On the Ground

M-KOPA was founded in 2010 in Nairobi. Its three co-founders — Nick Hughes, Jesse Moore, and Chad Larson — spotted a paradox: 70% of Kenyans had no bank account, yet 90% had mobile coverage, and the mobile money system M-Pesa was already moving money at scale. The question was what ordinary people could actually buy with it. Their answer was light: a $200 solar home system, financed through a GSM...

BRAC began in 1972, in the ruins of Bangladesh's war of independence. Fazle Hasan Abed quit his accounting job in the UK to return home and help with relief work — only to find that handouts didn't solve the problem: after three months of food aid, people were still hungry. In 1974, he met a group of village women pooling money to buy a goat, and from that grew BRAC's core idea, the "lowest thresh...

Aiyouxi began in 2009 as a public-welfare theatre troupe — over 300 volunteers writing, directing, and filming short films on causes like blood donation. Along the way the team realized that "what happens outside the camera matters more than what's in the frame," and in 2011 it formally became a community social-work organization, putting down roots in the old courtyards of Chengdu's Shuijingfang...

Crisis Text Line, founded in 2013, is the first and largest text-based crisis service in the United States. We believe everyone in crisis deserves to be heard. Through a nationwide network of trained volunteer counselors, we provide free, confidential, 24/7 crisis support via text to millions globally. Text HOME to 741741 and connect with a counselor in 38 seconds—far faster than the 10+ minute av...

31 staff. 22,000 families. 6 cities. 47 communities. Over twenty years, Shanghai's Xin Tu Community Health Promotion Society went through three fundamental shifts: from direct service delivery, to training community "Health Ambassadors" to serve their own neighborhoods; from labor-intensive expansion, to exploring digital platforms; and from centralized management, to a "sense-and-respond" organiz...