class.

The police department in Altavista, Virginia, installed traffic cameras in school zones that help catch people going 10 miles per hour or more above the speed limit during the beginning and end of the school day. The $100 tickets issued for speed violations deter the behavior and reduce the occurrence of accidents involving pedestrians.

The Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women is piloting an AP African American Studies course to broaden the scope of how Black history is taught and discussed in schools. At the Institute of Math and Science, 32 students are taking the course, but nationwide it has expanded to 700 high schools.

Agric Connect is raising climate change awareness in Ghana with a video game called “The Planet Saver.” The game is structured like a quiz and incorporates a leaderboard, social sharing and a forum to ask experts questions.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of Nigerian entrepreneurs launched a digital education platform called Schoola, which allowed teachers to set up virtual classrooms and engage students with learning games, duels, and tournaments. The platform is now used in 110 schools across six Nigerian states.