Stay ConnectedDiscover the people and the projects trying to make the world a better place.
A weekly programme looking at common challenges around the world and the creative ways people are trying to tackle them.
Presenter Myra Anubi speaks to reporters, experts and innovators to investigate how effective different solutions are, share their successes and inspire listeners with what is possible.
Copyright: © (C) BBC 2022
Child abduction by strangers is extremely rare, but the danger looms large in the minds of many parents. One reason is that for the past 50 years or so, governments have created public information campaigns around the message of “Stranger Danger”. In the UK, the US, Canada and many other countries too, these videos were played in the media and in schools. The videos portrayed in stark terms the risk of talking to adults you did not know who appeared to be friendly. But a new generation of childcare experts believe this is not the most effective message to protect children. Most abductions are by people children already know. And there is a worry that a general fear of strangers is not good for a child’s social development - or for society in general. World Hacks meets the charity Action Against Abduction as they teach a new message: Clever Never Goes.
Presenter: Harriet Noble Reporter and Producer: Dougal Shaw
Photo Caption: Stranger Danger Photo Credit: BBC
Our brains are the control centre of the human body. They allow us to think, to learn and to dream - but if you know how the brain works, it can also be fooled. Two start-up companies are making a business from these brain hacks, using wearable technology to trick the brain to improve people’s lives.
The first is a wristband that uses a fake heartbeat to trick users’ brains into feeling calmer in stressful situations. The Doppel device also allows users to increase the rate of the fake heartbeat to make them feel more focused.
The second wearable device allows people to fit lasers to their shoes. They are designed to help Parkinson’s patients who suffer from freezing episodes. These episodes affect up to 70% of Parkinson’s patients and come on suddenly, halting a sufferer mid-stride as they walk. The laser shoes provide visual cues to trick the brain into moving again.
Presenter: Sofia Bettiza Reporter: Ammar Ebrahim
Photo Credit: Getty Images
In Japan, to become a 'hikikomori' means to withdraw from the world and social life. Many of those who suffer from the condition shut themselves in their bedrooms for years on end, refusing to work, study or interact with anyone around them. More than half a million people are thought to be hikikomori, most of them young men.
One organisation, New Start, has come up with an unusual solution: rental sisters. The sisters-for-hire visit regularly, helping to coax the hikikomori out of their bedrooms and back into society. That could mean just talking through the door, going out for lunch or even moving into a hikikomori boarding house and starting some part time work. Reporter Amelia Martyn-Hemphill finds out about the increasingly popular rental sister phenomenon for BBC World Hacks in Tokyo.
Presenter: Harriet Noble Reporter: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill
Photo Caption: A Former Hikikomori Photo Credit: BBC
In Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, access to water is a minefield. The marketplace is dominated by water cartels, or mafias - water is often syphoned off from the mains supply and pumped in through dirty hosepipes.
But Kennedy Odede is trying to change that. Dubbed the ‘president of the poor’, he set up a scheme to pump water up from a borehole deep underground, and deliver it through a new network of pipes with a difference. To avoid contamination, and keep them safe from the cartels, Kennedy’s pipes are suspended 15m in the air on a series of poles that carry them around the slum.
In this episode of World Hacks we travel to Kibera to meet Kennedy, see the aerial waterways in action, and ask if his scheme can expand to help people living in slums across the globe.
Presenter: Dougal Shaw Reporter: Sam Judah Producer: Sam Judah for the BBC World Service
Photo Caption: Kennedy Odede Photo Credit: BBC
Volunteers around the world regularly get together to fix other people’s broken stuff free of charge. Reporter Nick Holland visits an event called a Repair Café in the Netherlands and links up with a team running a similar workshop in India. He asks what difference this 'make do and mend’ movement can make to our disposable culture
Photo Caption: Repairing a radio with a soldering iron Photo Credit: BBC
Anyone who cares for someone with dementia knows the struggle to keep them stimulated and engaged as the condition progresses. This week World Hacks looks at three clever ideas that attempt to help.
First up, a designer in the Netherlands has created a device that projects simple interactive games on to any table. Using lights, colours and sounds, the Tovertafel, or ‘Magic Table’, allows users to push rustling leaves, pop bubbles and catch virtual fish. We visit a dementia club in north London where it’s the star attraction at their weekly meeting and visit the creator, Dr Hester Le Riche, at her head office in Utrecht to find out how it works.
Another game features next, a simple board game called Call To Mind, which stimulates conversation through its gameplay.
And finally we look at some brightly-coloured rehydration drops, which draw the attention of people living with dementia and so aim to keep them healthy as the condition worsens.
Presenter: Nick Holland Reporters: Claire Bates, Susila Silva, Tom Colls
Photo Caption: The Tovertafel in action Photo Credit: BBC
This week we go back to school, with two simple ideas that involve changing the day-to-day lives of pupils to improve their physical and mental wellbeing. The Daily Mile is an idea developed in a Scottish school by an enterprising teacher, which is now being adopted worldwide. It gets pupils to run a mile at a surprise moment during the school day, to break up their learning and burn some calories. Meanwhile, in Bradford, in the north of England, a previously failing school has found salvation through music. To improve its performance in core subjects including maths and English, it promoted music in the timetable and embraced a music-teaching philosophy pioneered in communist-era Hungary. Presenter: Dougal Shaw Reporters: Shabnam Grewal and Dougal Shaw
Photo Caption: A pupil playing drums and singing Photo Credit: BBC
How do you create green spaces in the middle of a city, where there’s no space to create large-scale parks or gardens? Paris has come up with a clever solution – they allow anyone to apply for a permit to start a garden anywhere at all. A rich assortment of small projects has sprung up, ranging from plant pots around lamp posts, to rejuvenated church squares, to walls covered with ivy. It’s a piecemeal approach to making the city greener, but it’s one that seems to be working.
This week on World Hacks we visit this and two other projects that are trying to improve our experience of urban public spaces. As well as Paris’ citizen gardeners, we’ll hear from joggers in India who are ridding their streets of litter and commuters in London who are making a small but crucial change to the way they get to work.
Presenter: Harriet Noble Reporter: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Have you ever wanted to donate to a homeless person, but found yourself without any cash, or concerned about how they may spend the money? A potential solution is being proposed in Oxford, England, through a scheme issuing homeless people with barcodes which can be worn around the neck or printed on a sign.
Members of the public can scan these barcodes on their smartphones and read the homeless person’s story, before deciding whether or not to donate. Any money pledged goes into a special bank account managed by a support worker, helping the homeless person save towards long-term goals.
Some think the project solves a number of problems but others fear the act of scanning someone using a smartphone could be dehumanising.
We visit Oxford to meet homeless people using the barcodes, and speak to the people behind the big idea.
Presenter: Harriet Noble
Photo Caption: One of the homeless people helping trial the new system in Oxford Photo Credit: BBC
In the northern Italian town of Bologna, a new public transport system is rewarding citizens for taking sustainable modes of transport. Each time locals walk or use the bus, train, car pooling or car sharing, they receive ‘mobility points’, which can be cashed in at cafes, cinemas, bars, bookshops and a number of other locations across the city. We explore the social and environmental benefits of taking Bologna’s residents out of their cars and onto the streets, moving about the city in a greener way.
Presenter: Dougal Shaw Reporter: Nicola Kelly
Picture caption: Bologna’s citizens are rewarded for using green transport like bikes Picture credit: GreenMe Italy
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