People Fixing the World

More than a quarter of Japan’s population is over 65 and the country has the highest rate of centenarians in the world. It’s a ticking demographic time bomb as the cost of caring for the elderly rises. But can the solution to this growing problem be found in Kashiwa City near Tokyo? A project there has been looking at how to redesign towns and cities to adapt to their residents as they reach old age. World Hacks asks whether the answers they have found could help ageing populations across the world. Producer: Harriet Noble (for BBC World Service)

Just over a year ago, Kenya introduced the world’s most draconian rules on single-use plastic bags. People can be fined up to $40,000 or even thrown in jail for producing, selling or using them.World Hacks travels to Nairobi to find out what impact the ban has had, and asks why Kenya has taken such a seemingly progressive stance on plastic. We also speak to experts in the UK to find out why many governments prefer to ‘nudge’ their citizens into cutting back on plastic bags, instead of banning them.Presenter: Amelia Martyn-HemphillPhoto Credit: Getty Images

Child abduction by strangers is extremely rare, but the danger looms large in the minds of many parents. One reason is that for the past 50 years or so, governments have created public information campaigns around the message of “Stranger Danger”. In the UK, the US, Canada and many other countries too, these videos were played in the media and in schools. The videos portrayed in stark terms the risk of talking to adults you did not know who appeared to be friendly. But a new generation of childcare experts believe this is not the most effective message to protect children. Most abductions are by people children already know. And there is a worry that a general fear of strangers is not good for a child’s social development - or for society in general. World Hacks meets the charity Action Against Abduction as they teach a new message: Clever Never Goes. Presenter: Harriet Noble Reporter and Producer: Dougal Shaw Photo Caption: Stranger Danger Photo Credit: BBC

Our brains are the control centre of the human body. They allow us to think, to learn and to dream - but if you know how the brain works, it can also be fooled. Two start-up companies are making a business from these brain hacks, using wearable technology to trick the brain to improve people’s lives.The first is a wristband that uses a fake heartbeat to trick users’ brains into feeling calmer in stressful situations. The Doppel device also allows users to increase the rate of the fake heartbeat to make them feel more focused.The second wearable device allows people to fit lasers to their shoes. They are designed to help Parkinson’s patients who suffer from freezing episodes. These episodes affect up to 70% of Parkinson’s patients and come on suddenly, halting a sufferer mid-stride as they walk. The laser shoes provide visual cues to trick the brain into moving again.Presenter: Sofia Bettiza Reporter: Ammar Ebrahim Photo Credit: Getty Images

In Japan, to become a 'hikikomori' means to withdraw from the world and social life. Many of those who suffer from the condition shut themselves in their bedrooms for years on end, refusing to work, study or interact with anyone around them. More than half a million people are thought to be hikikomori, most of them young men. One organisation, New Start, has come up with an unusual solution: rental sisters. The sisters-for-hire visit regularly, helping to coax the hikikomori out of their bedrooms and back into society. That could mean just talking through the door, going out for lunch or even moving into a hikikomori boarding house and starting some part time work. Reporter Amelia Martyn-Hemphill finds out about the increasingly popular rental sister phenomenon for BBC World Hacks in Tokyo.Presenter: Harriet Noble Reporter: Amelia Martyn-HemphillPhoto Caption: A Former Hikikomori Photo Credit: BBC

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