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Welcome to Fixes
This is a series about solutions, or potential solutions, to real world problems. It focuses on the line between failure and success, drawing on the stories of people who have crossed it.
Most of us tend to be better informed about problems than solutions. This presents two challenges: if we rarely hear about success when it occurs, it’s hard to believe that problems can, in fact, be solved. Also, knowledge about how to solve problems ends up being concentrated in too few hands. It needs to circulate more broadly so that it can be applied where needed.
We are both journalists who have spent more than two decades reporting on social problems around the world, and where possible, exploring new models to address them. Here, we’ll be looking at examples of success in fields such as health care, education, employment, political change and environmental protection. The projects can be as specific as fixing motorcycles or as broad as improving the way we finance vaccines globally. Examples will come from all over — the poorest parts of Africa and South Asia, but also middle-income countries like Mexico and Poland and rich ones like Canada and the United States. In each case, we will look at what the people behind them did differently — what led to success in a world where plans so often end in disappointment. And we will explore what we can learn from their experiences.
Continue the rest of the article at the NY Times
