Month: November 2018

Categories
Wellbeing

Can local walking groups help solve urban issues?

“This street sign is crooked,” notes Henny Koot, then stoops down to straighten it.

We are in Spoorwijk, a neighbourhood in The Hague. “Spoorwijk is a very special neighbourhood. It’s a green space where children can play safely in the playgrounds, where entrepreneurs from different cultures have set up shop. People care about each other,” explains Koot, who chairs a local community organisation. Spoorwijk may be a caring neighbourhood, but it’s part of Laak, The Hague’s smallest district – as well as one of its poorest and most diverse. The average annual income of its 4,340 residents is €16,300 (£14,225) – about €1,350 (£1,180) a month. In 2017, 67.3% of the inhabitants of Spoorwijk were of non-Dutch background – the majority from Surinam, but also from Turkey and Morocco.

Categories
Planet

Co-op to replace carrier bags with compostables

The Co-op is to be the first major supermarket in the UK to replace single-use plastic carrier bags with lightweight compostable alternatives that shoppers can reuse as biodegradable bags for food waste.

The bags – a stronger version of the biodegradable bags the convenience chain has been trialling since 2014 – will be rolled out within weeks to almost 1,400 stores across England, Scotland and Wales, and then to all 2,600 shops.

Categories
Equality

Cruise ship converted into supported housing

Kenneth Capron is determined to find housing for the homeless, even if it means thinking outside the box – and outside of land.

Earlier this week, Capron addressed the city council of Portland, Maine about transforming a decommissioned cruise ship into a housing community for vulnerable people.

“We’re looking at four populations: the homeless population, the low-income population, the workforce population and immigrant population who all need housing,” Capron told WMTW. “They all need job skills training. We would offer that on board.”

Categories
Culture Planet

Learning how to co-exist with animals again

Growing up as a Maasai herder on the Lemek group ranch, Dickson Kaelo frequently encountered big cats. But when we meet a cheetah on a drive into the Maasai Mara’s Kicheche Bush Camp, he reacts as if seeing the slender creature for the very first time.

His surprise is justified.

When he helped found the Olare Orok (now Olare Motorogi) Conservancy in 2006, this land on the fringes of the National Reserve was over-grazed and devoid of native species. Now it’s one of Africa’s top safari destinations, with professional photographers and returning tourists applauding the wildlife sightings.

 

Categories
Planet

UK renewable energy capacity surpasses fossil fuels

The capacity of renewable energy has overtaken that of fossil fuels in the UK for the first time, in a milestone that experts said would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

In the past five years, the amount of renewable capacity has tripled while fossil fuels’ has fallen by one-third, as power stations reached the end of their life or became uneconomic.

Categories
Culture Equality

UN to use Alibaba technology to reach end hunger

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has struck a deal with Chinese tech giant Alibaba to use its technology to help speed up plans around ending world hunger by 2030, under the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Two.

Much like Alibaba’s agreement with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Alibaba’s involvement will be around the digital transformation of the organisation, using its cloud technology as the foundation.

Categories
Culture

How ‘Makers’ Make the Classroom More Inclusive

When Jean Kaneko started volunteering at her son’s kindergarten class in Santa Monica, Calif., she was surprised by how hesitant the children were to play with toys they didn’t recognize, to make a mess and, well, to be kids.

“‘I can’t do that. I’m not good at that,’” she remembered them saying. Even at 4 or 5 years old, there was already a ‘be perfect, don’t fail’ attitude, she said.

Categories
Wellbeing

Drones to deliver vaccines in world-first trial

Drones carrying precious vaccines will soon be taking to the skies over Vanuatu, in a world-first trial that has the potential to revolutionise healthcare for isolated islanders in the Pacific.

The Vanuatuan government has signed contracts with two commercial drone companies and asked them to deliver temperature-sensitive vaccines to 39 remote villages that health workers often take days to access by car, boat or on foot.

Unicef has been instrumental in setting up the trial and said the drone technology had “massive” potential in the Pacific and around the globe.

Categories
Culture Equality

Football fans doing good

There can be few more relevant or powerful images than the one of Dave Kelly, an Evertonian to the core, holding a banner representing both Merseyside clubs while standing on the freezing concrete of Sir Matt Busby Way behind a trolley filled with donated items for a foodbank set up by Manchester United supporters.

It has been part of Kelly’s average weekend routine for three years now, operating out of Goodison Park on behalf of Everton’s Supporters Trust, and depending on his team’s schedule sometimes from one of the three collection points around Anfield where he works with Ian Byrne, who coordinates collections on behalf of Spirit of Shankly.