Jacquelin Marin has no running hot water at home. For a while, she had no real home at all. But soon she’ll have both, with the sun heating water for her showers.

Marin and her neighbors are part of a pilot program to install solar water heaters in the houses of low-income families. For Chile—a country with stark economic inequality and few fossil fuels—it’s a way to help the poor while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

(READ the story in GlobalPost.com)

When a Washington, D.C., couple moved to Burlington, Vermont, they were having trouble getting to know the neighbors. So, they cooked up a plan to use the internet as a way to meet NOT people who lived half a world away, but half a block.

“I invested $15 at the copy shop, printed up 400 fliers, and put one on every door in our neighborhood,” Wood-Lewis explains. “It pretty much just said, ‘Share messages about lost cats and block parties.'”

Someone wrote in: “Neighbors, FYI: Late last night I observed a large possum ambling across my front yard. Not as bad as a skunk, but I understand that possums can damage gardens and dig up lawns.” Twenty-four hours later, another neighbor responded: “They have very soft feet that aren’t good for digging and aren’t likely to cause lawn damage–and they’re very clean animals and spend much of their rest time grooming themselves.”

Last fall, Eric Alperin, a San Francisco artist, heard about blackberries, plums and loquats growing on public property in his city and free for the picking.

“It was great,” he said. “We picked as much as we could carry and had beautiful, fresh, free city fruit,” Alperin said. “I’ll definitely go (picking) again.” Fruit-picking opportunities like that are becoming more common, as volunteers in cities including Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia and Madison, Wis., mobilize behind a goal of planting fruit trees on public land in city parks and neighborhoods.

(READ the inspiring story in USA Today)