BRADY KIRCHBERG

PeaceLove, a non-profit that fosters mental wellness through art and creativity has been successfully spreading the gospel of art as a mental wellness tool for 12 years now.

Hear from its co-founder, artist Jeff Sparr, on how he transformed his mental health coping mechanisms into artistic expression. How do you express your feelings when challenged?

PeaceLove, a non-profit that fosters mental wellness through art and creativity has been successfully spreading the gospel of art as a mental wellness tool for 12 years now.

Hear from its co-founder, artist Jeff Sparr, on how he transformed his mental health coping mechanisms into artistic expression. How do you express your feelings when challenged?

For fifty-three-year-old Carl, the biggest mistake of his life was dropping out of high school. With unexpected help by his side, he's going back to get his high school diploma.

Cliff Nellis, a respected Chicago lawyer, is taking a different approach to justice - asking victims to sit down with their attacker, and talk, face to face. And it’s working: 89% of the kids and young adults Nellis has worked with have not returned to crime.

Cliff Nellis is the executive director of the Lawndale Christian Legal Center (LCLC), a nonprofit that provides free legal services to their community, North Lawndale, located in Chicago. Their program is working — 89% of the kids LCLC has served have never returned to crime.

As one of the most effective nonprofit leaders in the country, Nellis’ advice to social entrepreneurs is “the people you’re serving need to be the driver of change.” LCLC takes the to their core, with a bylaw to protect it.

100% of the founding board of directors are from North Lawndale, and 51% of the board will always be residents of North Lawndale. Furthermore, LCLC prioritizes hiring from the community.

“If you’re looking around and nobody who is the beneficiary of your service is leading that service or doing that service with you, then you are not in the right relationship with your cause,” says Nellis.

Every employee at Thistle Farms, including the ones in the beauty shop and attached cafe, are survivors of sex trafficking, prostitution, or addiction — “some of the oldest scars humanity’s ever dealt,” Becca Stevens, the founder and president of Thistle Farms, says. Thistle Farms provides a safe, stable place for healing, where people have ample time to overcome trauma and addiction, and can build their own financial freedom and start a path of realizing their full potential.

The mission to end world hunger is one of today’s most pressing challenges. Here’s how big data is helping solve it.

America appears to be divided right now and we all feel it. The perceived division is so strong and so emotionally charged that we can’t seem to work together or make progress on some of our most pressing problems.

There have to be ways to find common ground and bridge these divides. We must build empathy for each other and focus on solutions.

Narrative 4, a growing network of educators, students, and artists, is one group working to find that common ground. Using the power of storytelling, their vision is not only to create empathy between strangers, but to also turn it into action.

In this video, we see Narrative 4’s story exchange methodology first-hand. Watch as 8 strangers sit down, face-to-face, and share deep emotional life stories. Participants then retell their partners’ stories in the first person, creating a deeper connection and sense of understanding. This method has proven to break down barriers related to faith, identity, immigration, violence and more.

Narrative 4 has become one of the world’s most impactful organizations in the fields of empathy and education. From Port Elizabeth, South Africa to West Bank, Palestine, the organization is opening minds and changing narratives across the globe. Thanks to early successes and a bold vision, the project has received funding from Stand Together Foundation, a philanthropic community that also provided Narrative 4 a slot in the Stand Together Catalyst Program, which seeks to unlock the potential of America’s most promising nonprofits. What if those of us working hard to solve our country's most pressing problems took this approach?

What if the next generation of leaders got more exposed to this? Imagine the difference we could make at bridging divides and solving problems together.

Narrative 4, a growing network of educators, students and artists, is one group working to find that common ground. Using the power of storytelling, their vision is not only to create empathy between strangers, but to also turn it into action.

“If we are allowed to understand one another, not through facts and figures, but through personal stories, then we can begin to push change forward,” says Co-founder and President, Colum McCann.

We need energy to fuel our lives. And we need to be good stewards of the environment. But can we really achieve both? Innovators at Antora Energy, a hard-tech company, think so. They believe their solution can tackle a major challenge with renewable energy: Its power generation is unpredictable. To prove their solution works, they’re attempting to revolutionize heavy industry's energy dependence through a unique carbon-based battery system.

Antora's solution is a solid carbon battery capable of storing large amounts of energy when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, enabling an abundant, reliable energy supply. This has the potential to significantly reduce heavy industry's emissions, which currently account for around 30% of global emissions. Compared to lithium-ion batteries and other energy sources, Antora says its carbon battery offers similar energy storage and usage at a fraction of the cost.

Antora believes this technology could potentially drive a shift in the energy landscape and a re-industrialization in the US powered by renewable energy. Despite regulatory challenges, Antora envisions a future of universal access to abundant, zero-emissions energy.

Since barbershop customers often open up and share about their lives and issues with their barber, The Confess Project aims to train barbers in basic mental health services, as another way to reach out to and support Black men in their communities.

The Frederick Douglass Project is an innovative program aimed at rehabilitating incarcerated individuals through direct, face-to-face conversations with outside visitors — as well as inspiring understanding and empathy in those visitors when they meet the people inside.Spearheaded by Dr. Mark Howard and J.J. Velasquez, this initiative challenges the conventional approach to the United States' prison system, which currently houses two million people but often fails in addressing underlying issues that can lead to crime like addiction and trauma.

The project is rooted in the belief that individuals who have committed crimes should be accountable for their actions — but also that they are capable of change and should be equipped for successful reintegration into society. Equally central to the project is the humanization of incarcerated individuals by focusing on shared humanity rather than past mistakes. By facilitating these interactions, the Frederick Douglass Project seeks to dismantle the narrative of fear and demonization often associated with incarcerated people.

As the project grows, encompassing multiple prisons and engaging thousands of participants, its goal extends beyond individual transformation. It envisions a society that welcomes returning individuals with acceptance and support, fundamentally shifting how reentry and rehabilitation are approached. This shift is not only humane but also strategic, with the potential to lower recidivism rates and enhance public safety.

What explains the high levels of anxiety and depression among children and teenagers today? One factor is a lack of play, according to evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray.

Boston Uncornered is a program designed to offer gang members and other disadvantaged youth better opportunities than they can receive on the street, identifying their unique gifts and putting them on sustainable, individualized paths toward fulfilling lives.

Schools across America are facing a teacher shortage crisis: over 280,000 teachers have left the profession since the pandemic. Mallory Palisch, a founder of Reach University, thinks we can solve that problem with the workforce that’s hiding in plain sight: teacher’s aides. These paraprofessionals already have the experience and the drive to become teachers, but in many cases, they cannot afford to earn a college degree, or don’t have the time to do so while working full-time. That’s where Reach University comes in. The organization aims to provide free access to apprenticeship degree courses to teaching aids, allowing them to get qualified for the job of their dreams — and solve the teacher shortage while they’re at it. The program combines college education with apprenticeships, allowing participants to earn while they learn, without incurring student loan debt. Reach University currently has over 1,000 paraprofessionals in training, with a goal to have over 10,000 teacher apprentices in the next four years. The Reach model has the potential to revolutionize education and other fields like nursing and social work by making apprenticeship degrees a mainstream option. This approach ensures individuals can access any profession they dream of without money being a barrier.

Electric Girls is a nonprofit that’s dedicated to equipping girls with the skills, knowledge, and confidence they need to pursue careers in STEM. They run a variety of classes, workshops, and summer camps that provide girls with hands-on experiences to explore their natural gifts, talents, and interests across all sorts of STEM-related projects: soldering, computer programming, robotics, etc.

Approximately 100,000 Americans die each year of a drug overdose. “What if a little restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky, can solve the addiction issue in America?” asks Rob Perez, owner of DV8 Kitchen. Perez and DV8 Kitchen have given recovering substance users gainful employment at an organization that understands the unique challenges of substance use recovery.

Recidiviz, a non-profit based in San Francisco, is working to transform the US criminal justice system—to safely reduce prison populations and significantly improve outcomes. The engineering team at Recidiviz team builds tools that bring together fragmented data sources, providing criminal justice leaders a real-time view of their system. These tools help leaders find and address challenges, identify people who are succeeding, and improve outcomes for communities across the country.

America’s bachelor degree obsession is killing the economy and holding back millions of talented workers. Now there’s a bold campaign to ditch degree requirements, and it could unleash a whole new skilled workforce.

Thread is a Baltimore-based nonprofit created in 2004 by a husband and wife team, Sarah and Ryan Hemminger. Thread brings together members of the community so that they can create a support network — like a family — for Donyae and other Baltimore students.

There are more Americans experiencing homelessness today than ever before. To help them improve their lives, Jonathan Kumar designed the Samaritan app.

On one end, users can get to know unhoused individuals through their profiles, learn about their goals, and contribute to specific needs. On the other end, a person experiencing homelessness is able to receive financial and social support on their path to achieving those goals.

Whether it’s a haircut or groceries, the Samaritan philosophy is that being able to meet each person’s unique needs helps to empower people and propel them forward. The goal is to “provide a social home” and meet people where they are. After all, people without homes are still our neighbors.

Jonathan Kumar had nearly reached a contract with Seattle for his Samaritan app — a social platform designed to support people experiencing homelessness — but then he lost a crucial city council vote right before the pandemic hit.

At the time, Kumar wondered whether his venture was headed for failure. Disasters are part of every entrepreneur's story, but Kumar says knowing how to handle them was the key to his success.

Kumar advises social entrepreneurs to be rigid about problems, but flexible about solutions. After all, being flexible and making a quick pivot ultimately made the difference in the success of his app. He says failure is an opportunity to pivot and think broadly about solutions.

Jonathan Kumar is a web engineer, who founded the Samaritan app — a platform designed to empower people experiencing homelessness.

His advice for people looking to start similar community-based social missions has four main steps: Build a great team, identify where the funding will come from, develop milestones to sell your idea and attract more investors, and know the kind of funding you will need.

With these steps in place, your idea has a framework that Kumar believes paves the way to success.