Database of Successful Strategies and Tactics

We all hear discouraging news about threats and damage to the environment, human rights, etc., but usually very little about the many people and organizations worldwide who are responding and often finding solutions. You'll find many of these stories here. Issues addressed include peace, social justice, environmental concerns, ethnic conflict, corporate abuses, preservation of our biological and cultural heritage, and related areas.

This collection of 840 stories is intended to provide:

a source of information
a source of encouragement
A reminder that you are not struggling alone and that it is not hopeless

Included with the successes are also partial or temporary successes, promising but incomplete efforts, and failed efforts that are worth a second look.

To allow easy access from older computers and slow phone lines, we made this site very simiple.

TRY BROWSING! These actions can often be applied to different situations. For instance, a strategy for protecting the environment might also be useful for protecting human rights. To find other valuable strategies and tactics, it may be helpful to randomly browse through the database, or to look at the "Editor's Choice" cases.

Please keep in mind that there are many factors that make for success or failure in a given situation, and that everything contains the seeds of its opposite. No success or failure is ever complete or permanent.

PLEASE HELP US WITH FEEDBACK!

Your comments, corrections, and new success stories will directly help others around the world who are struggling with similar problems. This project is still new and we want to make it as useful as possible. We ask for the following:

How useful is this for you? Are there parts that are particularly useful, or parts that are difficult? Is the language ok for those of you who are not fluent in English? Any advice on making it better?
If you find a case that needs to be corrected or updated, please let us know by using the "Feedback, this Case" link on the case page.
Please send us more stories of successful efforts, using the "Feedback" button at the top of every page. Just a simple text describing the story will be enough for us to work with.
Let us know of any strategies that you think should be added to the "selected" list.

THIS SITE IS SPONSORED BY:
The Mountain Forum for Peace
PO Box 1233, Nederland CO 80466

757: Native Plants Ecosystems Return to Woodland, California

By nurturing native plants in fields laid barren by monoculture farming, John Anderson brings back a whole host of life. Part of Anderson's campaign to restore native grasslands to the fields and foothills surrounding Hedgerow Farms, his 520-acre native seed farm in California's Sacramento Valley. The poppy and rye seed Anderson collects here will transform gravel pits, highway banks, and eroded stream sides from weed-infes....

741: The Talking Circle

How can we re-learn respect, understand the gifts of creation, and break the cycle of violence? In prisons, a Native American democratic tradition brings healing and new possibilities.

733: Mayan Justice Returns to Guatemala

In Guatemala, local judges are abandoning the Spanish colonial system that was imposed 500 years ago and returning to Mayan traditions that favor mediation, reconciliation, and personal contact between the victim and transgressor. "In the official system," says justice of the peace Edgardo Barreda, "there is always a winner and a loser. In the unofficial indigenous system, we want everyone to go away happy. It's based more ....

540: Couple Designs House to Emit Less Carbon Dioxide

For Mike and Catherine Tidwell, January 2001 findings of the (US) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change first set them to plotting their home energy revolution. Most scientists believe the world's CO emissions must drop 80 per cent below current levels to stabilize the climate. So that became their goal: 80 per cent. They felt that it was the least they could do in a nation where the government seemingly sabotages even ....

537: Creating and Using Green Electricity

An option now open to most UK households is to buy so-called `green electricity' straight from electric utility companies. Most of the electricity suppliers run green electricity schemes, but each is different. There are typically three different schemes to choose from. The first is a `renewable tariff' where your supplier matches every unit of electricity you use by purchases of renewable energy. The other is an `eco fund' ....

Welcome

PLEASE HELP US WITH FEEDBACK!