People Fixing the World

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?Presenter: Harriet Noble Photo credit: Shutterstock

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

Naomi is not your average teacher. For one thing, she is only six months old. But in many schools across Canada babies like Naomi are a regular feature at the front of class. It is 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 cannot explain and externalise how it is feeling, children learn to recognise and identify the baby’s emotions, and become more emotionally astute themselves. It has been proven to reduce bullying. World Hacks visits a school in Toronto to see how it works.Reporter: Harriet Noble Producer: Elizabeth Davies(Photo: Naomi)

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 the 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.

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

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 and Nick HollandImage: People Fixing the World illustration / Credit: BBC

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 CollsImage: The Steel Warrior gym / 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 EvansImage: A community health nurse in Malawi holds up the dapivirine ring / 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 KremerImage: Wheelchair crash testing / Credit: Michele Erwin

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