e-Choupal is a web based initiative that provides rural Indian farmers with the products, information and services they need to enhance their productivity. The platform allows farmers to check both global and local future prices before selling; it gives them access to local weather conditions, soil testing techniques and scientific farm practices. Already covering 18,000 villages, the initiative plans to cover 100,000 villages in the next two years that will serve 3.5 million Indian farmers.

It was conceived to allow ITC (the company behind the initiative) to buy directly from farmers, eliminating numerous intermediaries, that not only contribute to increase transaction costs, but keep a high percentage of the margin. Farmers can monitor prevailing soybean prices in several nearby markets and quote an indicative one day crop price based on a sample and then they can decide whether to sell to ITC, in the open market or wait.

In the end, farmers earn higher profits, consumers get food at cheaper prices and the economy as a whole gains from the increase in agricultural productivity.  

As India emerges as one of the most powerful countries in terms of economic growth, it continues to lag behind developing nations in terms of quality of life. In the Human Development Index of 2005 it ranked 127 among 177 countries. Adult literacy for age 15 years and older ranked 107.The country’s accelerated economical growth has not resulted in a corresponding decline in poverty.

Low levels of literacy are commonly attributed to the lack of educational infrastructure, high levels of desertion and to the absence of a reading environment. Many previous literacy policies launched by the government have failed, evidencing the immediate need of new alternative low cost but effective policies.

The BookBox project is an innovative proposal developed by Dr. Brij Kothari that explores the connections between culture, technology, and education. This project seeks to transform children’s stories into animated books for television and digital media, using Same Language Subtitling (SLS). The project will help enhance the reading skills of semi-literate and non-literate tv viewers.

About half of the country, has access to television. Brijs approach seeks to introduce education through television in a non-intrusive manner. Subtitles are simply hitched on the regular programming by the state-owned television. Further on, since the technical costs of the project are very low, the BookBox project can be implemented at a national level without any additional costs to the already limited budget destined to education.

Aid programs focusing on helping street children have typically consisted in helping these children abandon street life by engaging in institutional support services that help reintegrate them into their families, society, school system, and culture. However, the traditional institutional setting is often rejected, as it inspires distrust and suspicion among the children, and inevitably affecting their commitment towards the program.

Mobile School, an organization aware of the drawbacks and limitations of an institutional setting, has developed a mobile structure that serves as a portable school and allows to reach out to children directly in their own environment. Portable classrooms consist of four wheel structures of five connected boxes  that slide in and out of each other. The box that is initially one and a half metres long becomes six metres long. The side of the boxes consist entirely of blackboard, to which street teachers can attach exercise cards to read, write, play or draw. The core themes are literacy and numeracy programs, creative therapy sessions, healthcare education and human rights. 

The program has been working primarily with street children in urban areas, children in refugee camps and specific targeted groups, such as street hookers. It has been implemented in several developing countries, including Colombia, Guatemala, Peru and Bolivia. Each school is run by local youth workers and through the interaction between street teacher and target group, it can be moulded to adapt to the environment it is placed in.

 
Originally conceived in the 70s as an alternative to fight declining retailing and commercial activities in canadian inner city neighbourhoods, today Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are being used by many organizations around the world to revitalize local economic activity.

BIDs are part of a set of new contemporary urban regeneration initiatives that seek to boost downtown economies by reinventing the concept of service delivery. Crime and safety problems, together with the need for environmental improvements and the limited capacity of local governments to adequately sustain and deal with public spaces, have stimulated the resurgence of BIDs.

The BID model can be understood as locally controlled public-private partnerships for improving the environment and economic performance of an area. This alternative form of governance empowers business stakeholders as they are free to organize, plan and implement programs to improve the conditions within their geographical boundaries, with a limited participation of local government bodies. A BID has also a flexible funding mechanism, property owners volunteer for additional taxation, compulsory upon all its members, in order to finance the neighbourhood’s improvement, operating as an extra-governmental body providing public goods.

Some of the specific benefits of BIDs include:

Porta 22 is an innovative service of the Local Development Agency of Barcelona designed to assist citizens in the overwhelming task of finding a job in the knowledge driven economic era. As a result of the constant changes affecting the labour market, such as the incorporation of new technologies into economic processes, life long learning skills have become essential in our ability to find a job. The objective of Porta 22 is to track down the changes taking place in the labour market and provide citizens the information and tools that will allow them to find a job. One example of these tools, is a multimedia application aimed for a young audience that resembles a video game and simulates the different stages of the recruiting process, from elaborating a CV to the final interview. Users learn the skills and attitudes that companies are looking for when hiring a new employee.

The 2000 squared meters open access facility was specifically designed to provide information, training and personalized assistance about emerging economic sectors, the new labour culture and job opportunities. Citizens learn how using the internet will improve their ability to detect these opportunities. The facility is made up of different functional spaces that provide a wide range of services that include:

Answering the requests of International NGOs, humanitarian aid organizations and international observers present in Sri Lanka, to provide more accurate information on the local reality, the Centre for Policy Alternatives, launched the visionary groundviews.lk website. Groundviews features content from respected civil society activists, bloggers, academics and professional journalists, all in support of peace, reconciliation, good governance and democracy.

With minimal editorial moderation, the website serves as a valuable repository for alternative perspectives on conflict and peace in Sri Lanka. Unlike traditional media channels, citizen journalism cannot be easily censored, empowering citizens to safeguard democracy and good governance.

The portal is Sri Lanka's first news website operating in all three official languages, Sinhala, Tamil and English. This trilingual platform creates new mechanisms to hold politicians responsible for their deeds and misdeeds, allowing citizens to expose police corruption and human rights violations.

Labelled as the world’s first sustainable city, the Dongtan Eco-city project will be used by the Chinese government as a template for future urban sustainable planning. Strategically situated on the island of Chongming, 15km north of Shangai, Dongtan Eco-city will be home to 500,000 citizens by the year 2040. China is currently immersed in a complex rural-urban transition, 400 cities are expected to be built over the next 20 years. With this in mind, it is no surprise that Chinese authorities are concerned with the development of dynamic, liveable and eco-friendly cities as a means to maintain economic and social vitality in the long term.

Dongtan is planned so citizens live near their workplace, while efficient clean public transportation makes every area accessible. Energy will be generated through a combination of heat and power systems linked to the use of renewables. Buildings will have photovoltaic solar panel cells and small wind turbines. Additionally, community waste management recycling will generate clean energy from organic waste, such as the millions of rice husks that are thrown away each day, reducing in this way land fills that severely damage the environment. The city’s sewage will fertilise the surrounding farmland and rainwater will be captured in canals for future recycling and consumption.

Ultimately, the initiative will set the right conditions to achieve incremental changes in the social, economic and environmental infrastructures, which act as operational supports for sustainability and that will allow the city to adjust to the demographic changes expected in the coming years. The social infrastructure facilitates social inclusion, mobility and competitiveness; the economic infrastructure acts as a means to create the right incentives to promote sustainable and competitive economic growth and the environment infrastructure as a means to improve the quality of life.