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Creating a Safe Haven—with Books
Terence Crowster, a development worker, has long helped disadvantaged youth in the hardscrabble, crime-ridden Cape Town neighbourhood of Scottsville. At various high schools, he helped create, among other things, valuable skill-development, anti-bullying and leadership programs. But it’s the new libraries he’s built out of repurposed shipping containers—with donations and second-hand books solicited through Facebook—that have truly transformed the neighbourhood. The first of these, which opened in 2017, was dubbed the Hot-Spot Library, a reference to both its location at the border of an area fought over by two rival gangs and its aim to be a helpful resource to youth in the area.
Despite the dangerous postal code, the library has flourished, becoming as much a safe space as an academic one. In its first year, its membership grew to 750 young people. Its shelves are now stocked with more than 2,000 books, and educational programming is offered six days a week. Last July, Crowster opened an additional branch in the adjoining Scottsdene neighbourhood, with future branches and libraries-on-wheels planned for elsewhere in Cape Town.
Crowster sees the libraries as part of a larger movement towards social justice in the city: “If this can inspire more people to stand up and do their part, then I have done my job towards changing our community.”
—By Jason McBride
Fighting “Period Poverty” with Free Menstrual Products
Canada | One-quarter of young women in Canada say they can’t afford period products like pads and tampons, and, according to a United Nations report from 2014, one in 10 youth worldwide have missed school because of their menstrual cycle. The Ontario government plans to ease this burden through a new partnership with Shoppers Drug Mart, which will distribute 18 million free pads in washroom dispensers at all public schools in the province over the next three years. The fourth Canadian province to take such an initiative, Ontario’s plan is part of a global movement to end “period poverty,” where stigma and lack of access to menstrual hygiene supplies have negative consequences for education, employment and health, causing absenteeism, anxiety and depression.
—By Anna-Kaisa Walker
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