A decade ago, these girls weren't allowed to play lacrosse. Now they inspire a reservation.

Non-profits in California worked together to set up a national network for undocumented immigrants to fight isolation and support legal aid. Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC) offers a free confidential hotline to report human rights abuses at detention centers and help families locate each other. CIVIC’s volunteers receive 14,000 calls a month from 210 detention centers in the United States.

A two-year curriculum on interpersonal conflict resolution transformed secondary schools in the province of Jawzjan. Violence between students fell by half. Girl’s school attendance increased. Both boys and girls experienced lower rates of depression. The curriculum is part of a larger project by a local NGO to build mediation skills and human rights knowledge in the conflict-affected province.

Grassroots organization can generate change in carbon emissions practices at the community level. In Phoenix, the Chispa nonprofit organization that promotes environmental and social justice, is working to get schools to apply to Arizona’s Lower-Emissions Bus program, funded by money paid to the state in the aftermath of Volkswagen’s emissions scandal. By mobilizing volunteers to canvass neighborhoods and attend school board meetings, the group has succeeded in getting at least one school district to purchase an electric bus and implement a pilot program.

In Oregon, there is a law in place that helps guide public school officials in how to react to a child with a possible concussion, but that law doesn't address what to do if a child suffers a concussion during private competitions. To address this loophole, concussion experts as well as a skier that had been impacted by this blind spot, led a legal fight that eventually allowed the expansion of this law to also cover "organized youth sports that take place outside public schools."

To reduce risk of concussions in high school football, high school coaches in Oregon are reducing the amount of impact time allowed during practices. Using the parameters established via the USA Football five levels of contact, high school coaches keep their players under 90 minutes of contact per week and instead work to "create higher-level intensity contact, without hitting each other, that is safe for the athlete."

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has given judges the option to allow victims of abuse to testify via video rather than in person. When victims must testify in person, they may suffer re-traumatization or might simply not show up in court. Advocates say the video option allows victims to seek justice while not having to face their abuser. However, some judges may refuse to grant this option on due process grounds.

A company called Gaggle works with school districts to screen their software and electronics for messages and text that are cause for concern – including threats against others, sexual content, or mentions of suicide and self-harm. In 2018, they identified over 700 students in danger of self-harm and alerted their biggest client, Texas’ Round Rock Independent School District, to nearly 9,000 potential dangers.

Kick-off soccer academy provides young people with mentorship, education, and talent development. It was created by a group of young friends during the COVID-19 pandemic after they noticed many young people getting into drugs and alcohol while out of school during pandemic-related shutdowns. The team, who mobilizes parents and caretakers so that they buy into the program’s benefits, serves almost 100 young people. The program develops the athletic skills of the young people but also increases their self-esteem and responsibility.

Wellness schools, Escuelas de Bienestar, run by a nonprofit in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, train physical education teachers to integrate topics like human rights, drug prevention, and emotional health into the play in their school programming. The learning combined with play aims to deter youth from participating in violence and help them build personal connections.

The Northville Township Police Department and Michigan State Police (MSP) are adapting new autism awareness techniques by participating in the Action For Autism program. The program helps officers better understand people with autism to interact with them without making quick judgments that can result in violence. Officers who go through the training have begun gathering profiles of members of the area’s autistic community to be used in 911 calls and have begun carrying calming bags in their patrol cars. The MSP alone has trained about 1,500 MSP troopers and department personnel.