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.
YouTube stars and social media influencers are coming together to tackle climate change. YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, is spearheading the massive online campaign to plant 20 million trees.
Christina Koch and Jessica Meir completed the first spacewalk with an all-women team. Since cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to do a spacewalk in 1984, women have participated in 42 spacewalks.
An estimated four million protesters in over 150 countries marched in the youth led global climate strike.
2018 marks the ninth consecutive with a year-on-year decrease in suicides in Japan and the first time in 37 years for the total to fall below 21,000.
Overdose deaths in the United States finally reversed course in 2018, ending nearly two decades of almost unbroken annual increases — a sign that the coordinated public health response is starting to work. Expanded naloxone access, medication-assisted treatment, and community outreach all appear to have contributed, though no single intervention gets the credit. The picture inside the data is mixed: while opioid deaths fell, deaths involving cocaine and methamphetamine rose, suggesting the epidemic shifted rather than ended. Still, experts say this is evidence that scaling up treatment saves lives — and that doing so remains the central, unfinished challenge.
Almost half of new cars sold in Norway in the first six months of 2019 were fully electric, up from just over 25% in the same period last year.
UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Climate Action Michael Bloomberg has announced Beyond Carbon campaign to close the United States’ fleet of coal plants and halt new gas plants.
More than 19,000 people in Japan have signed a petition to ban office dress codes which force women to wear high heels to work.
Denver voters approved a measure to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms. Psilocybin has been touted for treating a variety of psychological issues, including depression.
Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado founded Instituto Terra, a small organization that has since planted 4 million saplings and has brought the forest back from the dead.
