10 Innovative Ideas That Propelled America Forward in 2016

The most contentious presidential election in modern history offered Americans abundant reasons to shut off the news. But if they looked past the front page’s daily jaw-droppers, our countrymen would see that there’s plenty of inspiring work being done. At NationSwell, we strive to find the nonprofit directors, the social entrepreneurs and the government officials testing new ways to solve America’s most intractable problems. In our reporting this year, we’ve found there’s no shortage of good being done. Here’s a look at our favorite solutions from 2016.

This Woman Has Collected 40,000 Feminine Products to Boost the Self-Esteem of Homeless Women
Already struggling to afford basic necessities, homeless women often forgo bras and menstrual hygiene products. Dana Marlowe, a mother of two in the Washington, D.C., area, restored these ladies’ dignity by distributing over 40,000 feminine products to the homeless before NationSwell met her in February. Since then, her organization Support the Girls has given out 212,000 more.
Why Sleeping in a Former Slave’s Home Will Make You Rethink Race Relations in America
Joseph McGill, a Civil War re-enactor and history consultant for Charleston’s Magnolia Plantation in South Carolina, believes we must not forget the history of slavery and its lasting impact to date. To remind us, he’s slept overnight in 80 dilapidated cabins — sometimes bringing along groups of people interested in the experience — that once held the enslaved.

This Is How You End the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline
Abandoned by an abusive dad and a mentally ill mom, Pamela Bolnick was placed into foster care at 6 years old. For a time, the system worked — that is, until she “aged out” of it. Bolnick sought help from First Place for Youth, an East Bay nonprofit that provides security deposits for emancipated children to transition into stable housing.

Would Your Opinions of Criminals Change if One Cooked and Served You Dinner?
Café Momentum, one of Dallas’s most popular restaurants, is staffed by formerly incarcerated young men without prior culinary experience. Owner Chad Houser says the kitchen jobs have almost entirely eliminated recidivism among his restaurant’s ranks.

This Proven Method Is How You Prevent Sexual Assault on College Campuses
Nearly three decades before Rolling Stone published its incendiary (and factually inaccurate) description of sexual assault at the University of Virginia, a gang rape occurred at the University of New Hampshire in 1987. Choosing the right ways to respond to the crisis, the public college has since become the undisputed leader in ending sex crimes on campus.

This Sustainable ‘Farm of the Future’ Is Changing How Food Is Grown
Once a commercial fisherman, Bren Smith now employs a more sustainable way to draw food from the ocean. Underwater, near Thimble Island, Conn., he’s grown a vertical farm, layered with kelp, mussels, scallops and oysters.

This Former Inmate Fights for Others’ Freedom from Life Sentences
Jason Hernandez was never supposed to leave prison. At age 21, a federal judge sentenced him to life for selling crack cocaine in McKinney, Texas — Hernandez’s first criminal offense. After President Obama granted him clemency in 2013, he’s advocated on behalf of those still behind bars for first-time, nonviolent drug offenses.

Eliminating Food Waste, One Sandwich (and App) at a Time
In 2012, Raj Karmani, a Pakistani immigrant studying computer science at the University of Illinois, built an app to redistribute leftover food to local nonprofits. So far, the nonprofit Zero Percent has delivered 1 million meals from restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets to Chicago’s needy. In recognition of his work, Karmani was awarded a $10,000 grant as part of NationSwell’s and Comcast NBCUniversal’s AllStars program.

Baltimore Explores a Bold Solution to Fight Heroin Addiction
Last year, someone in Baltimore died from an overdose every day: 393 in total, more than the number killed by guns. Dr. Leana Wen, the city’s tireless public health commissioner, issued a blanket prescription for naloxone, which can reverse overdoses, to every citizen — the first step in her ambitious plan to wean 20,000 residents off heroin.

How a Fake Ad Campaign Led to the Real-Life Launch of a Massive Infrastructure Project
Up until 1974, a streetcar made daily trips from El Paso, Texas, across the Mexican border to Ciudad Juárez. Recently, a public art project depicting fake ads for the trolley inspired locals to call for the line’s comeback, and the artist behind the poster campaign now sits on the city council.

Continue reading “10 Innovative Ideas That Propelled America Forward in 2016”

How a Fake Ad Campaign Led to the Real-Life Launch of a Massive Infrastructure Project

Donald Trump’s call for a “big, beautiful wall” along our southern border hasn’t resonated in the West Texas city of El Paso. Already connected to Mexico by the world’s largest border metroplex, local officials want to further link El Paso to its sister city, Ciudad Juarez. Last January, they started laying tracks for a streetcar line that officials hope eventually will shuttle passengers between the two countries, as it had once done for most of the 20th century.
Notably, and rather unusually, the El Paso streetcar initiative gained steam as a public and performance art project. In 2011, black-and-white portraits of a smiling train conductor started popping up around town, sometimes accompanied by the phrase Sube al futuro: Go to the future. A few months later, a wheat-pasted mosaic on an abandoned brick building featured hundreds of locals’ faces; together, the composite formed an ad for a retro streetcar, which resembled the Art Deco-ish trolley that ran 63 miles between El Paso and Juarez until 1974. At that point, conceptual artist Peter Svarzbein, an El Paso native, introduced himself as the creative mind behind the El Paso Transnational Trolley Project.
In the five years since, an even odder confluence of art and life took place. The fictional ad campaign gave a fresh face to the public transit movement, which helped turn it into a multimillion-dollar construction reality (the first 4.8-mile section is set to open in 2018). Meanwhile, Svarzbein ran for office and now sits on the nine-member city council, which provides direction to the agency responsible for the El Paso’s transit projects.
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“Border crossing is what defines us,” Svarzbein says of his city. “It’s in the best interest, for both El Paso and Juarez, to allow these people to cross over. They’re not doing it to take our jobs and our Medicaid, or whatever rhetoric is espoused. We understand our people crossing over symbolize the dreams of what this country has always been about.”
The son of an Argentine-born surgeon and a French-born nurse who moved to El Paso together in 1978, Svarzbein grew up accustomed to a border town’s cross-cultural influence. In high school, he and his friends regularly trekked next door to dine out at restaurants or take advantage of Mexico’s younger drinking age at nightclubs.
But shortly after Svarzbein moved away to attend Franklin & Marshall College, a liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, the tie between the sister cities was snipped. In 2006, the Mexican president Felipe Calderon launched an all-out assault against the country’s powerful drug cartels, an opening salvo that led to turf wars in Juarez and chaos along the border. To respond to the violence, Svarzbein began looking for a way to remind residents of both countries of the connections they shared, despite the brutality.
Researching symbols of unity, he came across pictures of El Paso’s old trolley line. For his master’s thesis at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he decided to create a series of fake ads for the tram’s revival. Both conceptual and commercial, a historical documentary and a performance piece, the art project blurred genres — not unlike how living on the border can entwine residents’ identities.
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In 2012, Svarzbein’s fictional vision for a revitalized streetcar system started to become reality when he discovered the city planned on selling the old, rusting trolleys to San Francisco. “I said, ‘Oh, hell no,’” Svarzbein recalls. He began lobbying city officials to apportion part of a quality-of-life bond to reviving the streetcar, and he gathered over 1,800 signatures. The outpouring of support eventually won a $97 million grant from the Texas Department of Transportation.
When the first phase opens, the trolley will make 27 stops along a route from the University of Texas El Paso to the city’s downtown. It’s expected to pick up about 1,480 riders daily, topping 540,000 trips a year. The line will use six vintage Presidents’ Conference Committee cars, a tram design that became popular in 1936, around the time FDR was reelected for a third term; each is being refurbished with Wi-Fi and air-conditioning. “For some people, it taps into nostalgia. They remember when they were kids, riding the streetcar with their abuela, when it was easier to go into Mexico,” Svarzbein says.
The public-works project is a nod to the city’s history, but Svarzbein hopes that it will also create new opportunities on both sides of the border. “We have the ability in this region to not just design an idea, but to build it,” he says. “We need to make sure that people and businesses are able to cross the border in an efficient and safe way.”
That, after all, is the promise of an international streetcar, he adds, especially in a time where inflamed political rhetoric paints the US-Mexico border as an area in need of armed patrols, rather than more ports of entry. “What much of the country doesn’t understand — and what we understand all too well being in these twin cities — is that border security is economic security,” Svarzbein argues. “Providing jobs are how you make this area safe. Jobs are how the cartels don’t have as much power. Jobs are how you grow this region.”

An earlier version of this story suggested Svarsbein was the sole instigator of the project, when he was actually one of several people advocating for it, and that the cartel-related violence in Juarez had reached across the border. We regret the errors.

Homepage photo courtesy of Peter Svarzbein/mongovision.com.

This Texas Solar Farm Relies on a Flock of Sheep to Perform Maintenance

A solar farm in San Antonio, Texas is not being sheepish about its newest landscapers: a group of four-legged friends that are keeping the 45 sprawling acres perfectly manicured under the sweltering Texas sun.
The farm’s operator, OCI Solar Power, put around 90 Barbados-cross sheep out to pasture in April to graze and serve as an environmentally-friendly, cheap alternative to maintenance, the Texas Tribune reports. Though the practice is used elsewhere in the U.S., including California and South Carolina, sheep grazing is not common among Texas solar farms.

“It was good to see it was actually quite common” elsewhere, said Charlie Hemmeline, executive director of the recently formed Texas Solar Power Association. “The fact that you’ve got a solar plant there isn’t necessarily restrictive to other uses such as grazing.”

The 4.4-megawatt solar farm is part of a larger series of 400-megawatt plants that San Antonio’s municipal utility, CPS Energy, intends on adding to its system by 2016. Just one megawatt of solar energy can heat and cool up to 100 homes on a hot, Texas summer day, according to the Tribune, and in more mild conditions, can power even more houses.

OCI Solar’s experiment with sheep grazing has worked out well despite recent heavy rains. None of the sheep have chewed through cables or hopped up onto the solar panels, unlike goats, which are more prone to that type of behavior.

Not only are the solar panels good for soaking up the rays. In the blazing sun, they provide a shady respite for the sheep.

Officials contend sheep grazing not only boosts the local agricultural economy, but is also cheaper than hiring human landscapers, who have to steer large lawn equipment in sometimes difficult-to-reach areas.

The sheep aren’t the only animals living at the solar farm. The company has also employed two herding dogs to help stave off lingering coyotes and help protect the sheep.

OCI Solar intends to keep the current herd around for about 10 months before a Texas breeder will swap the sheep with a new crew. If all goes well, they might add the animals to keep its expansive 500-acre, 41-megawatt-plant in sheep shape.
MORE: EnergyCube: The Pop-up Power Station Revolutionizing Solar

Texas Breaks a Record, But Not the Kind You’d Expect

Everything’s bigger in Texas, which partly explains how a state known for its oil rigs, giant steaks, and five-lane highways has just broken a national wind energy record.
On the evening of Wednesday, March 26, wind power fed 10,296 megawatts of power into the state’s electricity grid — almost 29 percent of all wind power used in the state at that time. According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, that’s a record for all power systems in the United States.
Texas is actually the largest producer of wind power in the United States, with the potential to collect more power than Italy, France, or the U.K., according to Next City. It’s no surprise, then, that the morning after the wind energy record, Texas broke a “wind power share record,” when 38.43 percent of the state’s power came from windmills. (To be fair, that happened at 3:19 a.m., so perhaps the state wasn’t buzzing with electrical needs.)
Most of the electricity comes from West Texas, which is home of Roscoe Wind Farm and Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, as well as the television drama Friday Night Lights. (Why was wind energy never a plot on the show?)
There’s a divide in the Lone Star State in terms of energy needs and energy generation, though: West Texas has the wind, but it doesn’t actually have a large enough population to use the power it generates. At the same time, places like Houston and Corpus Christi generate far less electricity than they need.
To solve the problem, Texas passed the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones Initiative. Now transmission lines zigzag across the state, successfully carrying wind power from north to south and west to east that was previously lost on its way to the electrical grid.
Other states and their power generators are trying to be more like Texas. The Southwest Power Pool, which serves Oklahoma, Kansas, and parts of Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Arkansas, is attempting to build a network of transmission lines that will hook into the one in Texas, funneling wind energy across state lines.
Currently Texas has 12 gigawatts of installed capacity in the state, and 8 more gigawatts are planned or under construction.
The lesson here is clear: Don’t mess with Texas, especially when it comes to transforming wind energy into electrical power.