- To protect his people’s Maskoke culture and language, Marcus Briggs-Cloud is using natural building techniques to construct an off-the-grid ecovillage on reclaimed ancestral land in what is now Alabama.
- By focusing on energy efficiency — how existing structures are maintained and used — Iowa-based Emily Rice helps companies throughout the Midwest reduce energy use and boost their bottom lines.
- Inventing ways to get farmers paid for sequestering carbon in the soil and helping growers fund the transition to organic, Colorado’s Phil Taylor is bringing joy back to agriculture.
- Jenna Nicholas’ agency, Impact Experience, has brought together funders, investors, and local people in West Virginia to guide economic-renewal projects that include retraining former miners and building an ecotourism hotel.
- In Cincinnati, Cam Hardy’s homegrown activism has pushed the bus system to get better — and helped put a new measure on the ballot to generate more than $100 million in new funds.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Don’t call it ‘flyover’: Meet 5 people making change beyond the coasts on Apr 10, 2020.