Eliminating food deserts, social mobility for ex-prisoners, all-female Bangladeshi police team

Photo: Felipe Tofani / Flickr (CC0)

In today’s edition of Squirrel News, we’re talking about the basic right to healthy food in Belo Horizonte, former prisoners sharing the homes of strangers and how an all-female police team combats online harassment in Bangladesh.

Pioneering food security system eliminates hunger in Belo Horizonte

Access to affordable healthy food is a basic right for the residents of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, whose innovative food security system ensures no one goes hungry.

Source: Yes Magazine

Strangers welcome former prisoners into their homes to promote social mobility

The Homecoming Project matches residents looking for roomates with former inmates, aiming to promote better solutions to criminal justice reform.

Source: Reasons To Be Cheerful

An all-women police team is combatting digital abuse in Bangladesh

Targeted by online threats and digital abuse, women in Bangladesh can now directly report to an all-woman police team.

Source: Thomson Reuters News Foundation

Powerful and low cost method found to recycle waste into biodiesel

The University of Western Australia identified a new, cost effective method to turn used cooking oil and agricultural waste into biofuel.

Source: University of Western Australia

Car-free ‘Superblocks’ to be enlarged in Barcelona

Following on from the success of their introduction earlier this year, the city plans to expand the pedestrianised zones extensively over the course of the next decade.

Source: Bloomberg City Lab

A Malagasy community has saved its lake through community-driven management

The association has ensured the survival and revival of their lake’s ecosystem through regulation, and have even helped increase fish catches for the community.

Source: Mongabay

How Costa Rica covered 75% of its landmass with forest

In spite of its small percentage of global landmass, the country serves as a home for a significant portion of the world’s biodiversity.

Source: Euronews

Young social business founder finds solution to Rwanda’s water crisis

To stop people collecting water from crocodile infested rivers, Christelle Kwizera found a new way to provide water to 70,000 people on a daily basis.

Source: Global Citizen

The world’s first graphic novel made by homeless people will soon be published

A new crowdfunded book aims to challenge perceptions of homelessness – and change the lives of the people who wrote it

Source: The Guardian

Orthopedic surgeon fits first prosthesis for an elephant

After losing her leg in a landmine injury along the Thai-Burmese border at the age of two, Mosha the elephant is able to walk again due to an innovative new invention.

Source: CNN