People Fixing the World

Street harassment and violence against women in public spaces is a global issue. According to one survey, 84% of women in cities around the world reported being harassed on the street before the age of 17; half of respondents said they had been groped or fondled. It’s acknowledged that intimidating, violent behaviour from men needs to stop, but what can be done to improve the safety of women and g...

Being a teenage mum is not easy. But innovative projects around the world are trying to help. We hear from Sierra Leone, where the 2 Young Lives project supports teenagers who've been rejected by their families for getting pregnant. They link them up with older women who step in to look after them. Complications during pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death for 15–19-year-old girls...

A young scientist has developed a white powder which gives waste soil concrete-like properties. Gnanli Landrou grew up in Togo, helping his neighbours dry out soil to make bricks, and his big dream is to help people like them build stronger, cheaper, houses. But the European building industry is also excited about his new, low carbon building material. We talk to Gnanli about his ambitions for thi...

Robots that navigate sewer pipes are being used to find leaks and blockages in an ancient water system. They’re being put to work in Pune, India, to access dangerous and noxious spots that otherwise would be checked by people. The sewage systems are more than 100 years old and the maps have been lost or are just outdated. So the robots are being used to update the maps, which should eventually lea...

Lotteries aren’t just about winning money. They’re also being used to nudge people to change their behaviour. In the UK we try out a mobile app that enters users in to a £25,000 lottery every time they pick up a piece of litter. We see how heart patients in the US can win smaller prizes for taking their pills… and if they don’t take their medicine, are told what they could have won. And we look at...

La Casa de Carlota isn’t like most workplaces. The design studio, based in Barcelona, Spain, employs creatives who have intellectual disabilities, autism and schizophrenia. Working together with non-disabled colleagues, they produce striking graphics for campaigns and packaging, as well as original works of art. This isn’t a government-backed scheme to help out a disadvantaged group, but a winning...

Sponge cities use natural features to slow down, soak up and reuse flood water. Yu Kongjian nearly drowned as a boy when his village flooded, but it inspired him to come up with the sponge city concept. It’s now being rolled out across China. In Singapore too, parks and lakes are being engineered to soak up excess water. They embrace the flood water rather than block it with concrete barriers. It...

Meet the entrepreneurs using scrap rubber to fuel cars and make new tyres. Each year, over a billion car tyres reach the end of their life. They’re notoriously hard to recycle and present an environmental hazard if left to disintegrate out in the open. But around the world, people are trying to clean up their cities by finding new uses for the mountains of rubber waste. In Senegal, a young entrepr...

In California, butterflies such as the monarch are critically endangered as a result of habitat erosion, pesticides, and climate change. But many people are trying to save these beautiful insects. We meet the scientists who are painstakingly rearing individual butterflies by hand and then releasing them back into the wild. In California’s vineyards, we talk to a farmer who has designed a butterfly...

Fish have favourite colours and dolphins hate high pitched noises. In an effort to save rapidly dwindling global fish stocks, scientists are trying to figure out how to attract the right fish into nets, and keep protected species away. On the southern coast of England, we meet the man who’s designed a hi-frequency gadget which warns dolphins to stay out of fishing nets. In Denmark, scientists show...

Hospitals can make you sicker. It's a strange thought for places that also can make you healthier. But think about the constant noise, the distinctive hospital smell, the bright lights. There's lots of evidence that most patients find hospitals themselves very stressful. This stress can lead to slower healing times or even a higher chance of being readmitted to hospital. This week, we look at some...

When you get your hair cut, you probably don't think much about what happens to the bits that get chopped off. But it turns out that rather than being dumped in the rubbish, hair can be put to all kinds of uses that can help clean up the planet and feed the people who live on it. We meet a hairdresser who weaves the clippings into mats that get used to soak up oil spills. Plus the young entreprene...

From an industrial-scale fly factory in London to farming bugs in the Madagascan rainforest, insects are being put to work all around the world. These biological wonders are turning stuff we don’t want – like food waste and even faeces – into useful protein. This is creating a greener alternative to animal feed and creating food products for humans too. We meet the people using bugs to help the pl...

The Prison Voicemail app connects inmates and their families, helping them stay in touch throughout a sentence. We hear a mum and daughter using the messages to rebuild their relationship, and find out how it helps children who are separated from their dad. Producer/ reporter Ruth Evans Repeat - first published 4 Aug 2020

Police in Iceland treat domestic violence differently. Leaving an abusive relationship is hard, and many victims stay with physically or mentally hurtful partners, even after police get involved. In Iceland, they focus their efforts on the first 24 hours after a domestic attack is reported. This is the “window” in which survivors are most likely to give unfiltered evidence against their abusers an...

How do you get officers to step in to prevent other officers from harming the public? “Loyalty isn't saying: ‘Well, you've done something wrong, I'm going to protect you.’ Loyalty is me saying: ‘You're about to do something wrong, and I'm going to stop you.’” New Orleans Police Department says this is the basis of a radical training programme devised to reduce incidents of police brutality. We fir...

Malaria kills more than half a million people per year. We meet the innovators who are using buildings, lights, genes and vaccines to fight the mosquito-borne disease. In Ghana, a young woman has turned her school project into a business, selling lights that electrocute mosquitos and help kids study. In Tanzania, researchers have designed a house with porous walls that diffuse human breath and kee...

Virtual Reality is being used by researchers around the world to change people’s lives – helping them confront their own fears and change how they treat other people. In the UK, a company is using VR to help people with a fear of heights. The automated therapy system puts participants in a virtual multi-story building to help them combat their fear. A team in Israel is experimenting with using VR...

Could a video game where you pretend to spread Covid misinformation actually make you less susceptible to real-life fake news? Fake news, conspiracy theories and misinformation about health can stop people getting vaccinated, which in turn could cause diseases to spread and ultimately result in people dying. In Sierra Leone, an NGO is educating people about typhoid and malaria by creating audio dr...

A Ugandan chemist has found a way to use old cattle bones and food waste to make clean water. Timothy Kayondo turns the rubbish into activated carbon, which he uses to produce water purifiers. They’re being used in schools and hospitals. It is estimated that one in 10 people on the planet do not have a basic level of access to clean water. In this programme we find out about Timothy’s work and dis...

How are Covid sniffer dogs, a sturdy bicycle scheme and balloons beaming down the internet getting on? We catch up with a few of the projects featured on our programme to see if they are making progress. In the UK we catch up with the sniffer dogs being trained to detect Covid 19. After promising results from a large trial, they’re onto the next stage of training. Meanwhile Wyson in Zambia has ext...

Scientists are checking up on the health of forests by analysing the sounds in them. They test their vital signs by measuring the croaks, tweets and hums of resident creatures. If they can hear a full range of animals they can be confident an ecosystem is doing well. However, if gaps start to appear, it’s a sign something is up. Nick Holland hears more about how it works and how it’s being used to...

Training cows to use the toilet and a bouncy castle that fights climate change are some of the surprising solutions today. Humans have been training animals like dogs and horses for centuries. But how easy is it to train a cow? Well scientists in New Zealand and Germany have been successfully training cows to use a special latrine. The cows get a reward each time they pay a visit. The idea behind...

Meet the innovators who want to change gig work for the better. When we order a pizza on a Friday night or use a ride-sharing app to get home, it’s likely that the person providing the service is a ‘gig worker’ – a flexible employee who picks their own hours and gets paid per-job. The app-based gig economy provides convenience for consumers - and has become an increasingly important part of the gl...

Hundreds of millions of people don’t have access to electricity. But all over the world, people are joining forces to provide a home-grown solution — by setting up their own “microgrids” using renewable energy. We meet the Kenyan man who got so frustrated waiting for his village to be connected to the national power grid that he built his own hydro power station. Using scrap materials and a bicycl...