In January, D. Nathan Cieszynski was teaching a course that he knew well and had offered so many times that there should have been few surprises. During his January workshop, however, a young man in the course gave him pause.

Zuni Indian Reservation, N.M. – Some three decades ago Darrell Tsabetsaye opened a convenience store called Major Market on the Zuni Indian Reservation on the Arizona-northern New Mexico border. Though such stores are fixtures on many street corners, Tsabetsaye’s was neither common nor convenient to establish.

I first saw the village of Kotlik from the window of a small bush plane after an hour’s flight from the “hub town” of Bethel, over the tundra of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in southwest Alaska.

In February, Daphne Rotolo received some distressing news from a woman she was helping to find better housing. As a homeownership assistant with Housing Resources of Western Colorado, she’s seen and heard about many troublesome living situations. This was among the worst.

More than one million Californians lack access to safe drinking water, a startling statistic in a state with the fifth largest economy in the world. For these Californians-of which one in three is Hispanic and nearly half are adults diagnosed as pre-diabetic-the only alternatives to unsafe water are expensive bottled water or sugary drinks.