Judges in Roanoke, Virginia, are ensuring children have a voice in the courtroom to improve the way cases are handled and the outcomes for children in foster care. They encourage children to speak up, ask them what they want, prepare them in advance with worksheets and letters, and even offer them gifts like a book or stuffed animal.

Organizations around the world are using an integrated approach to empowering women by addressing climate justice and health issues in their communities. PATH Foundation Philippines, for example, helped implement sustainable marine management practices to increase the fish stocks in fishing communities so families were less inclined to send their daughters away for financial support.

Farmers around the world are implementing agroecology practices to make their farms more resilient to climate change while promoting climate justice to strengthen farming communities. Agroecology follows 13 principles that include ecological practices, like using organic fertilizers, and political and social values, like embracing land rights.

Some states are combining ranked choice voting, which asks voters to rank candidates by order of preference, with Final Five primaries where multiple candidates advance to the general election, rather than one candidate from each major party. After implementing both reforms, Alaska saw more women run for office than in the five previous elections, and an analysis of the system found it improved representation by giving voters more choice and encouraging candidates to appeal to a wider demographic.

Worker cooperatives, which are worker-owned and democratically operated, are spreading across the United States as a response to the large number of baby-boomer-owned businesses closing with no succession plan. Baltimore’s Common Ground Cafe is an example of staff, the community, and a local cooperative incubator coming together to do just that.

Ahead of a ballot measure to guarantee access to abortion and reproductive health care in Ohio, the Black-led Ohio Women’s Alliance spoke with more than 1.3 million young female BIPOC voters, framing the campaign as a fight for a wide range of reproductive services. Residents approved the constitutional amendment with 60 percent of female voters and 83 percent of Black voters voting in favor.

Following a fraudulent election and violent backlash against demonstrators, activists in Belarus used open source photographs and documents, as well as those submitted by journalists and citizens, to expose police and state actors participating in human rights violations via a secure Telegram channel.

After Kentucky reinstated voting rights for people convicted of nonviolent crimes who have finished their sentence, a coalition of activists and nonprofit organizations started using public records, social media, door-to-door canvassing, and other outreach methods to inform formerly incarcerated people of their rights. The effort has helped register more than 89,000 people since 2019, though advocates say the state itself could be doing much more to reach newly-enfranchised voters.

The Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund’s In Her Hands initiative provides monthly stipends to Black women with no strings attached, to help them combat poverty. Payments average $850 dollars per month and recipients have full control over how it is spen.

The largest central trade union in India, the Self Employed Women’s Association, runs affordable, flexible childcare centers across the country to combat the lack of accessible childcare options creating gender inequality in the job market. Now, women who are members of the union can go to work knowing their children are well cared for and older children can stay in school instead of caring for their siblings.

Since testing by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection found shockingly high levels of PFAS and PFOS — also known as forever chemicals — on land across the state, researchers and locals have been working on remediation. In one example, the Aroostook Band of the Mi’kmaq found that hemp grown on contaminated land extracts large amounts of the chemicals from the soil.

The United States-based nonprofit Miles4Migrants has flown over 43,000 migrants around the world to safety by pooling donated frequent flyer miles, credit card points, and cash.

In Maine, one of only two states where people in prison retain their right to vote, the Maine State Prison branch of the NAACP engages incarcerated voters through flyers, posters, guest speakers, and group discussions about political issues. Over the past two decades, the organization has helped more than 1,000 people register to vote in Maine prisons.

In Jackson, Mississippi, the nonprofit-run Magnolia Mother’s Trust is a guaranteed income program providing a no-strings-attached monthly stipend of $1,000 to Black mothers living in affordable housing to help them combat poverty.

Jharkhand, India, created an awareness campaign about the laws related to human trafficking that reached all the ranks of the police department, the judiciary, and other relevant state departments. Now, the state has the country’s highest conviction rate for human trafficking.

The Landless Workers Movement in Brazil is fighting for land access for rural workers and is breaking up unequal land monopolies by squatting on privately-owned vacant land. This practice attracts the attention of the federal government, which assesses whether it can buy the land and provide it to the movement to live and farm on.

The Jicarilla Apache Nation is leasing its water rights, up to 20,000 acre-feet of water per year, to the State of New Mexico. The state’s Strategic Water Reserve can then designate that water to conservation projects like ensuring endangered fish species can migrate through the San Juan River.

The Rural Utah Project is working to connect rural, off-the-grid residents in Navajo Mountain with fundamental services like mail, emergency medical care and voter access that they were often denied due to lacking a formally recognized address. Google’s Plus Code tool is allowing simple 10-digit codes to be generated anywhere in the world and instantly located on Google Maps. The codes can easily be looked up and doubles as a formal address in most cases.

New bills passed by the state governments in Washington and Massachusetts are starting to make the states’ tax systems more equitable by increasing taxes on the wealthiest residents.

Organizations in politically divided states like Arkansas, Idaho and Ohio are hard at work to protect direct democracy through community organizing and education. These groups have rallied to pass measures like minimum wage increases, medical marijuana and have even organized voters to fail ballot measures like Ohio’s recent Issue 1.

Siragugal Bricks is a community-owned brick kiln operated by rescued bonded laborers, aiming to rehabilitate and empower them to explore business endeavors and find more sustainable, safer sources of income. Since April 2022, 100 families have worked for Siragugal and local government organizations have helped obtain funding and supplies to facilitate Siragugal’s operations, such as power supplies, a work shed and a borehole for water.

Having already eliminated the worst parts of slaughterhouse work by not using meat, the plant-based “chicken” company Rebellyous HQ is designing an autonomous system that will ease the physical demands of making its food. Developed with feedback from employees, the new machine will do the heavy lifting and repetitive scooping of ingredients for them.

The Fund for Frontline Power directs philanthropy funding to grassroots environmental justice organizations through grants. Thirteen environmental justice leaders, who are mostly women of color, organize the fund and ensure the community leaders are the ones who decide how the grant money is used once it is awarded.

Funded by a philanthropic donation and funds raised by the city, a guaranteed income program in Durham, North Carolina, provided people who were formerly incarcerated with a monthly stipend of $600. The no-strings-attached payments are meant to decrease recidivism by helping recipients meet their needs.

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches is working to make all of Nigerian society witch-hunting-free. Advocates in the organization report incidents of witchcraft branding and arrange to help the accused individual by moving them away from the danger, providing medical services, and working with lawyers, police, and government agencies to take legal action against the issue.