People Fixing the World

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 ServicePhoto 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 culturePhoto 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 CollsPhoto 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 ShawPhoto 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-HemphillPhoto 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 NoblePhoto 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 KellyPicture caption: Bologna’s citizens are rewarded for using green transport like bikes Picture credit: GreenMe Italy

A vast and expensive system with the sole purpose of keeping things cool exists across the developed world. This “cold chain” includes fridges in kitchens, refrigerated lorries and cold store warehouses for supermarket produce and medicines. It costs billions to run and has a big environmental cost. But in poorer countries, this cold chain is just in its infancy. People are dying as health clinics lack the fridges to keep vaccines safe. New cold chain technology is needed and two inventors think they’ve figured it out. World Hacks looks at their innovative ways of keeping things chilled. Presenter: Harriet Noble Reporter: Tom Colls

Across the Italian countryside, villages are becoming deserted as people migrate to towns and cities. A sustainable tourism model known as the ‘Albergo Diffuso’ is attempting to reverse this trend. Tourist services, restaurants and hotels are spread around the village to encourage visitors to eat and stay with different families, boosting the local economy. We travel to the town of Santo Stefano di Sessanio in the Abruzzo region to meet the local business owners, restaurateurs and hoteliers profiting from the steady increase in tourism that this model has brought them.Presenter: Harriet Noble Reporter: Nicola KellyPicture Caption: Santo Stefano di Sessanio, a hilltop village that was once abandoned, now a thriving tourist town Picture Credit: Sextantio Albergo Diffuso

A nine-year-old child announcer has been recruited on the London Underground. The idea is that her voice will surprise passengers, so they listen to her safety message. It’s an example of nudge theory in action, the art of subtly persuading large numbers of people to change their behaviour, by adjusting their environment. People Fixing the World also visits a university campus, which is nudging its students with a subtle price change, encouraging them to use fewer disposable coffee cups.Presenter: Harriet Noble Reporter: Dougal ShawPhoto Caption: Nine-year-old announcer Photo Credit: BBC