In the United States, a national professional organization is increasing its efforts to prevent potential infringements of privacy rights and intellectual freedom by making sure that as few records as possible are kept.

When businesses close and jobs disappear, individuals, families and communities risk falling into poverty. In Argentina’s recent economic downturn, many businesses have closed or gone bankrupt.

Interaction Belfast created a mobile phone network to prevent outbreaks of violence between Catholics and Protestants in Belfast.  Mobile phones are given to volunteers in both communities to share information across the Springfield interface, and intervene when necessary to prevent violence.  Interfaces are contested areas between Protestants and Catholics, typically areas divided by physical walls, where each community lives on one side.   If a volunteer sees or hears of a crowd, usually of young people, gathering along the interface, they call a volunteer on the other side to alert them about what is happening. Volunteers calm crowds on their own side of the interface before incidents become violent.  Since the program began, the phone network has prevented many rumors and gatherings from becoming violent episodes.

The Independent Monitoring Board in England and Wales (IMB) is not a pressure group but a constant presence in a prison, independent of the Governor, staff and prisoners, monitoring that the prison is being run according to the rules.  The IMB consists of a group of lay people living locally to a prison who are appointed by the Minister for Prisons to go into the prison, unannounced, at any time of the day or night and who may go anywhere they like in the prison and speak to prisoners out of  sight (where safe) and hearing of staff.  There is an IMB in every prison in England and Wales consisting of approximately 14 members.

At the beginning of 2005, Enfants & Developpement (E&D) set up a Participatory Child Protection Project in 6 communes covering 126 villages. The project pilots a new initiative in combating child trafficking issues through the establishment of Child Boards at the district level.  While it is too early to assess the impacts of the project, a high degree of success towards the goal of protecting children from being abused can be anticipated due to variety of reasons.

The CLEEN Foundation, formally Centre for Law Enforcement Education in Nigeria, created public forums where citizens and police can discuss concerns and grievances regarding crime and police conduct.

Communities and police forces can find themselves in an unproductive cycle of distrust. Community members are concerned about misconduct, brutality and corruption. The police, in turn, are concerned with the community is hostile and uncooperative in their investigations.

In 1999, the International Centre for Cultures and Languages (Internationales Zentrum für Kulturen und Sprachen) in Austria developed a program that pairs police officers with an immigrant or refugee to foster positive relations between the police force and the foreign-born population. While educating the officers about citizens who they may have held negative stereotypes about, this program also gives the refugees and immigrants an opportunity to communicate with the officers about racial profiling and other racial issues.

The NGO PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) and Maendeleo Ya Wanawake, Kenya's largest women's organization, have collaborated to offer alternatives to Female Genital Mutilation. They combine community education for young girls and parents with alternative rites of passage that preserve many traditional aspects of the coming-of-age ritual, while prohibiting physical harm to girls.