Good News Stories From Around the World
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Catching a Glimpse of the Stars
Kenya | As a child growing up in Nairobi City, the astronomer Susan Murabana didn’t get much encouragement to look to the stars. The solar system wasn’t a big part of her school’s curriculum.
Her disappointment turned to wonder in her early 20s, when she encountered her first telescope and spotted Saturn and its icy rings. “Seeing something I had only read about in a textbook, it made me realize how small we really are.”
In 2014, Murabana, now married, bought a telescope with her husband. Inspired by how studying space had opened up her life, the couple decided to give kids the same experience. They called their program The Travelling Telescope, and circle around Kenya bringing astronomy education and a portable planetarium to schools and communities. So far, they’ve met with 300,000 children in the process.
Kids can’t resist the lure of the telescope and the opportunity it offers to see the moon (a favourite) up close, as well as stars and planets. Murabana says the telescope is the main attraction wherever they go. In January 2021, the visiting musical artist Madonna booked a private session for her family. Murabana watched the pop star’s face light up with the same sense of wonder.
“It’s a way of reminding people about the universe that sits just above their heads, and that they remain an intrinsic part of,” she says. “It’s there, but we forget to look up.” —Flannery Dean
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Making Refugees’ Lives Easier
United Kingdom | For the 70 per cent of the world’s population without access to electric washing machines, simply keeping up with laundry is a time-consuming, often painful physical task. The burden falls disproportionately to women and girls, who can spend 20 hours a week hand-scrubbing clothes, often without electricity or running water. London engineer Navjot Sawhney, however, has come up with an off-grid solution: a portable, lightweight and hand crank-powered washing machine that resembles a plastic drum. It also does double duty as a dryer, and costs around $60.
The 31-year-old Sawhney calls it the Divya, after the woman who inspired the project—his former next-door neighbour in South India, where he spent a year volunteering after leaving his job as an engineer at high-end vacuum maker Dyson. “When I got to know Divya, I was so frustrated by all the unpaid labour she needed to do for the sake of clean clothes,” says Sawhney. He returned to the United Kingdom to found the Washing Machine Project in 2018. After a few months developing a prototype, he received a grant from Oxfam’s Iraq Response Innovation Lab.
Since March 2019, more than 150 Divyas have been distributed to refugees in Iraq through non-profit partners. “The feedback was overwhelmingly positive,” Sawhney says. His goal is to deliver 8,000 machines in 10 countries over the next three years. By saving 75 per cent of the time and 50 per cent of the water required to wash clothes, he says, women and girls will be freer to pursue education.
Aside from the Divya, Sawhney has also worked on making clean and fuel-efficient cookstoves, and plans to develop off-grid refrigerators, air conditioners and lighting. Sawhney, whose father had to flee his home during the Partition of India in 1947, sees the world’s growing refugee crisis as an urgent call for innovation: “There is a huge need for appliances that make life better for people.” —By Anna-Kaisa Walker
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Turning Old Tires into New Playgrounds
India | In and around more than a dozen cities in India, brightly coloured caterpillars, octopi and elephants have begun appearing in empty lots, much to the joy of local children. Built from old tires and industrial waste like scrap metal and ropes, these climbers, jungle gyms and swings are low-cost, sustainable play spaces created by Bangalore’s Anthill Creations. A new playground can be built in just five days for around $2,500, a fraction of the cost of a standard playground.
The project’s CEO, Pooja Rai, a trained architect, was inspired to found Anthill Creations in 2014 after watching children at an orphanage play with broken pipes and flip-flops—far from a luxury, play is a human right, she realized. Reusing some of the 100 million tires discarded in India every year also helps the environment, reducing the air pollution created by tire burning. Each tire is carefully cleaned, inspected and painted before being repurposed in the 300 playgrounds Anthill has so far built across India.
Rai aims to work with governments, corporate donors and Anthill’s team of about 30 active volunteers to make cities more child-friendly, converting empty lots into playful community spaces. “Children come up with hundreds of different games exploring their creativity, and there is something new every time they play,” Rai says. —By Anna-Kaisa Walker
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