Patrick Neumann's Blog (13)

My hero is Felix Finkbeiner. He is still is a kid but knows of the importance of fighting against certain problems in the world (like the climate change). I admire him for his doings!

For more information see:

http://www.plant-for-the-planet.org/en/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant-for-the-Planet

EPISODE 1

MANILA

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. – Chinese proverb

PAGE 1

PANEL A

Several children are playing basketball on the street. The court is somewhere in the slums of Quezon City/Manila, Philippines. They seem to have fun. The sun sets and the moon already rises above the city. Next to the court, a large group of people is watching a cockfight. They are whooping and screaming at the…

• WHICH great challenges and social problems should the EVOKE Network tackle next?

I would try to tackle the problems concerning the education and schooling of children. Millions of children all over the world don't get an appropriate education. Be it "easy" things like reading, writing, listening or speaking or more specialized things like stuyding. Children don't get the chance to learn. As it is very difficult to escape this desperate situation fully on your own, most of them rest…

I read the article "Covering risk". I was kind of surprised about what I read. I mean, after I read it, it all seemed logical and comprehensible to me, but I never really was conscious about how "easily" people's perception of something is influenceable by journalists and the media in general. For example, the words you choose to describe the current situation make a huge difference and are from enormous importance. Here is a classic example:

If you say a pandemic could kill…

I chose the case study "Involving fishing communities in marine protected area development: The establishment of marine reserves in Negros Oriental, Philippines" which is about a project that has the aim "to protect selected parts of the coral reefs in order to allow over-exploited economically important food-fish stocks to recover".

As the Philippines are an archipelago (about 7.107 islands), it is surrounded by lots of coral reefs. Approximately two million Filipinos are dependent on…

In ten years, I hope I have nice job which is well-paid but also makes a lot of fun. I don't want to be a top manager, but I want to earn enough money to enable my family a life free from (financial) worries. Of course, I hope my wh*** family will still be healthy. Health is the most valuable thing in life.

I live together with my wife and my two children, a boy and a girl who were just born (but no twins ;)), in a beautiful town in either Germany (e.g. Hamburg, Munich) or Australia…

I think, for my town, Braunschweig/Germany, an information system like Ushahidi is not that necessary. Of course, it would be a "nice thing to have", but as I tried to think about something that is most likely to happen here (natural disaster, food shortages, power outages, political crises, health outbreaks, other social disruptions), I came to the decision that none of it has a high probability of occurring here in the next years. Our region is quite safe concerning natural…

I chose a story about child marriage in Pakistan. Unfortunately, child marriage is still common in countries like Pakistan. Almost 25% of the girls get married before they turn 18. Families decide to marry their girls "as a reasonable response to the economic and psychological stresses of flood-related displacement and loss of livelihood, and a way to reduce the future burden of the family".

That's why the organization PLaCES (Protective Learning and Community Emergency Services) has…

I chose the NFC (Near Field Communication) technology as a creative solution for the future. This is not really an "experiment" anymore, since it already is an international standard for contactless exchange of data, e.g. the payment process. However, it is not yet that popular and widely spread, why I think this technology will have its impact in the near future…

Nearly two thirds of the earth are covered with water. As about 97% of the water is salt water, there's only a relative small amount of water which is drinkable for the human population. In addition, the United Nations say that "more people die and suffer from the lack of access to safe drinking water and to basic sanitation than from war" which also underlines the enormous importance of fighting against the water scarcity of which millions of people are affected.…

I chose the Dutch nightclub "Club Watt" in Rotterdam which is one of the first or maybe even the first sustainable nightclub in the world. The special thing about it is, that every step and every movement of the people dancing produces energy which is transformed into electricity (due to the piezoelectric effect). This electricity is used to power the light show which mainly consists of LEDs or low-energy bulbs. In Addition, the toilet flushing is done with rainwater and the guests are…

In my place (Germany), food security probably is also not totally given, but much more than in other parts of the world (e.g. Africa, Asia) at least. Normally, nobody has to die here because of starvation or famine. Consequently, it seems like there is already an existing system against hunger which is working pretty well. For example, there is the aid organisation "Die Tafeln" which provides food to poor people for a reduced price or even for free. The food they provide is not from less…

First of all, I think it is pretty difficult or even impossible to choose one secret as the solution for the improvement of social innovation. The problem is a lot too big and too complex to be solved by just one (even if great) idea or concept.

However, I picked four of the secrets as my favorites:

1) "What you have matters more than what you lack" by Ethan Zuckerman -

That was one of my favorite statements from the first time I read it. The essence is…