5 Cutting-Edge Ways That Cities Are Digging Out After Record Snowfall

Snow removal hasn’t changed much since the introduction of the horse-drawn plow in 1862. But this winter’s blizzards, which have already shattered records for the sheer amount of snow (Boston’s been deluged in 78.5 inches of powder — three times its average — and Worcester, Mass., has received a hefty 92.1 inches), are prompting smart collaborations and innovations to get the white stuff out of thoroughfares.
Make it a group effort.
Local governments plow the streets so that school buses and emergency vehicles can pass through, but some fed-up pedestrians say the policy prioritizes drivers over those who walk, bike or take public transit. Instead of griping, neighbors in Ann Arbor, Mich., banded together to operate the Snowbuddy, a 32-horsepower tractor to clear 12 miles of sidewalk each storm. Paul Tinkerhess, a 30-year resident and the lead organizer, says a unified effort makes much more sense than individuals shoveling. “It’s like taking something that’s really a linear transportation corridor, it’s one line, and dividing its maintenance responsibility into hundreds and even thousands of little links,” he says, “and assigning that responsibility to people who have a widely varying ability and even interest in maintaining that walkway.”
Solicit others to shovel.
One of the downsides of plowing the roadways is that all that snow gets piled up in huge icy banks on the curbs and corners, impeding pedestrians and upping their risk of taking a hard fall. To remove the windrows, some public transit authorities, like Rhode Island’s, have negotiated deals with advertising companies, requiring them to clear the snow around bus shelters where their signs are posted.

D.I.Y.
Chicago residents invented an ingenious way to make every ordinary citizen into a street-clearing machine: By attaching plows to almost any kind of personal vehicle. You name it, SUVs, Priuses, lawn mowers, ATVs. The Nordic Plow is a lightweight, rounded snow blade that works on almost any surface, too, so you can clear your grassy lawn or your gravel driveway. “The idea for the Nordic Auto Plows came from watching people struggle with shovels and snow blowers in cold, wintry weather,” says Richard Behan, the founder and CEO. “I believed there must be a better way.”
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Move it out of town.
Conjuring odd images of the original Tea Party protest, hard-hit Boston has considered dumping the snow into the harbor. But concerned citizens have cried foul, worried that the snow will also carry salt, litter and residue of gasoline that could pollute the bay. The strategy in Minneapolis has always been to use payloaders and dump trucks to pick up snow and consolidate it into giant piles in vacant lots. The strategy is the same in Portland, Maine, where one of the collection sites has been filled with so much snow that the mound is now 40 feet tall, just below the FAA height regulation.
Melt it.
This one’s a no-brainer. In Boston, the city is using machines that can zap up to 400 tons of snow per hour. Some of the technology is so advanced that it filters debris out of the water before releasing the cleaned H20 down a storm drain, as the Snow Dragon does by heating snow over a tank of hot water. (Other melters work like giant hair dryers, blowing out hot air.) While effective, these machines are expensive and require lots of energy to operate. But until the city implements civil engineer Rajib Mallick’s idea — building a network of pipes that could be filled with rushing hot fluid near the surface of streets, warming the pavement and melting the snow — it’s Boston’s best bet to get rid of 6+ feet of the white stuff.
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In These 8 States, Students Are Going to Be Served Healthier School Lunches

A new pilot program aimed at encouraging states to purchase locally-sourced food will bring more fresh produce to school meals across eight states.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced California, Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin will be able to use some of their USDA Foods allocation toward unprocessed fruits and vegetables from local farms rather than going through the USDA Foods program.

The Pilot Project for Procurement of Unprocessed Fruits and Vegetables, which falls under the Agricultural Act of 2014 (Farm Bill), was created to not only promote farm-to-table meals, but also help schools strengthen relationships with vendors, growers, wholesalers and distributors, according to the USDA.

USDA Foods comprises about 20 percent of foods served in schools, with schools using their allocation from a list of 180 items including fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, rice, low fat cheese, beans, pasta, flour and other whole grain products. Under the new program, schools will be able to substitute those allocations for fresher, local options.

“Providing pilot states with more flexibility in the use of their USDA Foods’ dollars offers states another opportunity to provide schoolchildren with additional fruits and vegetables from within their own communities,” says Kevin Concannon, USDA Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services.  “When schools invest food dollars into local communities, all of agriculture benefits, including local farmers, ranchers, fishermen, food processors and manufacturers.”

States were selected on criteria including a commitment to farm-to-school efforts, previous promotion initiatives, the variety and abundance of fruit and vegetable growers in the state on a per capita basis, as well as how diverse the state’s educational agencies are in size and geography.

For states like Connecticut, the program not only promotes the local economy, but also helps children form more nutritional habits of buying fresh, local produce.

“Connecticut’s participation in this federal pilot is great news for our farmers, our economy and our children,” says Governor Dannel P. Malloy. “Our state is home to thousands of farming operations responsible for billions in economic activity. By increasing the amount locally-sourced healthy food options for our students, we help lay a foundation for lifelong successful habits.”

MORE: The District Where Healthy School Lunches Are Actually Succeeding

These ‘Brothers’ Left Wall St. to Make a Difference, and Their Big Bet is Paying Off

NationSwell works to elevate solutions to national challenges both through powerful storytelling on NationSwell.com and its NationSwell Council membership network and events series. Here, we introduce you to some of the innovators who are part of the community.
Over the years, there have been some bad decisions made in the college bars of Ann Arbor, Mich. This is a story about a good one.
Sammy Politziner and Scott Thomas met while students at the University of Michigan when they lived next door to each other as freshmen. The two worked at summer camps together, and after graduation, both served as corps members of Teach for America (TFA). From there, like many of their classmates (even the most idealistic ones), they both decided to pursue careers in finance.
In 2008, nine years out of college, both worked in New York City: Politziner was a vice president at Kildare Capital, and Thomas was an analyst at Neuberger Berman. While in Ann Arbor one weekend for a football game, they got to talking about their lives as they sat before the row of taps at Ashley’s, their favorite haunt. Both decided something was missing.
It had something to do with the year. Recently, the duo had volunteered for the Obama campaign, and the feelings of hope and change that the campaign had infused in so many also struck a powerful chord with the two friends.
They spoke about the difference they hoped to make, the lives they still wanted to lead. When they thought about what they might have to offer, they wondered out loud if perhaps the business skills they had developed during those years in finance combined with classroom experience from their TFA days could help make a positive social impact.
They made a decision to find out.
“We just looked at each other and said, ‘We don’t know what we’re going to do…but we have got to go back to being a part of the solution,’ ” Politziner says of the moment that led him and Thomas to found Arbor Brothers, the philanthropic organization named for their college town.
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Arbor Brothers makes grants to social entrepreneurs focused on education and employment in New York (where they are based), Connecticut and New Jersey. Politziner and Thomas support nonprofits they identify as “second stage,” organizations that have already gone through seed funding but have not yet established a track record that would give them access to larger pools of capital. These groups tend to be two to 10 years old with two to 10 staff members and a budget of less than $2 million a year.
The founders of Arbor Brothers practice the concept of engaged philanthropy, combining financial support with countless hours of consulting. Each of their current grantees receive $250,000 in funding over the course of three years, while Politziner and Thomas spend 200 to 300 hours a year working with the leaders of each organization.
“Our view, one of our guiding principles, is not that we have the answer. It’s our job to build a relationship where we can be helpful in discreet, meaningful ways along that path,” says Thomas.
After the pivotal conversation at the pub, the two returned to their finance jobs. But to learn more about the social solutions they might support, they made a commitment that each week for six months, they would have dinner with various leaders in their fields. These foundation officers, nonprofit heads and social-impact consultants revealed there was a real hole in the funding market.
The friends who would go on to form Arbor Brothers learned that members of various second-stage organizations “were doing really good work with kids, but they had never run an organization before. They had never hired somebody, let alone fired somebody; they were doing their budgets on a napkin,” Politziner recalls. “We thought, these people are so talented, and they’ve got such a great idea, and yet, they’re slowly figuring out how to run an organization. And oh, by the way, they have to spend 70 percent of their time actually going out and raising money.”
Once Politziner and Thomas determined how needed they really were, there was no turning back.
While maintaining their day jobs, the two started with a few pilot projects. They spent 100 hours with Nick Ehrmann, then a Ph.D. student at Princeton University, who founded Blue Engine, a nonprofit that places teaching assistants in public high schools in New York City. They worked with Hot Bread Kitchen, an organization that empowers women and minority entrepreneurs in culinary workforce programs, a loan package that financed a move to a full-time kitchen. Then in September 2010, they quit their jobs and focused all their efforts on Arbor Brothers.
When they first got started, Arbor Brothers raised $15,000 — Politziner and Thomas put in some of their own money, and family and friends also contributed. Last year, the public charity had a budget of over $1 million, resulting from donations from individuals, family foundations and donor-advised funds. Because the nonprofit raises its own money, Arbor Brothers has to prove its value to its donors every year in a quantitative way.
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One organization that has benefited from Arbor Brothers is the Connecticut-based All Our Kin, which empowers child-care providers as business owners, provides parents with safe and stable care for their kids and gives children a strong educational foundation before they enter kindergarten. The organization licenses people to run family child-care programs in their homes, then involves them as part of a professional development network — at no cost to participants.
From 2011 to 2014, Arbor Brothers provided All Our Kin with $190,000 in unrestricted funding (money with no strings attached). While the grant money has had an impact, it’s the guidance and knowledge of Arbor Brothers that has really made a difference. Jessica Sager, executive director of All Our Kin, says the hundreds of hours Politziner and Thomas spent with the team in New Haven, Conn., helped the organization set up systems to manage fundraising and budgeting. Arbor Brothers also helped Sager and her co-founder create a plan to expand their model to a second site, and now All Our Kin is in three cities and considering national expansion. “We are rigorous about evaluation,” Sager says, explaining how Arbor Brothers taught her how to use data to track outcomes. “We put everything on spreadsheets”
Politziner and Thomas talk about the importance of an “outcomes focused culture” and “scale of impact versus scale of number of people served” with as much enthusiasm as they talk about their other shared passion, Michigan football.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to step away, and I hope we’ll be close to these organizations,” Thomas says of the Arbor Brothers’ relationship with All Our Kin and other groups. “But unless the tools we built and the conversations we had become embedded into their organizational culture, they’re not in our view likely to be sustainable and successful over the long term.”
Over the past four years, Arbor Brothers has evaluated nearly 500 nonprofits and made site visits to at least 75. Through experience, they have become better at finding the right fits for their funding and expertise. “We made this mistake a couple of times where we would meet a young entrepreneur with a lot of passion and charisma and an exciting vision for change, but we had this nagging anxiety that they were more style than substance,” Thomas says of one of the lessons he learned the hard way. “They were great marketers, and while that is important and can raise money, if someone does not have a high internal standard for quality, those are not the people we’re equipped to help.”
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They’ve also gotten better at taking cues from the leaders of the organizations they serve, figuring out the best ways to put their analytics background to use. For instance, when Arbor Brothers assisted All Our Kin on its financial model, they worked hard to make the numbers user-friendly, later realizing that the organization’s leadership felt more at ease knowing the ins and outs — no matter the complexity.
Politziner and Thomas believe not only in the importance of learning from their mistakes, but also in promoting transparency, so they conclude each of Arbor Brothers’ quarterly newsletters with a “We Blew It!” section where they detail the ways they can improve moving forward.
In the past five years, Arbor Brothers has funded 3 percent of the 500 high-potential, second-stage organizations located in the tri-state area that work to address the root causes of poverty. While Arbor Brothers is on a path to grow (this year’s budget is likely $1.25 million), they want to remain focused on finding, funding and supporting only the most promising of the organizations that fit this description.
“The lens through which we make grants is the concept that social change is extraordinarily hard and it takes a really long time and it’s messy,” Politziner says. “Those three simple tenets inform how we think about how our small pot of capital can make the biggest difference. That means we invest in organizations that make a deep investment in people over time.”
Another way that Arbor Brothers sets itself apart from other funding groups is that they don’t believe in forcing themselves on to boards or attaching strings to their funding. “We come to understand the organization so that we’re on the same side of the table, and their success is our success,” says Thomas.
Arbor Brothers carefully tracks and reports these successes. Doing so helped the organization settle on its three-year-long funding model, which gives them enough time to get these groups to the next level while also having a time pressure in place to reach organizational targets.
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Last summer, Politziner and Thomas gathered the four organizations “graduating” from three years in their portfolio for a backyard barbecue in Brooklyn, N.Y. “It was a moment that caused me to reflect on how far we’ve come,” Thomas says.
All Our Kin celebrated its expansion to two new cities; Green City Force looked back on the long hours spent vetting and prioritizing service opportunities so they could improve placement outcomes for their corps members; and exalt now had refined performance standards in place and looked forward to doing even more for teens who have been involved in the criminal justice system. The fourth graduate, ROW New York, was able to raise more than $3 million over three years to double their program size and outfit a new boathouse — thanks in part to support Arbor Brothers provided on marketing materials and earned-income strategy.
Last fall, four new organizations joined the Arbor Brothers portfolio: New Heights, Coalition for Queens, Springboard Collaborative and OneGoal. (BRICK Academy, which is transforming failing schools in Newark, N.J., GirlTrek, which NationSwell has featured for its work mobilizing black women to walk their way to better health, and The New American Academy, which brings new models like teacher teams to New York City public schools, will continue receiving their funding.)
So far, Arbor Brothers is walking the talk of engaged philanthropy — and it’s working. “It’s a really tough balance, but they do it well, where they’re supporting the growth of an organization — talking about best practices — but they’re not imposing things,” explains Jukay Hsu, founder of Coalition for Queens, which looks to the tech ecosystem to provide economic opportunity to a diverse community.
“It’s not an outsider coming in saying, ‘Do X, Y and Z.’ … They have a unique level of human empathy and understanding and an ability to listen and digest.”

How Putting a Pen to Paper Saved a Disabled Veteran’s Home

Saying that 65-year-old disabled Vietnam veteran Buck was down on his luck is an understatement.
His septic tank failed and would cost $27,000 to repair. His daughter is ill, so he and his wife support their children, leaving them with no money to spare and the belief that they might have to abandon their home in Pontiac, Mich. Desperate, Buck’s wife started writing letters to any organization and individual she could think of, asking for help.
“My wife started applying for everything and I remember it was almost funny the envelopes of rejection coming in,” Buck tells Fox Detroit.
When his wife exhausted all the places she could think of to ask for help, Buck sat down to write a letter of his own to L. Brooks Patterson, a lawyer and politician who is the County Executive of Oakland County, Mich., where Buck lives. “You sir are my last hope,” he wrote, “we gave up for the most part last month but something tells me to contact L. Brooks Patterson.”
Buck’s instinct was right. Patterson immediately directed his staff to search for grants to help Buck. “We picked up a $10,000 grant from the Michigan Veterans Trust Fund and a $16,000 grant from the Michigan Veterans Homeowners Assistance Program,” Patterson says. “Put that together and you can fix the septic and stay in your home for Christmas.”
“It was one of the most amazing feelings I ever felt,” Buck tells Bill Mullan, an Oakland County Media and Communications Officer. “For months we had been thinking we were going to have to leave our home, about the packing we had to do, and how we were going to have to come up with the money to move. I felt safe again.”
MORE: The Coordinated Rescue Team That Saved A Disabled Veteran From Homelessness

When Cities Get Connected, Civic Engagement Improves

With tighter budgets and fewer resources, local governments are turning to technology to stay connected to residents and improve their systems. According to the Digital Cities Survey published by Government Technology magazine, four major tech trends are visible across most of the participants, which range from cities with populations of 50,000 to more than a million.
1. Open data
Transparency is important for governments and thanks to technology, it’s easier to achieve than ever. Leading the pack of cities with easily accessible data records is New York City. The Big Apple started its open data system in 2012 and now has 1,300 data sets available for viewing. Chicago ranks second with over 600 data sets, while San Francisco scores the highest rating in U.S. Open Data Census for open data quality.
Open data isn’t limited to the country’s biggest cities, however, as mid-size Tacoma, Wash., offers 40 data sets and Ann Arbor, Mich,. has financial transparency data that is updated daily, according to Governing.
2. Stat programs and data analytics
These types of initiatives originated in the 1980s with the NYPD merging data with staff feedback, but have expanded to other cities. Louisville, Ky., now has Louiestat, which is used to spot weaknesses in performance and cut the city’s bill for unscheduled employee overtime.
Governing reports that data analytics are also a popular tool to gauge performance. In Denver, Phoenix and Jacksonville, Fla., local governments use them to sort through all their data sets in search of patterns that can be used for better decision-making.
3. Online citizen engagement
As social media becomes more prevalent in daily life, governments are getting on board to stay connected. Through social media sites and online surveys, local governments are using social media to engage their residents in local issues.
One such city is Avondale, Ariz. (population of 78,822), which connects a mobile app and an online forum for citizen use. Citizens can post ideas on the forum and then residents can vote yay or nay.
4. Geographic information systems
Although it’s been around for a long time, cities are updating the function of GIS to help make financial decisions that will, in turn, improve performance, public transit and public safety as well as organize social service and citizens engagement activities.
Augusta, Ga., recently won an award for its transit maps, while in Sugar Land, Texas, GIS is used for economic development and citizen engagement with 92 percent survey respondents citywide.
Based on all this, it seems that cities have embraced the tech craze.
MORE: Which 3 Cities are Fighting Poverty Through a Tech Cohort?

The Story Behind the Boxes Bringing Holiday Cheer to Veterans

Back in 2006, students at St. John’s Lutheran school in Westland, Mich., decided they wanted to bring some holiday cheer to veterans in V.A. hospitals, homeless veterans and soldiers serving overseas. So they collected donations from the community and put together care packages that met the needs of each of these groups — distributing 200 boxes in total.
This year, the St. John’s Veterans Project has filled 300 boxes, including 50 for homeless veterans making the transition to permanent housing that are stocked with items that will help them settle in. This year’s generosity brings the total of care packages the St. John’s Veterans Project has delivered past 3,000, including the 30 that were mailed to soldiers serving in Okinawa, Japan.
The 44 students that work on the project have expanded their mission, delivering hundreds of blankets, coats, scarves, mittens and other warm clothing items to the V.A.s in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Detroit.
The students personally deliver the packages to the patients at the V.A. and spend time chatting and singing Christmas carols with the veterans.
Kendra Schaffer, mother of former St. John’s students Anna and Bethany Schaffer who help organize the project, tells Hometown Life, “We’ll take anything and everything. There’s no deadline for donations. We can store stuff for next year. It’s important people know that this is year-round.”
People give clothing, food, and household items for the vets, and Thrivent Financial foots the bill for shipping the packages overseas. The students and others from the community write cards and letters to include.
Bethany said her favorite part is delivering the packages to the patients at the V.A. “It’s more personal and it’s always nice to see how thankful they are. I like seeing the gruff ones that say don’t come in here, leave it on the table. Two years ago we saw a young man who was rolling [in] bed because of pain. We asked if we could sing him a Christmas song, and he said yes.”
MORE: Here’s An Idea to Stabilize Neighborhoods and Help Veterans

When This School Got Rid of Homework, It Saw a Dramatic Outcome

In 2010, when Principal Greg Green decided to “flip” one class in his failing high school, it was considered a radical idea.
Flipping a classroom essentially turns the typical school day on its head. Students receive video lessons online at home and do their homework during class, freeing up time so they can receive more one-on-one help from their teacher.
While other schools had adopted the flipped model with some success, Green was cautious. He wanted to see the results for himself. So he ran a 20-week-long trial at Clintondale High School in Clinton, Mich., which at the time, ranked in the lowest 5 percent of Michigan’s high schools. The test run applied the flipped classroom teaching model to a civics class that included 13 failing kids and compared it with another class using a traditional teaching method.
Green says that the results were staggering. “The at-risk class actually outperformed the traditional class using the same teacher, the same materials — just a little different method.”
The next year, Green flipped every class at Clintondale, making it the first school in the nation to do so. Since then, the school has seen an increase in attendance, college acceptance and a fairly significant reduction in failure rates — from 35 percent to 10 percent in just two years.

How Can a Mayor Enact Change Once He’s Left Office?

One of the most common complaints about politicians is their lack of connectivity with the constituents that they serve. But you certainly can’t say that about R.T. Ryback, the former mayor of Minneapolis.
That’s because he’s teaching a new course at the University of Michigan called “Mayor 101.” Within the classroom walls, students are learning from Rybeck about all of the different components that encompass being a mayor — including how to be a public leader.
Elected mayor back in 2002 R.T. Rybeck served three terms, finishing his last term in January 2014. During his tenure, he handled budget crises, worked to increase interfaith dialogue following Sept. 11 and in 2009, oversaw the opening of a new college football stadium. While his background is in architecture and journalism (having degrees and work experience in both fields), he now using his knowledge and time as mayor to teach students about urban physical development and city policy.
And although he only has political experience in Minneapolis, he encourages all his students to look at the cities around them like Rochester, Duluth and St. Paul. For Rybeck, you can learn just as much, if not more, from another city as you can from your own.
“You most often get the best ideas by getting lost in cities,” Rybeck tells City Lab. “I’ve always studied other cities and I really think that’s the best way to understand these things.”
The class has no midterms or finals, but throughout the course, students are encouraged to go out into the city and practice what they are taught. At the end of the course, students will present their own urban-development proposal.
“I’d like all the energy they would have spent cramming on a final to be spent trying to develop something that can have an impact on a current place being designed,” Rybeck explains to City Lab. “I very much want these students to use the work they’re doing to go out into the workplace. Because we need their perspective now. Not just when they graduate.”
If that change can start now, just imagine what can happen when these students reach public office.
MORE: Why Are America’s Innovations in Education Spreading Worldwide But Not Here?

What Do You Get When You Combine Those In Need of a Job with Local Food?

Most of us know Goodwill as a place to find affordable donated household products and clothing. But Goodwill Industries of Northern Michigan (GINM) has something edible up their sleeves.
It’s called Farm to Freezer, and since 2013, this initiative has been providing training and jobs for the unemployed, as well as frozen local food to the community. It’s pretty much a win-win-win: farmers are able to extend their growing season, unemployed or underemployed people gain food skills and the community has more healthy food options.
The process starts with GINM buying food — including asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, apples, strawberries, cherries, Kohlrabi, Romanesco broccoli and saskatoons — from local farms and growers. The produce is then taken to a communal kitchen where trainees process and freeze it using a blast freezer. Once frozen, it’s put into cold storage where it can be sold to retail outlets, restaurants and industrial buyers. Currently, Farm to Freezer works with 16 farms (a jump from just four last year) and sells its product at 19 retail locations and nine school districts.
Participants of the GINM training program include those living in the Goodwill Inn homeless shelter and people recovering from addiction treatment. This year, the program has 21 trainees, some of whom have already found jobs through Farm to Freezer or are currently working with the organization, an increase from last year’s group of 15.
Mark Coe was working at Calvin Lutz Farm in Kavlevo, Mich. when the idea struck him that Goodwill should add local food to its repertoire. Now, he’s head of Farm to Freezer. “Farm to Freezer is a stepping stone to gainful employment,” Coe tells Sustainable Cities Collective. “We start with a ServSafe training class. It is a two-week program and when the trainees finish the class they have the opportunity to come into Farm To Freezer as an apprentice to learn the processing and freezing of locally purchased fruits and vegetables.”
With that, Goodwill is showing that it has an adept green thumb at growing not just produce, but jobs, too.
MORE: From Cubicles to Classrooms: A High-Rise Solution to Overcrowded Schools

The Problems May Exist Nationwide, But These Local Organizations Have Found Solutions for Their Own Communities

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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