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
Naomi is not your average teacher. For one thing, she is only six months old. But in many schools across Canada babies like Naomi are a regular feature at the front of class. It is because of an education programme called Roots of Empathy, which is designed to encourage kids to be kinder. The idea is that because a baby cannot explain and externalise how it is feeling, children learn to recognise and identify the baby’s emotions, and become more emotionally astute themselves. It has been proven to reduce bullying. World Hacks visits a school in Toronto to see how it works.
Reporter: Harriet Noble Producer: Elizabeth Davies
(Photo: Naomi)
An English woman has championed a way to bring back community spirit to city streets and keep children fit. She creates pop-up playgrounds by regularly closing the roads to cars. Alice Ferguson began her project in Bristol and the idea is spreading around the UK. It is part of a much larger, global movement that thinks it can give children a better deal.
Up to 90% of the world’s coral could be dead by 2050, according to some estimates, unless we take radical action.
Tackling climate change remains the central battle, but around the world scientists are working on projects that may give coral a greater chance of survival, or at least buy it some time.
The World Hacks team investigates ‘super coral’ in Hawaii, an innovative insurance policy in Cancun, Mexico and a highly controversial plan to geo-engineer clouds above the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
Can any of these schemes transform the fortune of this endangered ecosystem?
Presenter: Sofia Bettiza
World Hacks follows up on some of our stories from last year – going back to innovators around to world to see how their projects have developed. We hear updates on the app that lets volunteers donate their vision to blind people, the man making roads out of plastic and the compost toilets in Haiti that are turning human waste into soil.
Presenters: Harriet Noble and Dougal Shaw Reporters: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill and Nick Holland
Image: People Fixing the World illustration / Credit: BBC
This week we hear about three small solutions trying to make a dent on some big problems. We hear about an outdoor gym made from melted-down knives. We talk to the scout leaders in Madagascar trying to break taboos around periods. And in London we visit the community fridge, where locals can donate and take whatever they want.
Reporters: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill, Clare Spencer and Harriet Noble Presenter: Tom Colls
Image: The Steel Warrior gym / Credit: BBC
In Southern Africa, over seven thousand women are infected with HIV each week. Many can't persuade their partners to wear a condom, so a new form of protection being tested in Malawi could be a real game-changer. It's a small silicon ring which encircles the cervix and releases antiretroviral drugs, lowering the women’s risk of contracting HIV. Their partners can’t feel it, and don’t even need to know it’s there. World Hacks meets the women pioneering this approach and taking control of their own protection.
Presenter: India Rakusen Reporter: Ruth Evans
Image: A community health nurse in Malawi holds up the dapivirine ring / Credit: BBC
If you are a wheelchair user, travelling by aeroplane can be very difficult. Buses, trains and some cars are designed for people to roll into without getting out of their chair, but planes are not, which means an often painful process of moving between the chair and the airline seat – if this is even possible. This can potentially lead to injuries and can stop disabled people travelling by air.
Now, a small group of amateur campaigners is trying to change this – designing and testing their own systems that would let their loved-ones travel the world in safety and comfort.
Presenter: Harriet Noble Reporter: William Kremer
Image: Wheelchair crash testing / Credit: Michele Erwin
Most Malawians live in rural areas and if they get sick, it can be incredibly difficult to get testing kits or medicines in time. Malawi's government has now opened up part of its sky to companies and charities who want to use drones to solve this problem, creating what’s being called the world’s first humanitarian drone testing corridor. World Hacks travels to rural Malawi to assess the opportunities and dangers from this new technology, and to see how much Malawians could benefit.
Image: Villagers in rural Malawi look on as a drone carrying medical supplies is unloaded / Credit: BBC
Your chances of surviving a cardiac arrest while out on the high street are slim. It's estimated survival rates decrease by ten percent for every minute you don't get medical help. The nearest ambulance may be on its way but could take several minutes to arrive. But what if an off-duty paramedic was just around the corner and could help out? BBC World Hacks looks at a new alert system that informs people with first aid training when they're in the vicinity of a medical emergency. Nick Holland investigates whether it works work and what difference it could make to survival rates?
Image: The app that shows people with first aid training the location of a cardiac arrest / Credit: BBC
A retired police detective and a former neo-Nazi leader may seem like an unlikely partnership. But Dr Bernd Wagner and Ingo Hasselbach have taken their past differences and used them as the basis for making a real change. When Hasselbach quit neo-Nazism over two decades ago he and Wagner, who had once arrested him, realised they had a shared dream: to help far right extremists change their ways.
Presenter: Tallulah Berry Reporter: Harriet Noble
Image: Ingo Hasselbach / Credit: BBC
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