Episodes
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Neccessity is the mother of invention and there's an app for those who want to find handicap accessible businesses around the world.
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Play Everywhere by Mandy Stapleford
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Missing episodes?
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Forest Man2 by Mandy Stapleford
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Magic Mushroom Material by Mandy Stapleford
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To Bee Or Not To Bee by Mandy Stapleford
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Dressed Up Education by Mandy Stapleford
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Teen Ocean Clean by Mandy Stapleford
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Bedtime Stories for All by Mandy Stapleford
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Aussie Sleep Bus by Mandy Stapleford
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Free Pharmacy by Mandy Stapleford
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Street Vet
It’s often overlooked that people who become homeless are not likely to be able to care for their pets properly. Disturbed by this issue and the rising problem of homelessness in America, California veterinarian Kwane Stewart realized his unique opportunity to make a difference.
Since 2011, Kwane has visited the poorest areas of Los Angeles carrying his medical bag and offering his services, free of charge. He treats a myriad of animal illnesses from infections to allergies, bad teeth, flea infestations, and even arthritis. He also arranges surgeries at no or low cost, often paying for medicines and supplies out of his own pocket.
While the majority of his patients are dogs, he also sees cats, birds, and reptiles too. He gets to know these animals and their owners, who often open up about their lives on the street and their reasons for being there.
Anyone whose loved a pet knows how strong the bond of love can be.
Homeless people are with their animal every minute of every day and that relationship means everything to them. These animals can provide their owners with a sense of belonging, purpose, security and hope within the hard times they face on the street. It is not unusual for the owners to treat their animals better than they treat themselves.
“I’ve seen homeless people feed their pet before they feed themselves,” he says. “I’ve seen them give their last dollar to care for them. They sustain each other and that is the power of pet companionship.”
To expand his mission, Kwane set up a GoFundMe page called “The Street Vet.” He is also documenting his experiences in a TV series of the same name, where he hopes to not only take care of the animals in need but to also challenge the preconceived notions of the homeless people who love them.
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Talk to the Hands
Over 30 million people use sign language to communicate, but only a fraction of the world's population can understand them—until now.
Kenyan inventor Roy Allela has designed a pair of gloves that translate signed hand movements into speech. Called Sign-IO, it relies on sensors that are stitched into each finger which can detect the movement and positions of the hands, and interpret them into words being signed. The gloves connect via Bluetooth to a phone app, also designed by Allela, which convert the gestures into audible speech for others to understand.
Allela got the inspiration for his invention from watching his family's struggle to communicate with his six-year-old niece, who was born deaf. "My niece wears the gloves, pairs them to her phone or mine, then starts signing and I'm able to understand what she's saying," says Allela. "Like all sign language users, she's very good at lip reading so she doesn't need me to sign back."
But these gloves also double as a tool to teach non-signers by way of the visual and audible working together. Both the gloves and the app are adjustable to different users’ needs, from speed of movement of the hands, to different pitches and tones of voice in the electronic speech of the app.
Allella first launched his talking gloves in 2018, at a special-needs school in south-west Kenya, and he hopes to make them available to as many children as possible worldwide.
Sign-IO is just one of a growing number of assistive technology devices for people with impairments and limitations. The market, which is expected to top $30 billion dollars by 2024, is exploding as people find new ways to break down communication barriers and overcome obstacles via technology. And breaking down communication barriers of every kind, is a positive game changer for everyone.
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A Solar Road Trip
Recreational Vehicles cost big bucks and are often big gas guzzlers. Can you even imagine travelling across the country in an RV, without regularly fueling up at gas stations? Well, now you can, and you'll be able to get away from it all in a completely solar-powered, electric motorhome, that doesn’t leave
a carbon footprint behind you.
German RV company Dethleffs has built an RV prototype that is completely powered by the sun. Called the e.home, this large, Type C motorhome is covered in over 300 square feet of thin-film solar panels. The panels can generate 3000 watts of electricity, powering the vehicle for 175 miles per solar charge.
It also has the significant advantage of being able to run all the extra home devices without any additional type of energy source for the vehicle.
The e.home supplies all the on-board services with electricity for the living area, from its own solar power production. New technologies are also adding to the comfort, and safety of the vehicle.
Built-in monitoring systems streamline vehicle operations and provide driver assistance, creating a "Smart Motorhome" that squeezes the most out of its power production.
This extraordinary eco design also uses heat-releasing infrared panels in the floors, walls, and furniture and exterior heat absorbent materials that release heat inside, when the temperature drops at night outside.
The luxury e.home eco RV also features a sofa lounge and dining area that converts into a bedroom, complete with starlit ceiling. Creature comforts include a sleek kitchen, toilet room, and flat-panel TV, along with a wireless charging pad for mobile devices, all powered by the sun.
Dethleffs is making its e.home part of its future lineup of RVs, inspiring other manufacturers while bringing green, off-grid mobile living to a highway near you.
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Homeless Tiny Homes
Sadly, there are over half a million homeless people living across America with varied responses to the problem from the local communities.
In San Jose, California, the local nonprofit HomeFirst came up with the idea to offer tiny homes—very tiny homes—to the homeless. The project is aimed at getting people off the streets, onto their feet and back into society.
With support from the city’s Mayor Liccardo and Governor Gavin Newsome, HomeFirst teamed up with Habitat for Humanity to build a 40-unit community on vacant city property.
Each tiny home is 80 square feet and contains a twin bed with storage drawers beneath it. The units are equipped with lighting, electrical outlets, smoke detectors, and locking doors.
Residents also have access to shared bathrooms, showers, laundry facilities, and kitchens, plus a common room building with computers and job boards. The entire site is fenced in and provides around-the-clock security.
The idea was years in the making, but in early 2020 the Maybury Bridge Housing Project was finally ready for residents. Built with volunteers from Habitat for Humanity and HomeFirst, each unit cost just $6500—a small price to pay for such a big reward.
Residents stay for 60 days or until they can get into more permanent housing. They are supported with a range of services to help along the way, including healthcare resources and career counseling.
Although tiny in size, these homes serve as a giant step forward for those sheltering in them. A second site is already in the works, and will offer another 40 residences to those who need it most.
If this proves to be successful, San Jose will expand it to other unused industrial sites and vacant lots in the city, chipping away at homelessness--one tiny home at a time.
This story brought to you by Arroyo Seco Live.
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Super Adobe
Hormuz is an island south of Iran, in the Persian Gulf. It lays claim to being an historic port that controls shipments of petroleum from the middle east.
Its mountainous terrain is jagged and dramatic, full of rich, earthy color. The geography is indeed beautiful, but without sufficient tourism residents often
fall prey to illegal trafficking activities, using their boats.
In a unique attempt to boost the local economy and empower its residents in another direction, the Tehran based firm ZAV Architects, have built a brightly colored and visually engaging community right on the beach, with the sensational jagged mountain range as the backdrop.
The multipurpose development is called ‘Majara’ and it is intended to tie together the lives of the local people and visitors, both culturally and economically.
What you see from the sea is a cluster of candy-colored domes, like huge, pointy Easter eggs of multiple sizes pushed down into the sand. Over 100 of these bulbous forms are grouped together amid winding pathways. The interiors are extraordinary in their different heights and primary colors, and are beautifully simplistic and minimalist in design.
The structures are made using an innovative building method called superadobe, which involves layering long fabric tubes filled with earth and other organic materials, like straw, to form a compression structure.
The multicolored domes were built with the help of the local residents, who were trained in the superadobe process.
This mud bag construction is well suited to the hot, arid climate, as earth-based materials are both readily available and provide wonderful thermal mass. The interiors are cool during the day as the thick earthen walls absorb the sun’s heat and then radiate it back inside at night.
This successful and gorgeous eco-friendly design has won multiple architectural awards and achieved its purpose of encouraging tourism, boosting the economy and uniting the community that lives there.
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Tap the Power
Torrents of water flow beneath cities all over the world, creating pressure in their pipelines which must be vented. Lucid Energy in Portland, Oregon, has found a way to harness that pressure and change it into useable energy, without disrupting water delivery or the environment.
The company has invented a series of water turbines, which look like giant egg beaters that are placed in large, gravity-fed pipelines. As water flows through the pipes, the turbines spin, creating renewable energy which can then be used to generate clean water or be sold back to the power company.
Sensors installed in the pipes can also detect changes in water pressure, helping to predict potential burst pipes, saving millions of gallons that would otherwise be wasted. They can also monitor for contaminants in the drinking water.
This system is capturing energy—free energy—that is otherwise being lost. It operates day and night and is completely independent of the weather.
And since it's already enclosed, no fish or wildlife are harmed.
For water utilities, which use massive amounts of electricity, this approach is a game changer that can make it cheaper to provide clean drinking water. They can either use the power themselves or sell it as a new source of revenue.
Now, in places like Riverside, California and Portland, Oregon, when you turn on the tap, you are generating excess electricity that runs water operations during the day and powers the streetlights at night.
With the U.S. water infrastructure due to be overhauled over the next 20 years, there's an opportunity here, to add these water turbines everywhere, creating renewable energy within existing water delivery systems.
And this is just the beginning, as this technology is gaining worldwide attention, because the production of clean water and energy are so closely dependent, and are now, more sustainable.
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Flip Flop Art
For billions of people, colorful, rubbery flip-flops are the most affordable footwear option. But the flimsy shoes don't last long and often end up in dumps, ditches, and waterways. Millions end up in the oceans, where they can travel hundreds of miles, washing up on distant shores.
On the shores of Kenya, east Africa, entrepreneur Julie Church is finding ways to turn this never-ending stream of trash into treasure. She established “Ocean Sole Africa,” a social enterprise centered on cleaning the world's oceans while also supporting impoverished families in coastal areas.
In a country with a 40% unemployment rate, this Kenyan company offers a lifeline to disadvantaged and displaced workers. It hires local women, kids and fishermen to collect flip-flops from the shorelines. The discarded footwear is then washed, sterilized, and sorted by color, before being compressed and glued into giant blocks.
Local artists then sculpt and sand the blocks into bright, colorful toys, animal figures, jewelry, and more. Many of the artisans are woodcarvers who were displaced when the deforestation of ebony and mahogany was outlawed. Now their artwork is helping to restore balance to nature while also supporting and building their community.
The company has already recycled millions of flip-flops and contributes a portion of its revenue to beach cleanups, vocational and educational programs, and conservation efforts, wasting nothing in the process. Even the leftover rubber is shredded and made into mattresses for refugees.
“Ocean Sole Africa” sells their unique upcycled creations both online and offline. They've created large sculptures for malls and businesses, and a collection even resides in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
They’ve proven that conscious entrepreneurship can turn a profit while helping people and the planet at the same time.
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37 MLK
As California's housing crisis deepens, due to skyrocketing rents, many locals have been forced from their long-time homes and are now homeless within their own neighborhoods.
But a neighborhood in Oakland shines as an example of what neighbors can do when they work together.
Stefani Echeverría-Fenn walked past a vacant lot every day on her way to work for years. After learning of a friend who had lost her home due to rising rents, she became inspired and took action. She cleared the land of weeds and set up a tent for herself to show others what could be done with it.
Now called 37MLK for its address, it grew into a community of long-time female residents who had lived in the area for most of their lives but could no longer afford housing. Many grew up together and knew each other.
Stefani lives in an apartment nearby, but also in her tent at 37MLK, because she feels that if she can’t live there, it’s not good enough.
With the support of neighboring homeowners, the site has become a homeless sanctuary complete with a solar shower, a communal kitchen and dining area, camping toilets and a pump-operated sink.
Walkways between tents are lined with solar-powered lights and mini white picket fences. A garden provides fresh food, and chickens are kept for eggs and pest control. The entire area is kept clean by the resident women, while neighbors help with trash and waste disposal.
Together, this community has made 37MLK a model for local lawmakers, showing how residents, with and without homes, can work and live alongside one another while much-needed affordable housing is erected.
In early 2020, inspired by this success, Oakland city council allocated $600,000 to launch a pilot project based on the homeless encampment, intending to build more communities where all neighbors can care for one another.
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Food from Sun and Sea
How do you feed the Earth's growing population with a finite amount of land? You get smart and creative, that’s how, and that's just what the Australian company Sundrop Farms has done.
Addressing the increasing human population alongside the increasing shortages of food, water and energy, this company is growing food with only sunlight and sea water, even in the desert. Their off-grid farming solution negates the effects of droughts, floods, and other weather challenges, without using soil, fossil fuels, groundwater, pesticides, or GMOs.
Sundrop Farms chose to focus on what resources were abundant, to come up with food growing solutions. Starting in the coastal Australian desert, they’ve utilized the abundance of sunshine and sea water. Their hi-tech greenhouses integrate solar power, electricity generation, fresh water production and hydroponics that can produce 37,000 pounds of food a year on just 49 acres.
The entire operation is powered by a solar tower that creates 39 megawatts of electricity on a sunny day, enough to run the entire farm. The crops are grown hydroponically with a million gallons of sea water that is pumped in daily, desalinated, and enriched with coconut husks and sustainably-sourced nutrients.
Sea water is also a natural disinfectant and pest control, eliminating the need for pesticides. Leftover water is returned to the sea, further reducing the farm's environmental impact.
The success of Sundrop Farms in Australia has allowed them to expand to other countries, where they’re building farms to meet the needs of local supermarkets. Their unique eco-friendly process doesn’t compete with, but rather compliments, other local food production.
Using smart innovation while caring for the health of our planet, they are breaking farming’s dependence chemicals and finite resources and that equals a long term, win-win solution for all.
This story brought to you by Arroyo Seco Live.
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For One Smile
Not everyone can afford a beautiful smile. In some countries, dental care is only a dream...as well as a luxury. In Brazil alone, nearly twenty million people have never seen a dentist due to social and economic hardships.
Having witnessed these difficulties first hand, a Brazilian man is seeking to improve dental healthcare for the poor, and not just in his own country.
Thirty-eight-year-old dentist Filipe Rossi travels the world providing dental care to native populations and villages in poverty.
His charity organization, “Por 1 Sorriso”, meaning "for one smile,” provides dental care to thousands of people annually in South America and East Africa. And they do it all for free.
The majority of Rossi's work is financed through donations from charities and from private companies, like toothpaste manufacturer Colgate, who has sponsored many of his trips.
This generous dentist also raises awareness and funds by sharing before and after photos of his work on social media, showing patients in need of new teeth and their reactions after treatment. The dramatic transformations showcase not just changed smiles, but changed lives as well.
Rossi and his thousands of volunteers offer an array of free dental procedures including root canals, cleanings, restorations and emergency dental work.
“I didn’t do dentistry to take care of teeth," says Rossi. “But to take care of people. Awakening smiles without a business relationship—just for love— connects us with something bigger.”
Improving someone’s teeth improves their lives in a myriad of ways. From social acceptance, to self-confidence and even improved physical health due to being able to eat anything and chew properly.
Filipe Rossi and “Por 1 Sorriso” are making the world a better place, one grateful smile at a time.
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