A 12-year-old, a picture book, and a shelter full of calm dogs

The Fairfax County animal shelter in Virginia has an adoption helper who cannot yet drive herself there: she is 12, and she arrives with a picture book. Through a free programme called Reading Tails, children sit and read aloud to shelter animals — practice for the readers, company for the animals, and a calmer kennel for everyone who walks through looking for a pet. Shelter staff say a dog that has been read to presents as the dog it actually is: relaxed, curious, itself. That matters, because animals who seem settled are the ones who go home. The programme costs nothing, asks only for a voice and some patience, and is changing outcomes on both ends of the leash.

Mechanism: community action