Colorado is paying parents to take care of children with disabilities, a pandemic benefit that's sticking around

Neighborhood Centers, a Houston anti-poverty program has a simple philosophy: “The people are the asset, the source of potential solutions, not the problem.” The non-profit has scaled nationally, employing its bottom-up approach to disburse funds in poor communities.

Around the world, students borrow money to pay for college, but, in the United States, students are more likely to fall behind on loans. Australia may offer some lessons: borrowers in Australia only start paying back their loans once their earnings reach $40,000, and beyond that they pay four percent of their income until the loans are repaid. The system does not penalize borrowers when they face economic hardship.

Over two million baby boomers own their own companies, and with retirement looming, the government stepped in with a solution. A portion of a 2018 federal bill included language that will push the Small Business Administration to help baby boomers transition ownership of their companies to their employees if they wish. This will mitigate job loss often associated with a retiring business owner putting the company up for sale. Employee owners on average make a higher salary and have higher job stability, supporting the idea that employee ownership is beneficial for everyone involved, as well as for the econom

Dementia units and long-term care homes for the elderly are often desolate and lonely places, with harried workers attempting to meet the needs of their patients while also meeting government-set metrics of success. For families and individuals, it can be difficult to imagine a better way. However, a pilot program in Canada called the Butterfly room is showing that dedicated efforts to making long-term care homes a vibrant and loving place for someone's last days has positive impacts for everyone - and is worth a government investment do right across the country.

The online Reparations for Black-Indigenous Farmers map connects farmers across the United States in an effort to support those who have been historically oppressed. Those who participate voluntarily pay reparations to the over 50 Black and Indigenous farmers’ projects that have been listed as a way of (re)building centuries of discrimination.

Three years after Arizona added people with intellectual or developmental disabilities to the list of people who can trigger a public alert when they go missing, advocates say the state enjoys better coordination from one community to the next. While the numbers aren't tracked, advocates say many people on the autism spectrum or with other disabilities have been quickly found and returned to safety. The state expanded its Silver Alert program, originally for missing seniors, and other states are starting to follow suit. An alert can result in notifications by phone, news and social media, and highway signs.

Virtual memory cafes for people with dementia are able to reach more people, avoid transportation and mobility barriers, and open new possibilities — like making new friends across the ocean. First pioneered in the Netherlands in the 1990s, memory cafes have spread around the world as a way for people experiencing memory loss and caregivers can find community and companionship.

The Wyoming Stock Growers Land Trust uses conservation easements to conserve agricultural land in the state. These agreements happen when a landowner sells or donates the development rights to their land to the trust forever. They are allowed to keep farming the land, but it must remain undeveloped.

The International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards trains employees in the tourism industry to become autism certified, ensuring they know how to care for neurodivergent youth and their families when they’re at places like restaurants or theme parks. Several of these businesses have practices in place like offering noise-canceling headphones, access to quiet rooms or even hosting autism awareness weekends, helping to make the city the first Autism Certified City in the world.

Companies like Sanofi are beginning to partner with organizations like Bright Horizons to offer eldercare benefits to employees, like in-home adult care services. The benefit allows Bright Horizons to dispatch care workers to a person’s home and the company administering the benefit subsidizes the majority of the cost. Providing eldercare benefits reduces the burden on employees, allowing them to be more present at work. Since the pandemic, Sanofi has seen a 20% increase in the number of employees registering for the eldercare benefit program.