People Fixing the World Folgen

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