This archive collects milestones and solutions-focused stories involving citizens — everyday people taking action in their communities, organizing locally, and driving change at the grassroots level. From civic participation to community-led initiatives, these stories highlight what ordinary people accomplish when they work together.
Launched two years ago, this first-of-its-kind initiative, known as Mikoko Pamoja (‘Mangroves Together’), raises money for its mangrove conservation by selling carbon credits to people and organizations eager to shrink their carbon footprint.
Nzambi Matee’s Nairobi-based company, Gjenge Makers, produces a variety of different paving stones, which are already being put to use to line sidewalks, driveways, and roads.
Francia Márquez became Colombia’s first Black woman vice president on June 19, 2022, winning alongside Gustavo Petro with just over half the national vote. A former housekeeper and single mother from Cauca, one of Colombia’s poorest provinces, she rose to office through years of grassroots organizing against illegal gold mining — work that earned her the Goldman Environmental Prize and, along the way, death threats she refused to back down from. Now leading a new equality ministry, she’s focused on women’s rights, rural health care, and education for communities long shut out. Her election doesn’t undo generations of exclusion, but it changes what’s imaginable — for Afro-Colombian girls, for environmental defenders, and for movements everywhere insisting the overlooked belong at the table.
After being stripped of her post for vigorously opposing mining in her community, a local official in Palawan has won in landslide victory in the country’s May 9 elections.
In 2018, Burundi launched a vast national reforestation program to boost the country’s dwindling forest cover, which will run until 2025.
For two decades, citizens have mobilized against different oil and gas projects in Quebec, including shale gas in the St. Lawrence Valley and oil projects in Gaspésie.
This is a precedent-setting case in the country’s management of forests, representing the first time an area will be declared protected at the request of the resident community.
The project has helped lift the Tamazula municipality, where the four communities are located, off the state’s poverty list, raise their income above the minimum wage and contain narcotrafficking.
The non-profit organization Glass Half Full collects glass bottles and grinds them down into super soft sand to use for disaster relief, eco-construction, and even new glass.
Dr. Gill has been described as a “beacon of hope” for the country’s neglected transgender community to pursue their dreams.
