Take a walk through your neighborhood and while you might not notice anything out of the ordinary, solutions to the country’s problems could be right in front of you.
That’s right, in order to make big changes people are thinking local and the results are inspiring similar programs across the country.
Here, a few examples of how communities are taking the lead.
Started in 2005 in Bainbridge, Washington, the online platform Buy Nothing allows people to post goods they need and things they want to give away. However, what sets it apart is that everything listed on the online marketplace is free — nothing is bought or sold — making it the perfect resource for poor and low-income families in need. Available items and services include household goods, childcare, cooking classes and garden produce.
Another community engaging in service exchanges is Kingston, N.Y. For the past four years, musicians, artists and medical professionals have united at the three-day O+ Festival. The attraction: free medical care in exchange for free music and art. Its origins date back to 2010 when a dentist wondered whether his favorite band would play for him for free in exhcange for no-cost dental care. The answer? Yes. From there, the festival was born. Four years later, the most recent O+ Festival provided 99 dental appointments and 350 hours of health services for 80 artists and musicians that might not have received the care otherwise.
“Building a community around O+ speaks to the simple idea of compassion and being part of a community,” Joe Concra, a painter who co-founded the festival, tells YES! Magazine. “Because we’ve become accustomed to huge companies providing everything we need, we forget to look to our neighbors to see what they can offer.”
In Kalamazoo, Mich., citizens are redesigning how to pay for higher education through the Kalamazoo Promise. Funded entirely by private donors, the program pays up to 100 percent tuition to any public Michigan college or university for students that have been enrolled in the Kalamazoo public school district since ninth grade. As a result of the program, there has been a 24 percent increase in enrollment in the school district, and students are earning higher test scores and GPAs. And this past June, the program added 15 Michigan private liberal arts colleges to the list of eligible institutions of enrollment.
To check out additional programs like this, click here.
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Tag: Health
The App That’s Making Responsible Food Choices A Breeze
Standing in front of a supermarket shelf featuring a variety of virtually the same product can give you a headache. Try figuring out which option is the most sustainable and that headache will quickly turn into a migraine.
But now, there’s a helpful guide: the HowGood app.
Created by the New York-based research organization HowGood (which has researched the global impact of producing of 100,000 food items), the app allows a customer to browse through a list of products or scan a product’s barcode and receive a sustainability rating. According to TechCrunch, each product receives a rating of good, better or great — represented by one, two or three worlds, respectively. The worst of the bunch don’t receive a rating.
The judging system is based on 60 indicators that go into producing the item — including health, humane treatment of animals, worker wages, location of food and the product’s sustainability, among others. Overall, it encompasses nearly every aspect of its production.
Based on the organization’s research, only six percent of the goods actually receive the highest rating.
Currently, the app is available for free download on iOS and Android phones.
So, with all of the “ethically wrong” goods out there, will this rating system actually matter? The answer is surprisingly yes. The HowGood organization has reported a 27 percent increase in the sales of the highest-rated products, showing that people do care about what they are consuming.
And for HowGood CEO of Alexander Gillet, that is exactly what he hoped for.
“We’re providing stores with a way to help people understand the real cost of food,” Gillet tells Fast Company. “If you want something that is made well, made healthy, and made in a way that’s good for the world, it will cost a little bit more. We’ve found that when people have that information in front of them, the same information across the store in a standardized way, they feel uplifted to make their choice.”
If there’s one thing that this app is showing, even a mundane act like grocery shopping can impact the world.
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The Mobile Health Clinic That’s Been Helping the Poor for 40 Years
In 1976, Dr. Augusto Ortiz and his wife Martha looked to a donated school bus as a means to achieve their dream of providing free medical care to the poor of Tucson, Ariz.
Today, The University of Arizona Mobile Health Program (MHP) visits communities in a big, shiny trailer stocked with all the amenities of a regular health clinic — including an EKG — but the spirit behind it remains the same 40 years later.
The MHP makes regular rounds of communities in southern Arizona, serving about 2,400 uninsured and under-insured people, plus those that don’t have regular access to health facilities. Additionally, since 2003, the MHP has run group prenatal care appointments for expectant mothers, serving many who would never have received the important care otherwise and resulting in the delivery of more than 200 healthy babies.
Still, for all the poor that have been helped by the MHP, the impact on doctors-in-training may even be greater. The clinic is staffed with medical residents and students in public health, pre-med and pre-dental programs at the University of Arizona. Tammie Bassford, head of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University, tells Linda Valdez of AZ Central, “It has a profound impact on students.”
Bassford recalls one time when MHP staffers asked a patient if she needed any help with anything besides her health. She told them that she lacked a pot big enough to cook beans for everyone in her family. The MHP was happy to provide her with one.
Dr. Ortiz died at age 90 in 2007, but his wife Martha, now 90, is still involved in fundraising for the mobile health clinic that they founded. She believes in helping the poor for purposes of altruism, but also for the practical reason of preventing the spread of disease. “If somebody is standing next to you in the grocery line and coughing, it’s possible they have tuberculosis, and don’t know because they can’t get to a doctor,” she tells Valdez.
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The Ability to Fight Hunger and Obesity is Right at Your Fingertips
How many times have you heard someone proclaim that they’re going on a diet? When this declaration is made, the person usually sticks with a few weeks, but then becomes bored with the food selection and falls off the wagon.
Well, one man thinks he may have found the solution to this dilemma and our country’s hunger problem at the same time. It’s called FoodTweeks and it’s an app that donates your “saved” calories to a local food bank.
America is a giant paradox when it comes to food: More than 200 million people overweight and obese, yet at the same time, another 49 million go hungry. After doing research about both topics , the idea for FoodTweeks popped into founder Evan Walker’s head.
“Two years ago, a small team of us were trying to figure out how we could get 50 million Americans — the approximate number you would need to have any meaningful change in the country— to have an easier and more successful time of managing their weight,” Walker explains. “Diets are not sustainable, and most people go running from food that has the label ‘healthy’ attached to it.”
So, how is this one app going to solve both problems? Well, every time a person eats something (whether it’s at home or at a restaurant) they log the food item into FoodTweeks. It then suggests ways to make the meal a little healthier, and the consumer can choose the most appetizing alternative.
After a selection is made, FoodTweeks calculates how many calories are saved for that meal. For every 600 calories saved, the app donates a meal of that caloric amount to a local food bank.
“Millions of families do not have reliable access to nutritious food. In a serendipitous twist, it turns out that addressing both of these problems at the same time is easier than dealing with them individually,” Walker says. “Turning our users’ actions into donations encourages them to continue making their calorie-reducing changes.”
Helping a person in need might just be that extra motivation that most of us need.
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How 3D Printing Can Reduce Medical Expenses
Sometimes, it seems like medical expenses cost an arm and a leg (figuratively, of course). And that’s not just the case for patients, but doctors and researchers, too.
That’s all about to change though, thanks to a recent innovation involving 3D printing, syringes and the Michigan Technological University. The research team, led by Joshua Pearce, has created an online open-source syringe pump library — so now, instead of ordering equipment, doctors can download, customize and 3D print their own pump (which is used to give doses of medication or fluids to patients).
All of the designs are customizable and all a physician needs is a RepRap 3D printer, small electric stepper motor that drives liquids, simple hardware and a syringe.
“Not only have we designed a single syringe pump, we’ve designed all future syringe pumps,” Pearce tells Michigan Tech. “Scientists can customize the design of a pump for exactly what they are doing, just by changing a couple of numbers in the software.”
Not only is this more efficient for physicians, but the 3D printing will drastically cut the cost of the equipment as well. While most open-source syringes run about $250 to $2,500, a 3D printed one only costs about $50 (the cost of the materials).
According to the researchers at Michigan Tech, “the development of open-source hardware has the potential to radically reduce the cost of performing experimental science and put high-quality scientific tools in the hands of everyone from the most prestigious labs to rural clinics in the developing world.”
Michigan Tech biomedical engineer Megan Frost agrees. She’s been using the 3D pumps to inject agents into culture cells.
“What’s beautiful about what Joshua is doing is that it lets us run three or four experiments in parallel, because we can get the equipment for so much less,” she tells Michigan Tech. “We’d always wanted to run experiments concurrently, but we couldn’t because the syringe pumps cost so much. This has really opened doors for us.”
Presumably, with the advent of 3D-printed equipment, the financial savings will be passed along to patients. Meaning that going to the doctor’s will soon be a little less painful — on your wallet anyways.
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With Millions Suffering From Alzheimer’s, This Teenager’s Invention Will Improve Their Safety
Kenneth Shinozuka isn’t like other teenagers. Maybe it’s because he’s one of the contestants in the Google Science Fair, an international competition for 13- to 18-year-olds, or because he’s the winner of the Scientific American Science in Action Award.
Most likely, though, it’s because of the impressive fact that he just invented a device to ease the lives of Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers.
About 5.2 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s, and, of those, 65 percent are wanderers — meaning that they walk away from their homes and loved ones, sometimes ending up lost or disoriented. Not only is this dangerous for the person with Alzheimer’s, but it causes added stress for caregivers.
Shinozuka’s grandfather is a wanderer. Many times at night, his grandpa will just get out of bed and start walking — oftentimes resulting in accidents. Which is why Shinozuka took matters into his own hands and created a wearable detection device.
So, how does it work?
Well, the device is worn on the patient’s foot, and it detects the pressure every time the patient takes a step. This triggers the wireless audible alarm in the caregiver’s smartphone signaling them that the patient is on the move. The device comes as a sock and a sensor assembly that can be attached to the foot.
Shinozuka used his grandfather as the subject of his six-month-long test trial. The result: Of the 437 known times of wandering, the device detected 100 percent of them. Even better, there weren’t any false alarms.
Currently, Shinozuka is conducting further testing, using nursing home patients as subjects.
Detecting patients’ movements isn’t Shinozuka’s only goal, though. “In addition to solving the originally intended problem, using the sensor to monitor a larger population of Alzheimer’s patients could lead to a fundamental understanding of the causes of wandering and thus ways to mitigate or prevent it,” Shinozuka explains in his project proposal.
Who says that teenagers can’t solve the world’s problems?
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The Homework Assignment That’s Saving the Lives of Hungry Kids in New Mexico
Marvin Callahan is no stranger to childhood hunger. As a kid living in a low-income neighborhood in Albuquerque, Callahan watched his parents do everything they could just to get by. For example, Callahan attended Catholic school, and while the tuition charge was $29 per month, his mom sent in whatever she could spare — be it $2, $3 or $4. Despite this, he always had something to eat.
Sadly, food is something that many of his students don’t have. For the past 29 years, Callahan has been working as a first grade teacher in Albuquerque public schools, and every day, he sees his students come into school without having had a meal.
This situation is typical for many children living in New Mexico. For the past two years, New Mexico has ranked number one in the U.S. for childhood hunger. Sixty percent of the students at Comanche Elementary (where Callahan works) are members of the federal free or reduced price lunch program, and 6,000 of the 87,000 students in the district are homeless.
While the federal programs provide lunch to kids from low-income households five days a week, oftentimes, the meal served at school is only one that these children receive. Which is why Callahan took matters into his own hands.
For Callahan’s students, class begins with breakfast. Every morning, he asks his students who has eaten breakfast, and those who haven’t are either sent to the cafeteria or given a snack from the classroom closet. The kicker, though, is that all the money for the food comes out of Callahan’s own pocket.
“I look into my kids’ eyes, and I can see that sadness and apprehension, and the discomfort of not being their powerful, strong, engaging little selves,” he tells the Huffington Post. “Kids are boundless, but the ones who aren’t being taken care of properly with proper nutrition and rest… you can tell.”
Daily breakfast isn’t the only way that Callahan helps out his hungry students. About two years ago, he also started the backpack program with school counselor Karin Medina and other community members. Every Friday, 37 students are sent home with a backpack containing two breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners — enough to feed them for the weekend.
It’s not much, but the breakfast bars, oatmeal, mac & cheese, beefaroni and sliced turkey is more than the kids would probably have otherwise.
“It’s hard for me to go home some weekends when the kids are saying, ‘I don’t want to go home because I don’t have anything at home,’” Callahan says. “I just hope that when I get home and open my refrigerator and there’s food in there, I hope that they have the same thing.”
Thanks to this special teacher, that hope is a reality.
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See the House Built Specifically for Autistic Adults
There’s something new on the horizon for three of acres of prime land in Sonoma, California. And no, it’s not a vineyard or winery, but rather, the first home designed specifically for autistic adults.
With one in 88 kids being diagnosed with autism, the question asked by many families is, what to do when these children reach adulthood?
The solution? Sweetwater Spectrum, which is the culmination of the efforts of families of autistic children, civic leaders and autism professionals. Together, they were able to design and fund the privately-developed $9 million home.
Comprised of four 3,250 square feet houses, the community will be able to house 16 residents over the age of 18. Living facilities aren’t the only accommodation as the Sweetwater Spectrum community also boasts common areas that include a communal kitchen, an exercise studio, a one-acre organic garden, , a swimming pool, hot tubs, art and music rooms and more.
To make it even more unique, the place is designed to reduce unnecessary sensory stimulation (which can be bothersome to those with autism). In addition, it has natural ventilation and solar photovoltaic panels on the roof.
While many homes have strict, rigid schedules, there’s no typical day at Sweetwater Spectrum. Rather, residents can work part-time, attend junior college or participate in one of the house’s day programs. Furthermore, the community offers enrichment activities in the evenings and on weekends.
In order to apply, the person must be on the autism spectrum, want to live there and have a care plan, which is very important according to CEO and executive director Deirdre Sheerin.
“We have an abundant tolerance for a person with autism … but we also need to have a safe environment,” Sheerin explains to Fast Company. “There has to be certain level of acting-out behavior that can be managed through a treatment plan, an individualized plan for care.”
So far, the house has received attention across the country and the globe — even as far away as Saudi Arabia. Although living at Sweetwater Spectrum is costly — $3,200 per month ($650 per month for rent and an extra community fee of $2,600 per month) — many people have already expressed interest. In fact, there are 18 active applications and five people have leases or expressed a desire to lease.
Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right?
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When You Want to ‘Buy Local,’ These Programs Make Doing So Easy
You’ve probably heard about community supported agriculture (or CSA) — a program where you pay up front and every week, a box of fresh, locally grown produce appears on your doorstop. Since its initial conception in western Massachusetts in the 1980s, such programs have been popping up across the country.
For consumers, it’s a great way to connect with high quality products and their community. And, due to their popularity, other industries have since jumped on the bandwagon.
One such group is local breweries. As of 2013, there were 1,500 microbreweries in the U.S. producing their own craft beer. While many of us may not know how to get our hands on these beverages, community-supported breweries (CSB) are solving that problem. For a set price, participants can sign up to receive craft beer every month for six to 12 months. Purchases are made directly from the producer, who sometimes throw in a few extra benefits, such as member-only events.
If beer isn’t your thing, community-supported art might be more appealing. In each program, commissioned artists will produce about 50 pieces of work. Patrons can then choose one piece of artwork from each artist, ranging in price from $50 to $500.
The first community-supported art program, the Minnesota-based Springboard for the Arts organization, began five years ago. Today, 40 groups nationwide offer community-supported art programs. One of their key components is interaction: Patrons attend “pick-up parties” where they collect their purchases and meet the featured artists.
Not to be outdone by artists, writers are also getting in on the action. Small, independent publishing houses are making a name for themselves through community-supported publishing programs by offering their members newly-released books fresh off the press or even discounts on all existing titles.
While the products may range in diversity and purpose, the main point is that these programs offer people a way to connect to their local community.
“It’s a model people already understood,” Andy Sturdevant, artists resources director at Springboard for the Arts tells Yes! Magazine. “People like to know where the things they buy come from, whether that’s food or whether that’s artwork.”
And in a world of corporations and big-box stores, that transparency and personal touch is often all that’s needed.
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Step Right Up, the Barber Will See You Now
When you think of a barbershop, images of men sitting around talking about sports, debating politics and discussing life probably comes to mind.
Besides the actual haircut, this social connection is why males, especially many African Americans, frequent barbershops.
Interestingly, starting in 2015, barbershops across Los Angeles will double as a doctor’s office. That’s right, patrons will sit down in the chair to receive a haircut and get a complementary blood pressure check to boot.
It’s all part of a study being conducted by Dr. Ronald Victor, the director of L.A.’s Cedars-Sinai Center for Hypertension, after he recently received an $8.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to research the impact of early barbershop intervention on high blood pressure in African-American males.
Unfortunately, high blood pressure is much more common among this demographic than any other group. Not only do they have a greater chance of contracting it at a younger age, but it’s also more likely that the problem will escalate, causing a stroke or heart disease.
Due to the lack of preventative care, the death rate of African-American males from hypertension is two times higher than in white males.
Which is why Victor and his partner, Los Angeles cardiologist Dr. Anthony Reid, are going to the heart of (pun intended) the African-American male community to solve the problem.
“Barbers are trusted peers,” Victor tells City Lab. “They have a lot of respect in their community, more than healthcare workers.”
Victor’s study is looking to expand on the research of an earlier study conducted in Dallas, where scientists studied the impact of barber intervention in 17 barbershops affecting 1,300 patrons during a 10-month-long period.
Now, Victor’s research will expand not only the knowledge gained, but the amount of participants. Lasting for at least 18 months, barbers will regularly check the blood pressure of their clients and refer them to physicians when needed.
This isn’t the first time doctors have tried to address this problem. Mobile clinics are found across inner cities and, oftentimes, clinics are set up in churches. However, most of the time, it’s mainly women and children attending them. But this time around, it’s just for the men.
In the end, Victor hopes that the comfy, reclining barbershop chair can help this become a scalable solution to a problem facing men nationwide.
So sit back, relax and get ready for the haircut that might just save your life.
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