People Fixing the World
Episodes
The secrets of greywater
28 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Greywater is the relatively clean waste water from baths, sinks, washing machines and dishwashers. It’s not drinkable but there’s still loads you ...
Arrows of hope
21 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women globally. The earlier it is diagnosed the higher the chance of survival. Treatment, even when success...
Back from the brink: Uganda’s gentle giants
14 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The eco-tourism that is helping to protect mountain gorillas in Uganda.Myra Anubi is in Uganda visiting the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. It’s one of ...
Fashion without barriers
07 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Exploring style and beauty for people with disabilities.What we wear helps us express ourselves and communicate to others in the most immediate way. B...
Empowering the LGBT community
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
**This episode contains one instance of offensive languageHow two projects in Kenya and Spain are helping LGBT communities.Setting up a business can b...
The Kindergarten makeover
24 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How mums are helping transform early years education in Ghana.Pre-school, or early years education, is seen by experts as providing an important found...
Making cities feel quieter
17 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Cities are getting bigger - and louder. As urban noise increases, we look at how sound itself can be used to make things feel quieter. Myra Anubi visi...
The power of poetry
10 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Can poetry change how we think, feel and act? We’re looking at how poetry is being used in some innovative and unexpected ways. We’ll hear from th...
Super seagrass
03 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Seagrass meadows are one of the world’s most valuable underwater habitats. As well as providing food and shelter to thousands of species, seagrass i...
The school run by kids
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
If you could invent a new kind of school what would it look like? What skills would you teach children, and how would the school be run?On this editio...
Who cares for the carers?
17 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Millions of people around the world are unpaid carers, providing help for a friend or family member who due to illness or disability cannot cope witho...
The positive power of your peers
10 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Peer support is an often overlooked but important tool that can reduce isolation, increase confidence and complement various health services. We take ...
Family Friendly Cities
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Cities are growing and developing at a faster rate than at any time in history. More than half the world’s population now live in cities. But cities...
Helping prisoners to become better parents
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
An innovative scheme in Scotland is helping dads in prison become better parents. Myra Anubi visits Barlinnie jail in Glasgow to meet the prisoners ta...
Wild Horses
20 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Wild horses have been roaming public lands in the American West for over a century but their population numbers are far greater than what is considere...
No brother left behind
13 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Igba Boyi apprenticeship scheme, described as the world's largest business incubator, has helped the Nigerian Igbo people build generational wealt...
Can AI power a green fashion revolution?
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Could AI technology help the fashion industry get to grips with sustainability, and arrest its brutal impact on the planet? With a huge carbon footpri...
Making friends in Sweden
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
8% of Swedish adults say they have no close friends, according to one survey. But a wave of innovative projects is trying to change that. From buddy s...
Our favourite solutions
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Presenter Myra Anubi and the team chat about some of their favourite projects that have been covered on People Fixing The World over the last twelve m...
Saving mothers with portable ultrasound
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The World Health Organisation recommends all pregnant women should have at least one ultrasound before six months. However, only half of women do in s...
Rethinking dyslexia
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Children with dyslexia are often misunderstood — but what if their struggles in school are actually signs of unique strengths? We visit a pioneering...
Building empathy and fighting disinformation
02 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We look at solutions that focus on teaching children how to respect each other and understand their emotions better. We visit a primary school in Bots...
Preserving Peru’s food heritage
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peru is famous for its diverse and innovative cuisine - but how is it making sure its venerable food heritage is preserved for decades to come? We mee...
How literacy can change a life
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Learning to read empowers people, reduces poverty and increases their job chances. Yet more than 700 miliion adults are illiterate, the majority of th...
Saving seabirds and squirrels
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you save threatened species? This week we look at two novel solutions. In the UK, scientists are developing a unique contraceptive that will be...
Making organ donation easier
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Organ transplantation has long been seen as a miracle of modern medicine but each year thousands of people across the world die while waiting for this...
Helping and healing in Sierra Leone
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thousands of people in Sierra Leone lost limbs during the brutal civil war, and many more have struggled to overcome the mental as well as physical bu...
Harnessing the wind to keep us cool
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many cities are becoming unpleasant to live in: they are getting hotter due to climate change and all the heat absorbed by the streets and buildings. ...
Alaska's wild solutions
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The US state of Alaska may be known for its rugged wilderness, but it’s also quietly leading a green revolution. We explore how an island community ...
The preschool in a retirement home
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A unique community in Chester in northern England, brings multiple generations together to encourage learning and connection. We explore how young chi...
Surgery in a backpack
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In some places, the nearest safe operating room can be hours or even days away. We find out about a portable operating theatre called SurgiBox that fi...
Transforming life in cities
23 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Mumbai, a quiet transformation is underway. Govandi has long been associated with poverty and poor health outc...
The power of play
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Play is essential to children’s development – kids learn about themselves and the world around them by having fun and taking risks. In some countr...
Digging deep to help farmers
09 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A new farming method is having a dramatic effect on maize crops in Malawi. And assistance is coming from a solar-powered tractor. In the last of her v...
Flower Power
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In India, how can gorgeous flowers offered in a temple or gathered to decorate a wedding be an environmental problem? Chhavi Sachdev discovers that th...
Front Yard Floods
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Frequent floods blight the poorest neighbourhoods of New Orleans but the residents are fighting back, one yard at a time. Physicist Helen Czerski joi...
A Washing Machine Solution
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
British Sikh engineer, Navjot Sawhney gave up his lucrative career to go and work in India, to use his skills to help solve problems for rural communi...
Speaking out
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Communication is a human right - but what happens when someone can’t speak for themselves?Sean Allsop struggled to talk until he was eight years old...
Safer streets in Cairo
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if reimagining how cities are designed could make women safer? In Cairo, sexual harassment and violence against women on the streets has been end...
How seaweed is surprisingly useful
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From powering cars to feeding farm animals, how using seaweed more can help the planet. We hear how a local business in Barbados is using sargassum se...
Being better citizens
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Citizenship is a kind of social contract that exists in democracies. To function effectively, members of society need to feel like they can engage wit...
Saving mothers and babies
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2017, Spanish engineer Pablo Bergasa began an unusual hobby: to design a new incubator for use in African hospitals. Eight years on, he has sent 20...
Cutting food waste
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Food waste is one of the biggest environmental and economic challenges we face — and much of it happens long before the food reaches our plates. In ...
The traffic lights tackling poverty
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Despite a lot of progress in the last few decades, more than a billion people still live in acute poverty, according to the UN. Many don’t have acce...
What to do with stray animals
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How the numbers of stray dogs - and feral pigeons - can be kept down kindly in urban areas. From street dogs to feral pigeons, many towns and cities a...
Making hospitals kinder for kids
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Being in hospital can be frightening and lonely for children — but playful ideas are helping make the experience a little easier. In Scotland, profe...
Making life easier for older people
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Barcelona in Spain is famous for its beautiful streets, lined with tall apartment buildings. But the architecture is a problem for many people who hav...
Shipping containers fixing the world
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Shipping containers are a staple of global trade, helping in the transport of all sorts of goods by sea across the world. But their relatively cheap c...
Malawi's waste warriors
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What do you do with your waste if you live somewhere that doesn’t have the infrastructure to deal with it? Turns out there are some really simple so...
Working with our minds
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mindfulness meditation, which involves becoming aware of the breath in the present moment, has been a core part of Eastern contemplative practices for...
Helping Chile's stolen children
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
During the 1970s and 80s, thousands of Chilean babies were illegally kidnapped, trafficked and adopted. The practice was widespread during the rule of...
The classroom tablet revolution
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From Malawi, Myra Anubi takes a look at ways that technology is improving children’s education. Malawi has free primary schools - but almost 90% of ...
Tackling bias in health
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bias in the way medical research is carried out means that new medicines for diseases such as cancer – as well as the tools used to diagnose patient...
Gadgets for blind people
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Myra Anubi is joined by BBC Access All presenter Emma Tracey to look at new technology that could help blind people in their everyday lives. Glide is ...
How sport can bring outsiders in
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week we look at two projects that show how sport can be a powerful tool for social inclusion.We go rowing with some refugees in Seville, Spain, a...
Recovery for all
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There are more people alive and living for longer - but with that comes more people experiencing failing health. While some of this is inevitable, som...
Radioactive rhinos
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The global rhino population has fallen by 95% since 1900, mainly due to poaching. Now an atomic approach is being used to stop the poachers in South A...
Building a clinic to save a forest
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you stop people chopping down precious rainforest? In the Indonesian part of Borneo, researchers for a conservation charity discovered that loc...
Helping the children of sex workers
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the red light districts of Kolkata, India, there exists an extraordinary youth club. DIKSHA, as it’s known, looks after the children of sex worke...
Fishing trash from our oceans
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Around the world, rubbish is collecting in our gutters and waterways, with millions of tonnes being washed out to sea every year. As the soup of ocean...
Renewable kids on the block
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Globally, energy production and use is responsible for around 75% of the world’s carbon emissions, with around a third of that on electricity and he...
The artificial limbs bringing hope in Gaza
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one in every 100 people in Gaza have a life-changing injury because of the conflict. It’s current...
How to have better sex
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sex is one of the few things in life that is available to everyone and is free. But achieving enjoyable sex is not possible for many. Some people are ...
Making money go further
11 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Billions of people struggle to make ends meet a lot of the time. We look at ways in which people who don’t have much money or are in financial distr...
Improving our eyesight
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many agricultural workers don’t have the eyesight they need for the work they do, affecting both their comfort and their ability to earn more money....
Sharing the river
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the farming community of Los Negros in rural Bolivia, the river is their life and livelihood. So when that river started to dry up, it made life ve...
We're coming back for 2025!
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A quick hello and happy new year from Myra and a preview of some of the great solutions coming up on People Fixing The World. Share our podcast with y...
Restoring nature for all
31 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Myra Anubi visits a major project in the north of England that’s restoring a damaged landscape. Haweswater in the Lake District is an area of stunni...
Our favourite solutions
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Presenter Myra Anubi and the team chat about some of their favourite projects that have been covered on People Fixing The World over the last twelve m...
The cows fighting wildfires
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This summer, deadly wildfires raged in countries like Spain, Canada, and Greece. And as the earth warms up, they’re becoming increasingly common and...
Reducing gun violence
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The misuse of guns is a problem for lots of countries across the world. This week we look at projects trying to reduce deaths and injuries.In the US w...
Cleaning up India's streets
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The world produces about 400 million tonnes of plastic waste annually. A lot of this waste, such as multi-layered plastic packaging and cigarette butt...
Coconuts fixing the world
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We eat millions of tonnes of coconuts every year - with the dense white flesh of the fruit making a tasty snack and the juice a refreshing drink.But t...
Sorting extreme waste
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We rely on space for our communications, weather monitoring and security. Yet rising levels of space junk increase the risk of collisions, putting the...
A wheelchair that learns
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Powered chairs offer people with limited mobility the chance to be independent, since they can be controlled with an array of switches and pads. For s...
The race to save Madagascar's biodiversity
05 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Madagascar is the second-largest island nation in the world, similar in size to France or Texas. Lying off the coast of southern Africa, it’s home t...
The jails where they do things differently
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2019 a group of prison officers from Philadelphia in the US spent three weeks working in jails across Scandinavia - in order to see whether their m...
Fixing elections - for the better
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
2024 has been called a record breaking year for elections, with billions of people eligible to take part in all types of votes. But how can we make su...
The pioneering TV news service
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
TV BRA in Norway is a unique media organisation. Their fortnightly national news show is presented by reporters who have learning disabilities or are ...
Keeping men healthy
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can people get much needed health services as they go about their daily lives? We’re back in Kenya where we visit a barbers shop that offers men...
Saving Britain's sea life
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The health of shorelines around the world is under threat like never before. We look at efforts being made in the UK to tackle some of the challenges ...
The power of native knowledge
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Awajun people have lived in the Amazon rainforest for thousands of years but their way of life and environment is under threat from deforestation ...
Hopping aboard the hospital train
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Half of the world's population don't have access to essential healthcare, according to the World Health Organisation. And even in highly developed cou...
The medicines dropping from the sky
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Presenter Myra Anubi visits western Kenya to see an innovative project that’s using hi-tech drones to deliver HIV drugs and testing kits. It’s an ...
Our favourite climate solutions
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a special edition, we join forces with fellow BBC podcast The Climate Question to share some of our favourite ways of fighting the impacts of clima...
Switching off our smartphones
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Concerns are growing about the effects of smartphones on both adults and children, so we're looking at ways to reduce our dependence on these ubiquito...
Greener ways to keep cool
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Climate change is affecting us all. When the temperature goes up, many of us reach for the air conditioning. But that in itself is making things worse...
Olympic-sized solutions
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As athletes from around the world strive for glory at the Paris Olympics, we look at how sport has a unique ability to change people’s lives for the...
Protecting wildlife from human activity
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the way we catch food, to how we generate energy, human activity inevitably impacts on wildlife and the environment in unintended ways. So this w...
Rethinking mental health
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the US, police officers spend about a fifth of their time responding to mental health crises. This is something they are often not trained for, and...
Africa's best new innovators
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a special programme, Myra Anubi is in Nairobi, Kenya at the final of the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation which rewards the best new innovat...
Making tourism work for everyone
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tourism brings money and opportunities to communities around the world, but it brings risks too. Sometimes an influx of tourists changes a place, dama...
Saving water at a time of scarcity
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Just over a quarter of people on the planet live in water stressed countries. And our increasing demands for water as well as climate change is puttin...
What to do with an empty mall?
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
US shopping malls, once a mainstay of American life, are in decline. Forty malls have closed since 2020, while more than 230 department stores have cl...
Fashion without barriers
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What we wear helps us express ourselves and communicate to others in the most immediate way. But the tools we frequently use to do that, such as cloth...
Solving Mexico City's water crisis
28 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mexico's capital often floods during the rainy season, but paradoxically, it's also running out of water. A large and growing population, along with c...
Living with climate change
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Poorer countries are likely to bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change, with rising temperatures and more unsettled weather leading to greater...
The school run by kids
14 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you could invent a new kind of school what would it look like? What skills would you teach children, and how would the school be run?On this editio...
Fighting sexism in society
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Across the world millions of women and girls face discrimination and worse because of their gender. On this edition of People Fixing The World we look...
Restoring California's underwater forests
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Often described as underwater rainforests and the “lungs of the ocean”, kelp forests line as much as 25% of the world’s coastlines. They provide...