Mary Lean visits an innercity area of Nottingham, England, and meets the residents who are determined to rescue it from guns, drugs and crime.

This is border country with a long and turbulent history. Everyone knows that borderlands can be flash points.England and Wales meet here and in the past fought it out, stealing each other’s cattle, firing villages and building castles to enforce the ownership of occupied lands.

Connected 2 (C2) courses are Open College Network accredited and put a particular emphasis on disengaged, so-called ‘hard-to-reach’ and ‘at risk’ 15- to 25-year-olds.

The Micro Loan Foundation is working for long-term sustainable development in Malawi as opposed to providing temporary solutions. As celebrity patron Bob Geldof says, ‘To treat someone as an adult human being with a stake in his or her future is the essence of sound empirical business sense.’

In 1999, a local NGO in Andhra Pradesh (AP), India, suggested that the farmers try out ecological methods, based on the pests’ life-cycle. Five selfhelp groups run by village women provided the determination and support to help make this shift possible.

Mary Lean visits Bergh Apton, and English village which shows what communities can do when they get going.

When Carl Clowes applied for a job as a doctor in North Wales, he could not have foreseen that it would lead him to launching the UK’s first cooperative village—or becoming Honorary Consul for Lesotho. He talks to Paul Williams.

It was deemed unsustainable to renovate the building as a place of worship, but Greg Davis had a vision of creating something else that would bring the community together.

James Wood teaches a subject which challenges both schools and society at large.

Representatives from communities from around the UK got together to discuss initiatives being undertaken to bring opportunities to deprived areas.