Water Protectors Take Action to Keep Pipeline Out of Black and Indigenous Communities

Water:Charity assumed that money and celebrity exposure would be able to solve the world’s access-to-clean-water crisis. But this approach often led to more abandoned water pumps. Charities – and journalists who cover them – are now working to concentrate on making their solutions sustainable.

Raton, a town once surrounded by eight coal mines, now has a main street of boarded-up buildings. There is reason for optimism as the town diversifies its local economy, betting on "a mix of small manufacturing businesses, health care and specialty services, and hospitality for travelers" to endure the sudden decline in mining revenue. Its calculated revitalization may hold lessons for other towns.

The rapid development of emerging economies across Asia and Africa is lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty - but there is much debate as to how to best structure this growth. If these economies evolve in the same way as in the West - with unchecked, excessive resource consumption and heavy pollution - the planet may be on the fast track to disaster. Earthrise explores how these nations can grow sustainably using improved, eco-conscious technologies like renewable energy and eco-friendly farming practices.

In Uganda, religious leaders and anti-gay individuals have been very vocal against the LGBTI community and have disowned many LGBTI religious leaders. This has led some of these leaders to publicly come out and advocate for others and speak of their own experiences, showing the possibility of being LGBTI and religious.

Portland-based NGO, Micah Challenge USA, uses scripture to reach Evangelicals about climate change. The organization partners with legislation-making initiatives, travels to Christian colleges, and contacts national and local leaders urging them to join the Climate Solutions Caucus. Underpinning every initiative is a core strategy: climate change is causing people to suffer, especially those that are experiencing poverty, and as Christians, they are called to help the poor and end their suffering.

The South Central Leadership Academy was started in Los Angeles by a college student who believes that gun violence survivors like him should lead the community response in finding solutions to violence. Its first year of paying more than a dozen student survivors to learn community organizing skills succeeded in attracting funding to expand to Nashville, Baltimore, and Atlanta. COVID-19 put the latter two expansions on hold, but LA and Nashville continued with well-attended classes learning remotely. Founder Marco Vargas hopes to turn this startup into a national network of youth leadership academies.

The Women’s Collective is a nonprofit that works with more than 10,000 subsistence farmers in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to promote food security using millets, a crop resilient to drought and climate change. For Pavitra, one of those farmers, she began cultivating the ancient grains in 2015 and now has more than enough food to feed her family year-round. However, there’s a lack of public investment in millet production and machinery. And there’s no unified effort to create demand for millets: Some state governments lead the charge and in other states, it’s led by grassroots organizations.

A grass blend formulated specifically for northern Utah’s environment uses at least 30 percent less water than typical turf.

Lamakani, a small village in India, went barren and townspeople completely depended on water tankers after a drought in the 90s. One leader initiated a watershed movement. They applied a series of approaches which included things like watershed development, bans on grass grazing and tree falling, and collaborating with local artists to communicate messages of conservation. Now, the town is lush again.

A New York-based nonprofit called Students for a Free Tibet is training Tibetans in "how to stage nonviolent protests." This effort, in conjunction with other Tibetan NGOs, has helped activists in Dharamsala, India to become "more organized, media savvy and technologically sophisticated," which in turn has increased the number of people who have come together to participate in the nonviolent protests.