People Fixing the World

Many cities are becoming unpleasant to live in: they are getting hotter due to climate change and all the heat absorbed by the streets and buildings. But Stuttgart in Germany has been tackling this by carefully studying local wind patterns. Using the natural airflow they are cooling the city by creating corridors of wind from the surrounding hills. It’s an idea which is being copied by cities arou...

The US state of Alaska may be known for its rugged wilderness, but it’s also quietly leading a green revolution. We explore how an island community is powering itself through a locally built and managed microgrid - cutting out fossil fuels and slashing energy costs. And we find out how scientists are using native mushrooms to produce sustainable building insulation and cold fish storage boxes that...

A unique community in Chester in northern England, brings multiple generations together to encourage learning and connection. We explore how young children in the onsite nursery benefit from the time, attention and vocabulary skills offered by the older adults. Meanwhile the retirement home residents can benefit from increased social activity and a sense of purpose. We also speak to an intergenera...

In some places, the nearest safe operating room can be hours or even days away. We find out about a portable operating theatre called SurgiBox that fits in a backpack and inflates in minutes, creating a safe surgical environment for operations almost anywhere. We meet the co-founder of the start-up behind it and see it put to the test, and speak to a surgeon who has used it to save lives far from...

In one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Mumbai, a quiet transformation is underway. Govandi has long been associated with poverty and poor health outcomes. But with the help of a civic organisation, the community has built vibrant spaces with children and women in mind— libraries, workshops, and leisure zones—defying the norms of city planning that can overlook such needs. We explore how trust, pe...

Play is essential to children’s development – kids learn about themselves and the world around them by having fun and taking risks. In some countries scientists have linked a decline in free play with a rise in children’s mental health problems. In this programme we visit a playground called “the land” where no parents are allowed in! This highly-regarded project in Wales now supports adults too,...

A new farming method is having a dramatic effect on maize crops in Malawi. And assistance is coming from a solar-powered tractor. In the last of her visits to Malawi, Myra goes to a village where they are using a new method called Deep Bed Farming. It’s more than doubled the yield of some of the farmers and improved their standards of living. The method involves digging deep into the hard earth. T...

In India, how can gorgeous flowers offered in a temple or gathered to decorate a wedding be an environmental problem? Chhavi Sachdev discovers that the practice of disposing of the spent flowers, thousands of tonnes of the them daily, into rivers and lakes causes major pollution and literally suffocates waterborne life. The problem is made worse by the fact that the flowers are sprayed with pestic...

Frequent floods blight the poorest neighbourhoods of New Orleans but the residents are fighting back, one yard at a time. Physicist Helen Czerski joins the team behind the Front Yard Initiative as they strive to keep the Big Easy safe and dry, 20 years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. When Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, the levees broke, 800,000 residents were forced out and 18...

British Sikh engineer, Navjot Sawhney gave up his lucrative career to go and work in India, to use his skills to help solve problems for rural communities. While there, he became fascinated with the problems his neighbour, Divya, was facing while handwashing clothes, sometimes for up to three hours a day. Broadcaster and journalist Nkem Ifejika finds out how Nav promised to design a hand crank, of...

Communication is a human right - but what happens when someone can’t speak for themselves? Sean Allsop struggled to talk until he was eight years old, when he began to speak thanks to years of speech therapy. He explores the technologies and innovations helping people around the world who struggle to communicate. We meet Richard Cave, National Advisor at the Royal College of Speech and Language Th...

What if reimagining how cities are designed could make women safer? In Cairo, sexual harassment and violence against women on the streets has been endemic. Women don't feel safe enough to walk or take public transport. A pioneering programme called Safer Cities, is hoping to find the solution through radical urban redesigns, women friendly spaces and raising awareness about sexual harassment. Salm...

From powering cars to feeding farm animals, how using seaweed more can help the planet. We hear how a local business in Barbados is using sargassum seaweed to power cars, providing an eco-friendly alternative for islanders and potentially helping to clear the beaches of smelly seaweed. Also we visit the European company aiming to replace single-use plastics with seaweed-based packaging. And how fe...

Citizenship is a kind of social contract that exists in democracies. To function effectively, members of society need to feel like they can engage with and improve their communities. We take a look at two projects helping people do just that in Portugal. We explore a scheme that has helped 30,000 teenagers team up with politicians to transform their local areas. And we hear how another project has...

In 2017, Spanish engineer Pablo Bergasa began an unusual hobby: to design a new incubator for use in African hospitals. Eight years on, he has sent 200 of his machines around the world, and he estimates they have saved the lives of 5,000 babies. Pablo’s incubator costs a small proportion of the price of a regular machine and can run on a battery and a bottle of water. Plus Myra Anubi hears about h...

Food waste is one of the biggest environmental and economic challenges we face — and much of it happens long before the food reaches our plates. In this episode, we meet the people working to tackle the problem in different ways. We hear about the smart sensors which could help cut down waste by measuring when food has actually gone bad rather than relying on one-size-fits-all expiry dates. And in...

Despite a lot of progress in the last few decades, more than a billion people still live in acute poverty, according to the UN. Many don’t have access to basic needs like food, water, shelter and clothing. We look at an innovative project in Paraguay where people identify their own needs using a traffic light system and are then linked up with businesses, NGOs and government bodies who they work w...

How the numbers of stray dogs - and feral pigeons - can be kept down kindly in urban areas. From street dogs to feral pigeons, many towns and cities are having to deal with exploding bird and animal populations which can pose risks to health and safety. This week we take a look at ways we can control numbers in an effective and humane way. We visit a special pigeon loft in Germany, where pigeon eg...

Being in hospital can be frightening and lonely for children — but playful ideas are helping make the experience a little easier. In Scotland, professionally trained clowns are visiting paediatric wards to bring joy and distraction, while in the US, immersive video games are helping young patients come to terms with illness and long stays. We meet the people using creative ways to brighten up a st...

Barcelona in Spain is famous for its beautiful streets, lined with tall apartment buildings. But the architecture is a problem for many people who have lived for years in upstairs apartments but who now find the stairs unmanageable. In 2008, a survey found that in one district there were 300 people who could not leave their homes alone. A group of volunteers decided to do something about this and...

Shipping containers are a staple of global trade, helping in the transport of all sorts of goods by sea across the world. But their relatively cheap cost and sturdy structure lends them to many other purposes. In this episode we look at a start-up business in the UK that uses shipping containers to store carbon captured from the air in the production of building materials. And we visit a school fo...

What do you do with your waste if you live somewhere that doesn’t have the infrastructure to deal with it? Turns out there are some really simple solutions. Presenter Myra Anubi is in Malawi where she meets the cafe owner in the capital Lilongwe who has set up a recycling hub as well as the women making valuable compost from food scraps and animal dung. Plus Myra visits the Kibébé workshop in the...

Mindfulness meditation, which involves becoming aware of the breath in the present moment, has been a core part of Eastern contemplative practices for thousands of years. Over recent decades however, it’s ‘exploded’ throughout the West as scientists have sought to prove the physical and mental benefits of regular practice - like feeling calmer, less stressed and feeling better able to manage emoti...

During the 1970s and 80s, thousands of Chilean babies were illegally kidnapped, trafficked and adopted. The practice was widespread during the rule of General Augusto Pinochet. Today many of Chile’s ‘stolen children’ are trying to trace their birth families - and their mothers are also looking for them. Hundreds of them have been successfully reunited with the help of a small Santiago-based NGO ca...

From Malawi, Myra Anubi takes a look at ways that technology is improving children’s education. Malawi has free primary schools - but almost 90% of 10 year olds are unable to read properly. So the government is distributing tablets to schools up and down the country. They use software that helps kids to learn maths and reading at their own speed and in their own language. Tests have shown that lit...