BBC World Hacks [World Service]

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
Reporters: Sam Judah and Amelia Martyn-Hemphill

Photo Credit: Getty Images

In one of the most expensive cities in the world, students are moving in with older people who have spare rooms as part of a “homeshare ? scheme.

The young people in Paris get cheap accommodation and the older people get companionship and support in return.

World Hacks reports on the generation-spanning friendships that are blossoming as a result.

Presented by Sahar Zand.

Photo: Monique and Mikyoung, who are part of the homeshare scheme / Credit: BBC

One in three children in Peru was growing up too short for their age, stunted by a lack of the right foods in their diet.

Then in 2005, the government put in place an innovative new system. They gave cash hand-outs to poor mothers but only on the condition that they had regular health check-ups and their children went to school.

By 2014 the number of children growing up too small had halved.

World Hacks tells the story.

Also on the programme, should we start getting rid of paper moneyBelieve It!

Also on the programme, should we start getting rid of paper money?

Presented by Sahar Zand.

Image caption: Mother and child part of the malnutrition programme / Image credit: BBC

In India, an estimated 79% of women have experienced sexual harassment in public, but it’s hoped that a $1 million competition will reduce that figure. We visit Mumbai for the grand final of the Women's Safety XPRIZE, where five teams compete to win $1 million for designing a wearable gadget that will secretly alert others in the event of an attack. We follow the competitors through a series of challenges as they try to prove their device is the best - from buses winding their way through the heart of the city, to a grand convention centre where they have to convince members of the public that their invention can keep women and girls safe from harm.

Presenters: Sam Judah, Chhavi Sachdev
Producer: Sam Judah

A new school in San Francisco thinks it can massively accelerate the speed at which children can learn, using clever technology and smart algorithms to offer each child a bespoke education.

AltSchool believes it can achieve results that were only previously possible by giving individual children their own personal tutor.

The firm currently runs eight small ‘lab schools’ dotted around the country, all run from their California headquarters. But they have huge plans for expansion, and hope to sell their software to every school in the country.

Sam Judah meets the pupils at one of the schools, and the CEO at AltSchool’s nerve centre, to find out what’s behind the company’s big idea.

Presenter: Mai Noman
Producer: Sam Judah

Image: A pupil at AltSchool / Credit: BBC

Syrian refugees in Lebanon are being handed cash cards instead of blankets and food. Aid agencies say money transfers are a better way to deliver essential supplies to some of the 1.5 million Syrians who live in the country – they buy what they need themselves. But does it work? We meet Moussa Junaid, who fled Raqqa with his family when IS moved in, and now buys food aid for himself from the local supermarket.

Plus, a very big idea about how the US could handle mass shootings differently. And, we help out Ugandan student Martin, who gets woken every night by the motorcycle taxis outside his window.

World Hacks is a new BBC programme that meets the people who are attempting to fix some of the world’s biggest problems. Then we figure out whether their solutions actually work.

Presented by Sahar Zand.

(Photo: Syrian refugee with cash card)

Could we build cities using solar panels instead of walls? That’s the dream that Huang Ming, a wealthy entrepreneur in China’s Shandong province, has had since the 1980s. He’s become known as the ‘Sun King’ after building a vast solar park, including a showcase hotel, to prove a new kind of solar architecture is possible. So why hasn’t it caught on? We check into a room in the solar hotel and examine the vision and sometimes unfulfilled dreams of solar architecture in China.
Plus, why do bins in Copenhagen have shelves built into them? Clue: it helps the city’s poorest people

(Photo: Huang Ming and his solar hotel)

How do you improve the lives of the very poorest people? Sometimes it’s just a question of doing the simple things.

In Greece, where an economic downturn has left thousands of people homeless on the streets, three friends have found a way to provide them with a basic need – clean clothes. They bought a van and fitted it with washing machines, so they can do the washing wherever it’s needed.

In Malawi, the problem-solvers have turned their minds to another basic need – vision. They are building a network of new opticians and wire-frame glasses-makers which aim to improve the eyesight of even the poorest in society.

Presenter: Tom Colls
Reporters: Nick Holland and Lucy Ashton

Photo Caption: The mobile laundry in Athens
Photo Credit: BBC

What can you do if you do not have access to running water? No pipes, no wells, no rainfall? The solution may be to catch water from fog. We meet Abel Cruz, the Peruvian man behind a huge fog net project which is providing water to a community in the slums of Lima. Could fog catching be a solution to wider water crises facing the world?

Also, we help a Canadian listener with his bed bug invasion and hear a big idea that could change how girls and women are viewed in the Arab world.

(Photo: Fog nets in Peru)

What can you do if you don’t have access to running water? No pipes, no wells, no rainfall? The solution may be to catch water from fog.

We meet Abel Cruz, the Peruvian man behind a huge fog net project which is providing water to a community in the slums of Lima.

Could fog catching be a solution to wider water crises facing the world?

Also on World Hacks, we hear a big idea about giving soldiers weapons that do not kill.

Image caption: Fog nets in Peru / Image credit: BBC

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

Photo Credit: BBC

BBC World Hacks travels to Israel and the Palestinian Territories for a special programme for the BBC’s Crossing Divides season. Could attempts to bring ordinary Israelis and Palestinians together be more successful in solving an apparently endless conflict than talks between politicians? We’ll visit the women behind an unusual fashion brand, the school designed to bring two communities together, the ordinary people trying to negotiate their own peace agreement, and explore how the ancient game of backgammon might help bridge divides. Can grassroots initiatives like these really have a meaningful influence?

Image: Participants of the peace talks Credit: BBC

Food waste is a massive global problem: the EU alone throws away 88 million tonnes a year. Much of this ends up in landfill and produces dangerous greenhouse gasses which contribute to climate change. In Europe 53% of food waste comes from households, and one woman has made it her mission to stop Danes throwing away food. We travel to Copenhagen to meet Selina Juul, a key part of Denmark’s food waste revolution.

Food waste is a global problem. According to the UN, one third of the food that we produce is being thrown away. Two London-based technology start-ups aim to change that. Smartphone app Olio encourages people to share food they no longer want with their neighbours. Meanwhile, Winnow has developed a smart bin which allows chefs to record how much food they’re throwing away, so they can make their kitchens more efficient.

Presenter: Dougal Shaw
Reporter: Ammar Ebrahim

Photo Caption: Food waste mountain
Photo Credit: BBC

As scientists and companies work on cleaning up cars, there’s also a team developing new technology along a road in rural Georgia in the United States, with the aim of making a truly sustainable highway. The Ray, an 18-mile stretch of road near the Alabama border, is a “living laboratory ? where eco-friendly projects are being tested. It’s got pollination gardens, a tyre-monitoring system to help reduce fuel consumption and solar panels embedded in a section of the road. A large solar installation also generates power and revenue, helping to reduce carbon emissions and encourage investment.
We meet the team behind the project and explore whether cleaner roads can be rolled out elsewhere in the United States and further afield.

Presenter: Harriet Noble
Reporter: Nicola Kelly

Photo Caption: An electric vehicle’s battery gets charged at a station along The Ray
Photo Credit: The Ray C. Anderson Foundation

What do you do in a medical emergency when the equivalent of 999 or 911 simply doesn’t exist? After spending time in countries that lack public ambulance services, US paramedic Jason Friesen realised the problem wasn’t a lack of sophisticated ambulances, or the hi-tech medical equipment inside them, but the communication system necessary to get an injured person from A to B in time to save their life.

In the Dominican Republic there are no public ambulances but now, in two rural areas, first responders respond to a medical emergency as fast as any ambulance service in the developed world. And all it takes is one smartphone, a handful of willing volunteers, and an Uber-like text system that crowdsources help when disaster strikes.

And Dougal Shaw meets the man who is pioneering a way to use recycled plastic to make stronger, longer lasting roads.

Presenter: Sahar Zand
Reporters: Gemma Newby, Dougal Shaw.

Image: First responders in the back of an ambulance / Credit: BBC

This is a story about what happens to your body after you die. In many countries, the current options are burial and cremation, but, both methods come with significant environmental impacts. We’re running out of space for burial in many places, and cremation carries the risk of toxins and greenhouse gases being released. For World Hacks, Sahar Zand travels to the US, where they’re using a new process to deal with the dead. It’s been called “green cremation, ? “water cremation ? or “resomation ? and uses alkaline hydrolysis to mimic and accelerate the breakdown of tissue that would occur in burial. Those who invented the process say it’s an environmentally friendly way to address this fundamental moment in the human life-cycle, but does the evidence stack up?

Reporter: Sahar Zand
Presenter Mukul Devichand

Image: A resomation machine / Credit: BBC

How do you fulfil your sexual needs if you have a disability? How do you masturbate if you have limited use of your hands? These are problems that most able-bodied people have probably never considered. But if you’re in this position it’s something you probably think about a lot. And it’s a problem which Vincent, the founder of a small NGO called Hand Angels, is trying to help with. His group matches volunteers with disabled people to provide a sexual service. Mukul Devichand and Alvaro Alvarez go to Taiwan to hear the remarkably frank stories of the volunteers and the receivers at the service. They open up a world of deep disappointment of those people who haven’t experienced sex or intimacy and an organisation that thinks it has the solution. But can any service ever fill this gap or is it just a shallow fix.

Presenter: Mukul Devichand

Image: Vincent – the founder of ‘Hand Angels’ / Credit: BBC

Air pollution is a huge problem for China, but did you know it’s actually getting better? The Air Quality Index in several cities is improving, because of a variety of experimental projects that are being rolled out.
In this special edition of World Hacks as part of the #SoICanBreathe season, we are in Beijing to gather together some of the thinkers and entrepreneurs leading China’s efforts to clean its air. We work through their ideas with an audience of students and entrepreneurs, as well as hearing reports about clever pollution solutions from around the country.

Presented by Mukul Devichand and Vincent Ni.
Additional reporting by Emma Wilson and Ruhua Xianyu.

Image caption: Young woman in face mask / Image credit: BBC

There are more than 200,000 women in US prisons and jails and it is estimated that 6% to 10% are pregnant. One project in Minnesota is trying to use these pregnancies to change the lives of the women, and their children, for the better. We go to jail with the Minnesota Prison Doula Project to see how it works.

Reporter: Sahar Zand
Producer: William Kremer

(Photo: A prison mum in Minnesota)

Most refugees do not have the right to work. In Jordan they are running an experiment to find out what happens when they are given that right. They are handing out work permits to thousands of Syrian refugees in the hope of improving their lives and the health of the economy. Academics say it is better for everyone, but in the local area – where unemployment is nearly 20% - they are not convinced. Mukul Devichand reports.

Also, the Swedish word 'snippa' and why we might need a version in English.

(Photo: Syrian refugees make their way in the Zaatari refugee camp. Credit: Khalil Mazraawi/Getty Images)

Can adapting your lifestyle add 10 years to your lifespan? Dan Buettner, a journalist for National Geographic, has identified nine characteristics that he says can add more than a decade to life expectancy. His Blue Zones Project uses lessons learned from five areas of the world with the highest population over the age of 100. We visit Naples in Florida, which has been named the top state for wellbeing in the United States, to find out how altering daily habits has improved the health and happiness of its population.

Presenter: Tom Colls
Reporter: Nicola Kelly

A new app is helping blind people solve everyday problems by combining smartphones video technology and an army of armchair volunteers.

World Hacks investigates how it works and explores whether micro-volunteering projects like this have the potential to solve all kinds of problems in the future.

(Photo: Vicky, who is blind, using an app to help her sew)

An innovative housing project in Amsterdam is attempting a new way of integrating refugees into the local population. In prefab flats, refugees from the Syrian war live next door to young people in need of cheap rent. They eat together, learn language together, and develop the networks that researchers say are critical to successful integration.

(Photo: Young people living in the Startblok)

More than three million people in Nigeria are living with HIV, but only about 10% of the population has ever taken an HIV test. Talking about sex is a taboo subject and sexual health clinics are not popular places to be seen. Other sexually transmitted diseases, such as Hepatitis B and Syphilis, are on the rise among young people.

But a Nigerian entrepreneur called Florida Uzoaru thinks she has a millennial-friendly solution to sexual health. Her start-up is giving people the option to anonymously test themselves at home. Secret packages, sent by courier, contain a pick ‘n' mix of self-test blood kits, contraception or the morning after pill. Customers buy everything online and receive counselling and assistance via WhatsApp. But can bypassing the healthcare system solve the problem?

Producer and Reporter: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill

Photo Caption: SlideSafe founder Florida Uzoaru with her secret STI testing kits
Photo Credit: BBC

On the island of Jersey, postal workers don’t just deliver the mail. They also check up on elderly people during their routes. In a five minute chat, they check they’ve taken their medication and if there’s anything else they need. It’s popular with older people and their relatives, and the project has caught the attention of post offices - and health professionals - around the world. Could a chat on the doorstep help solve the social care crisis? We travel to Jersey to meet the man behind the idea, and join a postman on his round.

Also in the programme, award-winning engineer Lina Nillson talks about how we could get more women into engineering.

Presenter: Tom Colls
Producer: Elizabeth Cassin

Image: Jersey postman Ricky Le Quesne / Credit: BBC

People cannot resist a prize, especially when there is money to go with a medal, and for hundreds of years that basic human urge has been used to push humanity forward. When you focus minds and money towards a simple target, incredible things can happen - from the clock that won the Longitude prize money in the 1700s to the spacecraft that won the XPRIZE in 2004. Are there any problems that a big enough prize cannot solve?

Producer: William Kremer

(Photo: Pilot Mike Melvill standing on Space Ship One, which went on to win the Ansari XPRIZE. Credit: Getty Images)
This programme uses a sound effect created by Freesound user bone666138

Rubbish littering the streets is a problem all around the world but collecting it can also be a vital source of income. Two projects, thousands of miles apart, are trying to clean up the streets and make life better for rubbish collectors at the same time.
In Nigeria, a start-up called Wecyclers is helping people to profit from their waste, with the help of bicycles, tricycles and an incentives system. In Brazil, a phone app called Cataki is helping connect litter pickers and people with rubbish in an attempt to professionalise these informal recyclers.

Presenter: Tom Colls
Reporters: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill and William Kremer

(Photo: Wecyclers in action in Lagos)

Nearly 1,000 people were shot and killed by the US police in 2015, sparking protests and huge controversy. But a new solution promises to reduce the death toll, by focusing on the key moment of stress in which guns are discharged. Studies have looked at police officers reactions in these situations - including their stress levels and their implicit biases. Now, a new training system has been developed which uses heart rate monitors and breathing exercises to minimise the stress reaction. World Hacks investigates whether the system works, and whether it will help save lives.

Also, a big idea about making theatres accessible to everyone.

Some £600bn is sent home every year by overseas migrant workers, almost four times more than all the countries of the world combined spend on foreign aid.

But far from home, many workers fear their families are not spending their money in the right way.

World Hacks looks at a two possible solutions for giving them more control over how their hard-earned cash is being used.

Also on the programme, we look at a smart way of making sure you’re not caught out when the power runs out.

Picture: 1000 peso bills in the Philippines, Credit: Joel Nito, Getty Images

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 Kelly

Picture Caption: Santo Stefano di Sessanio, a hilltop village that was once abandoned, now a thriving tourist town
Picture Credit: Sextantio Albergo Diffuso

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

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

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
Reporter: Sam Judah

Photo Caption: One of the homeless people helping trial the new system in Oxford
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

Wildfires can have a devastating impact, destroying land, homes and lives. Scientists say that as the planet gets warmer, they are only going to start more often. World Hacks looks at three projects in Spain and North America that are trying to prevent forest fire destruction, by making the landscape itself more fire-resistant.

Presenter: Harriet Noble
Reporters: Ammar Ebrahim and Richard Kenny

Photo Credit: Getty Images

In Barcelona, they are experimenting with a new way of designing the city. Superblocks are vast low-traffic zones, but they are also deeply controversial. The aim is cut pollution and reclaim public space from the car, but does it work? World Hacks investigates.

Also on the programme, we hear advice from Antarctica on how to stay warm in the cold snap.

(Photo: A superblock from above. Credit: Google Maps)

Space is littered with junk – some pieces as small as a fleck of paint, and some as large as a London bus. So much of it is orbiting the Earth, in fact, that it poses a danger to future missions. But how can space be cleaned up? One way could be to catch the junk in a net, or to use a harpoon to grab it. A team in Surrey, in the UK, are launching a special spacecraft to find all of this out.

Reporter: Nick Holland
Presenter: Dougal Shaw

Image: Stock illustration of space debris
Credit: Getty Images

Giving children lessons in how to think and learn for themselves can lead to dramatic improvements in results, according to education researchers.

World Hacks meets children learning these “meta-cognition ? techniques through philosophy lessons and juggling and looks at the difficulties in implementing the system.

We also hear a big idea about Christmas and look at the best advice for avoiding paying a bribe.

Presented by Sahar Zand.

Image caption: Child with hand up in class / Image credit: AP

Thailand in the 1960s was on the verge of a population disaster. Thai women were having seven children on average, and the government was struggling to raise living conditions. Mechai Viravaidya, a young economist who moonlighted as a soap actor, newspaper columnist and teacher, made it his mission to get family planning into every village in Thailand - he wanted to make condoms as easily accessible as vegetables.

Mechai realised he could use humour to break down Thai reservations about contraception, launching condom blowing competitions and condom beauty pageants. His efforts were so successful, condoms became known as “Mechais ? in Thai, and he was nicknamed “The Condom King ? or “Mr Condom ? When the HIV/Aids crisis threatened to engulf Thailand in early 1990s, Mechai, now a government minister, launched a mass media campaign promoting condom use and made condoms available everywhere, from massage parlours to bus stops. It is estimated these preventative measures saved 7.7 million lives. We find out what lessons we can learn from his 45 years of campaigning. Presented by Mai Noman.

Reporter: Ruth Evans
Producer: Charlotte Pritchard

(Photo: Mechai Viravaidya)

World Hacks goes to Thailand to meet an army of volunteers on the front line in the fight against dangerous diseases, like Ebola and bird flu.

Nearly 100 years ago Spanish Flu infected a third of the world’s population and killed about 50 million people. With increased international travel, growing populations and environmental damage, experts warn that viruses now have the potential to spread faster, and we could be on course for another pandemic, with devastating consequences.
Pandemics often originate in places where animals and people live in close contact, making it easy for animal diseases to spill over into humans, and where health systems may not be able to pick up on threats and respond quickly. In rural Thailand, 75% of people keep animals in their back gardens, making it hard to keep track of new outbreaks. In 2004, a strain of bird flu swept through the country, as well as Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, infecting more than 125 people and killing about half of them.
Vets at Chiang Mai University have started a project called PODD – the full name in Thai means “Look closely and you will see ? They’ve trained up 3,000 volunteers to take photos of dead animals and report any signs of sickness in their communities, helping spot dangerous outbreaks and contain them before they spread.

Presenter : Vincent Ni
Reporter: Ruth Evans
Producer: Charlotte Pritchard

Image: Vets from the PODD team test chickens during a suspected outbreak / Credit: BBC

**This programme was first broadcast on 23 Jan 2018**

Naomi isn’t your average teacher. For one thing, she’s only 6 months old. But in many schools across Canada babies like Naomi are a regular feature at the front of class. It’s 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 can’t explain and externalise how it’s feeling, children learn to recognise and identify the baby’s emotions, and become more emotionally astute themselves. It’s been proven to reduce bullying. World Hacks visits a school in Toronto to see how it works.

Reporter: Harriet Noble
Presenter: Tom Colls

Photo: Baby Naomi, Credit: BBC

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely-populated tracts of land in the world. In addition to the ongoing violence there, it has an unemployment rate of more than 40 percent, and problems with access not only to clean water and electricity, but also basic construction supplies. The United Nations has described the situation there as “a constant humanitarian emergency ? Despite these challenges, a young Gazan engineer has developed a new and innovative way of making bricks, which she hopes could make Gaza less dependent on outside help. She uses rubble and ash to create a cheap, light brick that can be made locally. World Hacks goes to visit the factory and to learn more about how this award-winning new brick, called ‘Green Cake’, could make a difference.

Presenter: Harriet Noble
Reporter: Elizabeth Davies

Photo Caption: Green Cake
Photo Credit: BBC

Meet Becky. She suffers from arthritis and is in constant pain. Like lots of people – patients and doctors alike – she has a hunch that bad weather could be exacerbating the problem.

It’s a question that has been asked for at least 2000 years, but we have never had the tools or resources to answer it. That is, perhaps, until now. Dr Will Dixon has set up a mass participation study that takes advantage of smartphone technology. More than 13,000 people have downloaded an app that has provided his team with a massive set of data, and by combing through it he hopes to answer the question once and for all. It’s not the only project of its kind, either. Around the world more and more people are launching similar projects – asking thousands of volunteers to donate their data for the greater good.

Presenter: Mukul Devichand
Reporter: Nick Holland

Image: overlay of highlighted bones of woman at physiotherapist / Credit: Shutterstock

Parents struggling with childcare costs in London are banding together to care for each other’s kids. They run a super-cheap nursery where mums and dads take on half of the childcare. It’s a throwback to the childcare movement of the 1970s but can it work in the modern age?

Presented by Sahar Zand. Produced by William Kremer.

Image: Drawing of a family / Credit: BBC

When we think of peace talks we think of politicians from opposing camps meeting behind closed doors in wood-panelled rooms, hammering out the details of an agreement that both sides can accept. But that process hasn’t led to long term peace when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So is it a mistake to think that only governments can negotiate peace? The Minds of Peace initiative brings together ordinary Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate their own peace agreement.

Producer & Reporter: Elizabeth Davies

Photo 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

Could bilingual schools help bring peace to a seemingly intractable conflict? In Israel, the school you’ll go to is largely decided before you’re even born – by whether you come from a Jewish or Arab family. Communities learn separately and live separately and that, many argue, cements the hostility and misunderstanding of generations. So is the solution to bring them side-by-side? Hand in Hand is a network of integrated schools across Israel where Jewish and Arab students are taught together in Hebrew and Arabic.
As part of the BBC’s Crossing Divides season, World Hacks visits one of the schools to see how well this model works and whether it really has a lasting impact.

Producer: Harriet Noble

Picture Credit: BBC

A growing movement in the UK is devolving the power of catching speeding motorists from the police to the people. Police have been working with community volunteers, letting them use speed guns in a bid to protect their communities from fast traffic. But as more of these amateurs learn to wield the speed gun, it’s a solution that’s thrown up its own problems.

Presenter: Harriet Noble
Reporter: Dougal Shaw

Photo Caption: A volunteer wields a laser speed gun
Photo Credit: BBC

Road accidents are the single largest cause of death amongst young people around the world. But a project in Kenya is making impressive progress in tackling the issue. It has deployed a small and very simple weapon, which has been proven to cut bus accidents by at least a quarter – a sticker.

Also on the programme, how they’re making recreation space in Chile, but without knocking down any buildings.

Presenter: Tom Colls
Producer: Harriet Noble

[Image: Mutatu buses in Kenya. Copyright: Getty Images]

Two thirds of the world’s population are expected to live in cities by 2050 according to the UN. But where will all these extra people actually live? Budgets to build new social housing are limited, so one architect has been working on a radical solution. To cut costs, Alejandro Aravena suggests providing people with only half a house that they complete at a later date with their own money. Several estates have already been built this way around the world. Tom Garmeson travelled to one in Chile to see how people are living in these new communities.

Presenter: Nick Holland
Producer: Tom Garmeson

Photo Caption: Half a house
Photo Credit: BBC

This is a story about how the most amazing ideas do not always work how you would like in practise. In theory it is so simple. You put disease-ridden water into a two litre plastic bottle, screw on the lid and leave it in the sun. After six hours on a cloudless day, almost all the bacteria and bugs that cause diseases like cholera and diarrhoea are killed or inactivated by the UV light and gentle warming. Professor Kevin McGuigan has proven this in the lab, but for the last 20 years he has been trying to get it working in rural African communities. It has not been anywhere near as easy as you might think.

(Photo: Godfrey putting his water bottle out to disinfect in the sunshine)

Loneliness and isolation can trigger a host of other problems, particularly for our health. But a town in Somerset, in the United Kingdom, appears to have taken a big step towards alleviating the problem. A team in Frome has implemented a handful of simple ideas – getting people to talk about the problems they face and finding ways for them to re-engage with family, friends or social clubs – and they believe it is having a dramatic effect. The cost of emergency admissions in Frome has fallen steeply, while it rises across most of the UK. We visit the town to meet the ‘connectors’ driving the project, and the people they have helped.

Reporter: Sam Judah
Presenter: Nick Holland

Photo caption: Susan Redding
Photo credit: BBC

Voter turnout is a problem around the world, particularly in local elections. But a small group of academics and activists in the US are experimenting with a new way of getting people to turn up and put their cross in a box – a lottery. Every voter is entered and one lucky winner gets a big cash prize. World Hacks investigates whether it works.

Also on the programme, should we be protecting our toasters and washing machines from computer hackers?

Presenter: Kathleen Hawkins
Reporter: Gemma Newby
Producer: Tom Colls

Image caption: Lottery balls about to be drawn, Image credit: Thomas Samson / Stringer / Getty Images

The internet is awash with made-up news stories. It’s not a new problem, but the highly charged US election campaign forced people to pay attention. This week on World Hacks we’re speaking to some of those fighting back against what they see as a threat to democracy: the fake news epidemic. We hear from guests including Le Monde’s Samuel Laurent, Democratic State Senator Bill Dodd of California, and Claire Wardle from journalism non-profit First Draft.

Presented by Sahar Zand

Produced by Harriet Noble

Image caption: Close up of a computer screen showing a web address, Image credit:Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

There are no sewers in Haiti. 26% of Haitians have access to a toilet, so a lot of the sewage ends up in the water supply. Currently, Haiti is battling the biggest cholera epidemic in recent history and thousands are dying. We travel there to meet a team of women who are trying to solve this massive problem. They have set up an NGO called Soil which delivers dry, compost toilets to peoples’ homes. Alternatives to water guzzling flushing toilets - which need infrastructure such as sewers - are drastically needed in many parts of the world. And there’s a bonus to this scheme too.

Also on the programme, a radical suggestion for airports: build circular runways. Are the current straight ones really the best way to take off and land?

Presenter: Sahar Zand
Reporters: Gemma Newby and Dougal Shaw
Producer: Charlotte Pritchard

Image: The women of Haiti who work for the NGO Soil / Credit: BBC

It’s thought that more than half the people claiming to be doctors in India have no medical qualifications. They are known as “quacks ?, operating illegally, but often ignored by the authorities because of a shortage of qualified doctors. They regularly misdiagnose diseases and prescribe the wrong drugs, and some even perform surgeries in makeshift clinics. One prominent, qualified, doctor has started a controversial scheme, offering a quick crash course in medicine to thousands of his untrained counterparts. In return they have to stop calling themselves doctors, and rebrand themselves as “healthcare workers ? At the very least, he says, they will do less harm to their patients, and the West Bengal government has agreed, rolling the project out across the state. But many in the medical establishment are appalled by the idea, arguing that a crash course isn’t enough, and the scheme legitimises criminals who have operated illegally for years.
World Hacks visits two villages outside of Kolkata - one with a newly reformed “healthcare worker ?, and another with a self-confessed fake doctor - to ask if the controversial scheme can really work.

Presenter: Harriet Noble
Reporter: Sam Judah

Photo Caption: Abhijit Choudhury
Photo Credit: BBC

Lurking in the sewers beneath the streets there are giant blobs of congealed cooking fat known as “fatbergs ? Now one company has come up with a clever way of making money out of them. Their efforts may one day change perceptions of fatbergs – turning the lumps of putrid waste into a valuable commodity.

Presenter: Tom Colls
Reporter: Nick Holland

(Image: A fatberg, Credit: Thames Water)

Fariel Salahuddin is not the type of person you’d expect to see wandering around rural Pakistan, especially with a herd of goats. She’s a successful energy consultant who has worked around the world. But when she returned to where she grew up, Pakistan, Fariel decided she wanted to work on smaller projects to try to make an immediate impact and provide solar energy to poor, rural communities. This was all very well, until she realised these places didn’t have water, let alone power. What they did have was goats. Fariel developed an innovative scheme to trade what the villagers have in plentiful supply for something they desperately needed: goats for water. But what was Fariel going to do with all her newly acquired goats?

Presenter: Mukul Devichand
Reporters: Secunder Kermani and Dougal Shaw
Producer: Charlotte Pritchard

Image: Goats in rural Pakistan / Credit: BBC

Picking up money - that’s what Haitian’s nicknamed a movement seeking to solve Haiti’s plastic waste problem and reduce poverty at the same time. It was started by a man who saw a glimmer of hope in the devastation wrought by the 2010 earthquake: plastic bottles were clogging the beaches and filling the oceans with rubbish. But what if you could clear up the trash, give Haitians employment, and reduce the reliance on “virgin ? plastic, all at the same time?

It’s a bold idea that aims to solve two of the World’s big problems – poverty and plastic in the ocean. And it all hinges on attaching social value to recycled plastic. So why aren’t more companies doing it?

Presenter: Sahar Zand
Reporter: Gemma Newby

Image: BBC

How do you pull subsistence farmers in Africa out of the cycle of poverty? All you have to do is help them produce more food than they need to survive. But to do that you need money and a new company in Nigeria has designed a smart way to provide it. Farmcrowdy connects farmers with online urban micro-investors. The investors finance the production of chickens, vegetables or grain and receive a guaranteed financial return – and the farmer makes enough to start to grow their business.

Producer: Shabnam Grewal
Presenter: Dougal Shaw

Photo Caption: The Farmcrowdy app
Photo Credit: BBC

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 Shaw

Photo Caption: Nine-year-old announcer
Photo Credit: BBC

Globally, only around 20% of clothes are re-used or recycled. The majority go to landfill or are incinerated. In the USA alone, the amount of clothes being thrown away has doubled in the last two decades. In World Hacks this week we meet the Scandinavian entrepreneurs trying to change this. Could a solution to this waste be to give people the option of renting clothes, so they don’t hoard things they rarely wear? Or how about clothes you can throw away guilt free, because they are fully compostable?

Presenter: Mukul Devichand
Reporter: Dougal Shaw

Image: Man in boxer shorts / Credit: Houdini

A new school in San Francisco thinks it can massively accelerate the speed at which children can learn, using clever technology and smart algorithms to offer each child a bespoke education.

AltSchool believes it can achieve results that were only previously possible by giving individual children their own personal tutor.

The firm currently runs eight small ‘lab schools’ dotted around the country, all run from their California headquarters. But they have huge plans for expansion, and hope to sell their software to every school in the country.

Sam Judah meets the pupils at one of the schools, and the CEO at AltSchool’s nerve centre, to find out what’s behind the company’s big idea.

Presenter: Mai Noman
Producer: Sam Judah

Image: A pupil at AltSchool / Credit: BBC

A new school in San Francisco thinks it can massively accelerate the speed at which children can learn, using clever technology and smart algorithms to offer each child a bespoke education.

AltSchool believes it can achieve results that were only previously possible by giving individual children their own personal tutor.

The firm currently runs eight small ‘lab schools’ dotted around the country, all run from their California headquarters. But they have huge plans for expansion, and hope to sell their software to every school in the country.

Sam Judah meets the pupils at one of the schools, and the CEO at AltSchool’s nerve centre, to find out what’s behind the company’s big idea.

Presenter: Mai Noman
Producer: Sam Judah

Image: A pupil at AltSchool / Credit: BBC

Methane emissions from the burps and farts of livestock accounts for around 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But the trick to reducing this could lie with some of Kenya’s smallholder farmers. By using very simple techniques to transform the way they manage their soil and animals, dairy farmers are helping their cows emit less methane per litre of milk they produce. And it’s all being paid for by big polluters, in what could become a major form of carbon offsetting. Is this a new frontier in the fight against climate change? World Hacks has been to rural Kenya to find out.

Also on the programme, one US academic asks you to think again about obesity.

Presenter: Vincent Ni
Reporter: Harriet Noble

(Photo: Cows eating)

**Listeners may find some parts of this report upsetting**
How do you get children who're victims of emotional abuse or physical harm to open up about what's happened to them? In Mexico a psychologist, Julia Borbolla, encourages them to have a one-to-one chat with a cartoon alien that appears on a video screen in a room near her office. What the children don't realise is Julia hears every word of their conversation with the animated creature because she's secretly controlling it from the room next door. She says children are more likely to reveal sensitive information to the cartoon alien than if they were face-to-face with a real person. World Hacks travels to Mexico City to assess whether the tool works and to meet people who're now operating it in public hospitals, women's shelters and within the country's judicial system.

Presenter: Tom Colls
Reporter: Elizabeth Cassin

(Photo: Psychologist Julia Borbolla)

Darius has been shot three separate occasions, but the third time was the last. He was met at his bedside by a stranger, who changed his life forever.

Victims of violence are, far more likely to be shot, stabbed or violently assaulted a second or third time - as the perpetrators of violence try to silence the victim.

In San Francisco, where Darius lived, specially trained case managers visit victims of violence at their bedsides in hospital and work with them to break that cycle of violence, offering practical advice and specialist services to the patients.

They claim that speaking with victims of violence immediately after an attack, when they are experiencing a 'teachable moment' they have a far greater chance of changing the patient's life forever.

Reporter Sam Judah meets Darius at the site of his third and final shooting, tracing his journey to the hospital, and his meeting with the youth worker who helped him turn his life around.

Presenter: Sahar Zand
Reporter: Sam Judah

Image: Darius / Credit: BBC

Around the world, governments and researchers are experimenting with the introduction of universal basic income. From Finland and Spain to India, the idea of giving every citizen – whether working or not – a set amount of money per month is gaining momentum. It’s claimed to be a fairer and more efficient way of running a welfare system, but we’re only just starting to understand what actually happens when you introduce a basic income for everyone. We look at the evidence and try to establish whether it is an idea whose time has come.

Presenter: Mukul Devichand
Reporter: Sam Judah
Producer: Jo Mathys

Image: An Indian man counts currency / Credit: Sajjad Hussain / AFP / Getty Images

Is a new urban cable car in Mexico more than just a means of public transport? As well as ferrying thousands of people a day, it's been strategically located to link up the poorest neighbourhoods to more affluent parts of the city. It's hoped it will bring growth to a forgotten district, reduce crime and become a means of bridging the social divide. World Hacks travels to Mexico City to see if it can achieve those goals and understand why cities are opting for this usual form of transport.

Presenter: Sahar Zand
Producers: Elizabeth Cassin and Nick Holland

Image: Cable cars above Mexico City / Credit: BBC

How do you help female doctors get back to work when they've given up medicine to look after their families? It's a particular problem in Pakistan where the majority of medical graduates are women who stop working after they get married. Now a scheme has been set up employing them to hold video clinics with patients over the internet, enabling them to work flexibly from home. What's more they're aiming to improve access to health care in Pakistan by targeting their 'computer screen clinics' at people living in deprived parts of the country, where the shortage of female doctors is most acute.

Produced by Nick Holland
Presented by Tallulah Berry

Image credit: BBC

The availability of blood for transfusions saves lives after difficult births and operations. But in much of the developing world, hospitals have a blood shortage. One entrepreneur in Nigeria is working on a solution. She has developed an app that connects blood banks to hospitals, and has built a network of moped drivers to ferry blood around Lagos, the largest city in the country. World Hacks investigates whether her solution can save lives.

Also on the programme, the designers of a new “city tree ? – large structures filled with moss that attempt to absorb pollution from the air.

Presenter: Mukul Devichand
Reporters: Stephanie Hegarty and Dougal Shaw

Image: Moped driver in Lagos / Credit: BBC

Antibiotic resistant superbugs are a huge problem both in humans and in animals. Many animals reared for food are routinely fed antibiotics to prevent infections. Farmers across the world do it to protect their livestock and to safeguard their incomes. But some bugs are becoming resistant to these drugs because of their overuse – fuelling the rise of animal “superbugs ? like MRSA that could potentially spread to humans. This means that animals and people can die from common infections because the antibiotics no longer work. In the Netherlands, the story of one sick little girl caused pig farmers to wake up to a huge pig MRSA infection that was spreading to humans. Recognising the problem, a couple of pig farmers started a movement that has resulted in the country cutting their antibiotics use in animals by 65% - and, crucially, without affecting their profits. World Hacks investigates how a group of pig farmers solved a massive problem in The Netherlands and whether other countries should urgently follow suit.

Presenter: Tallulah Berry
Reporter/ Producer: Shoku Amirani

Image: Pig on a farm in The Netherlands / Credit: BBC

Each year around 100,000 women die due to heavy bleeding after giving birth. But help is at hand from an unexpected source: condoms. World Hacks goes to a maternity hospital in Kenya to speak to the medical staff using this super-cheap kit that is saving lives.

Also on the programme, the US start-up that is asking volunteers to donate their voices, then transforming them into personalised, digital voices for people with degenerative diseases.

Reporters: Harriet Noble and Amelia Martyn-Hemphill
Presenter: India Rakusen

Image: Midwife Anne Mulinge / Credit: BBC

Local currencies – money you can only spend at small local businesses – aim to keep money in their neighbourhood and out of the hands of big corporations and their shareholders. Now they are going digital, with local currencies that live only on smartphone money apps. Could it make them a financial force to be reckoned with?

Presenter: India Rakusen
Reporter: Dougal Shaw

Image: A local digital currency working on a smartphone / Credit: BBC

Humanity’s hunger for meat is not good for the planet. Every cow, pig and fish that farmers rear has an environmental cost – particularly in the land and water resources it takes to grow the food the animals eat. But one entrepreneur is developing a solution – create animal feed from methane gas. Using methane-eating bacteria, they have developed animal feed that uses a fraction of the land and water of plant-based animal feed.

Reporter: Charlotte Pritchard
Presenter: Sahar Zand

(Photo: Sushi being picked up with chopsticks. Credit:4kodiak /Getty Images)

It’s not usually a good idea to take selfies of your private parts, but what if those photos could save your life? A new, tiny medical device is being used across Africa to detect cervical cancer from a mobile phone photograph. In Gambia, doctors are often in short supply, but nurses, midwives and smartphones are widely available, allowing patients to be diagnosed and treated remotely. In sub Saharan Africa, cervical cancer is the number one cause of cancer deaths in women, but it takes years to develop and can be treated for under $30 if caught early. Can cervical selfies get women talking about a silent, unseen killer?

Presenter: India Rakusen
Reporter: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill

Image: Nurse using the EVA system in Gambia / Credit: BBC

It’s not usually a good idea to take selfies of your private parts, but what if those photos could save your life? A new, tiny medical device is being used across Africa to detect cervical cancer from a mobile phone photograph. In Gambia, doctors are often in short supply, but nurses, midwives and smartphones are widely available, allowing patients to be diagnosed and treated remotely. In sub Saharan Africa, cervical cancer is the number one cause of cancer deaths in women, but it takes years to develop and can be treated for under $30 if caught early. Can cervical selfies get women talking about a silent, unseen killer?

Presenter: India Rakusen
Reporter: Amelia Martyn-Hemphill

Image: Nurse using the EVA system in Gambia / Credit: BBC

It looks like the set of Game of Thrones. Once a year Wolin in Poland hosts a huge Viking festival - with a twist. Enthusiasts come from around the world not just to re-enact battles, but to win them, fighting competitively. One organiser of these battles has found that this Viking scene can offer positive benefits to men who have been defined by violence in their past, and are now looking for a way to escape.

Presenter: Sofia Bettiza
Reporter: Dougal Shaw

Image: A modern Viking gets ready for a battle / Credit: BBC

Although Iceland is thought to be the best country in the world for gender equality, it lags behind in one metric: the gender pay gap. So a decade ago the country's unions and business community came together to try something new. They devised a management standard to help organisations implement equal pay. Now the government has gone a step further and introduced a law that from January will force companies to adopt the standard or face fines. So is this small island nation set to be the first in the world to equalise pay?

Presenter: India Rakusen
Reporter: William Kremer

Image: Illustration of two Icelandic people / Credit: BBC

Around 75% of the world's population, approximately 4 billion people, don't have an address. Take a country like Mongolia, with a largely nomadic population, where street names and postcodes can be few and far between. But that could all be changing thanks to just three words. Mongolia's Postal Service was the first in the world to sign up to What3Words, an idea from a British former music executive fed up of bands and equipment constantly getting lost. He's divided the entire world into 3m squares and given each one a different three word phrase, and it could mean that everyone in the world will soon have an address.

Presenter: Tom Colls
Reporter / Producer: Harriet Noble

Image: How What Three Words divides up the world / Credit: Google Maps

What do you do if you're out and about and can't find a public toilet? Do you sneak into a cafe and hope no one notices, buy something you don't want just for the privilege of using the facilities, or hold it in until you can get home? The number of public toilets around the world is decreasing, making this an increasingly common dilemma. But not in many parts of Germany thanks to a scheme called "Die Nette Toilette", or the nice toilet. Local authorities pay businesses a monthly fee to let anyone wonder in and go to the loo for free. Not only does this dramatically increase the number of available toilets, it leads to big savings for the public purse.

Producer: Harriet Noble
Presenter: Dougal Shaw

(Photo: Interior of a German public toilet)

Thousands of places in the world don't officially exist on a map. If you're not on a map, it can have implications for how people find you - in times of disaster for example. But a project called Missing Maps is solving that, by using the power of volunteers to make 'invisible people, visible'. At a mapathon in London, volunteers are sitting around their laptops plotting the world. And then in Malawi, mapping experts are putting in essential details to the map. World Hacks travels there to see the finished maps and what impact they could have on communities living there.

Presenter: Dougal Shaw
Producer: Nick Holland

(Photo: People looking at a map)

In 1998, 42% of Iceland’s 15 and 16 year-olds reported that they had got drunk in the past 30 days. By 2016, though, this figure had fallen to just 5% and drug use and smoking had also sharply declined. The action plan that led to this dramatic success is sometimes called “the Icelandic Model ? – and strikingly, it does not focus on tighter policing or awareness campaigns to warn children off bad habits. Instead, top researchers collaborate closely with communities on initiatives like parental pledges and night-time patrols after dark, while the government invests in recreational facilities. But is being a teenager in Iceland still fun?

Presenter: Harriet Noble
Reporter: William Kremer

Image: Icelandic teenagers / 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

(Photo: Ingo Hasselbach)

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 and the 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

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

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

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

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, Nick Holland and Sam Judah

Image: People Fixing the World illustration / Credit: BBC

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
Reporter: Sam Judah

Photo Credit: Getty Images

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 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.

Presenter: Tallulah Berry
Reporter: Dougal Shaw

Naomi isn’t your average teacher. For one thing, she’s only 6 months old. But in many schools across Canada babies like Naomi are a regular feature at the front of class. It’s 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 can’t explain and externalise how it’s feeling, children learn to recognise and identify the baby’s emotions, and become more emotionally astute themselves. It’s been proven to reduce bullying. World Hacks visits a school in Toronto to see how it works.

By its very nature, volunteering means you don’t get paid. But what if there was a way to compensate volunteers that also helped the local economy? The northern English city of Hull is trying an experiment with a new, local cryptocurrency called HullCoin - the first of its kind in the world. It’s a sort of community loyalty scheme, that can only be earned by doing ‘good deeds’ and can only be redeemed in local businesses. But can it really improve the economic resilience of struggling industrial cities? World Hacks has been to Hull to find out.

Presenter: Dougal Shaw
Reporter: Elizabeth Davies
Photo Credit: BBC

Providing food for seven billion people is fraught with difficulty. Fertilising vast tracts of land and flying fresh vegetables across the globe comes at a huge environmental cost. But more and more people are turning to hydroponics - growing plants in water, without any soil. The idea itself is hundreds of years old, but new twists on the old technique are now shaping the future of food. We investigate some of the most innovative hydroponics projects, from the refugees growing barley for their goats in the Algerian desert to the underground farm built in an abandoned London bomb shelter. But how efficient can the process become? Can hydroponics begin to offer a serious alternative to conventional farming?

Producer: Sam Judah
Presenter: Harriet Noble
Photo credit: Shutterstock

You’re standing on a stage, blinded by a spotlight trained on your face, knees weak, hands sweaty. Someone from the audience calls out a random word and you have to immediately react and come up with an amusing sketch or skit. This is improv, the unscripted theatre form that seems like it would cause rather than cure anxiety. But across North America people with the mental health condition are signing up for special “Improv for Anxiety ? courses where the techniques and practices of the stage art are used to boost confidence.

Producer: Harriet Noble
Presenter: Tom Colls
Photo Credit: BBC

An app in Greece is helping people donate their leftover drugs to people who can't afford to buy them. So far the system has helped to recover and redistribute 13,000 boxes of medicine. Donors use the software to scan a unique code on the side of their boxes of unwanted drugs. The app automatically uploads details of the medication to a central database. They're then taken in by the country's network of social pharmacies where they're then given out to unemployed and homeless people.

Reporter: Nick Holland
Presenter: Harriet Noble

An app in Greece is helping people donate their leftover drugs to people who can't afford to buy them. So far the system has recovered and redistributed 10,000 boxes of medicine. Donors use the software to scan a unique code on the side of their boxes of unwanted drugs. The app automatically uploads details of the medication to a central database. They're then taken in by the country's network of social pharmacies where they're then given out to unemployed and homeless people.

Reporter: Nick Holland
Presenter: Harriet Noble

Social media and messaging apps play a role in the extremist “radicalisation ? of individuals. Tech companies have tried to get better at identifying extremist content and taking it down, but some specialists advocate an alternative approach – to use these platforms to engage with extremists one-to-one, to confront them and talk them round.

Last year, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London organised hundreds of conversations on Facebook messenger between activists and those expressing extreme Islamist and far-right sympathies. World Hacks has been given exclusive access to their report.

This experiment raises many moral and practical questions. Do those posting extreme views online still have a right to privacy? At what point do we judge someone as suitable for this kind of intervention? And what exactly is the best way to start a conversation with an extremist?

Presenter: Elizabeth Davies
Producer: William Kremer

Photo credit: Colin Bidwell (BBC)

CORRECTION: In this programme, we say that counter-conversations were part of Facebook’s Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI). It was in fact a separate project, also funded by Facebook.

More than $20bn is spent on chewing gum around the world each year. A lot of that gum will end up stuck to the streets. That's why gum is the second most common kind of street litter after cigarette materials. In the UK councils spend around £50m each year cleaning up the mess. But British designer Anna Bullus had an idea - what if the sticky stuff could actually be recycled and turned into useful objects?

Presenter: Harriet Noble
Reporter: Dougal Shaw

Photo caption: Shoe sole made of chewing gum
Photo credit: BBC

One of every five bird species could be extinct within the next century. Whether it’s down to the shiny glass office blocks materialising all over cities or the trawlers sailing ever-further out to sea to feed our growing population, our birds are seriously under threat. This episode looks at two particular successes when it comes to helping the world’s feathered friends: how Toronto has become a world leader in making cities bird-friendly; and how a group of enterprising conservationists has almost eliminated the deaths of albatrosses as a result of deep-sea fishing.

Image: Pair of albatrosses on the nest
Credit: Shutterstock

Being homeless is extremely bad for your health. Homeless people end up in hospital far more often, and when they get there their condition is often serious. We visit a London hospital to see how one innovative healthcare charity is rethinking caring for the homeless – and how a hospital visit can be an opportunity to do far more than just patch a patient up and send them on their way.

Presenter: Tallulah Berry
Reporter: Tom Colls
Producer: Ammar Ebrahim

Image: Gary Spall (BBC)