1 LIFTING THE LOAD
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 task. The burden falls disproportionately to women and girls, many of whom spend 20 hours a week hand-scrubbing clothes, often without electricity or running water. But 31-year-old Navjot Sawhney, an engineer based. in London, has come up with an off-grid solution: a portable, lightweight washing machine powered by a hand crank. Sawhney calls it the Diyva, after the woman who inspired the project his former next-door neighbour in southern India, where he spent a year volunteering after leaving his job as an engineer at high-end vacuum maker Dyson. He returned to the UK 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 December 2022, nearly 200 Divyas, which resemble a plastic drum, have been distributed impacting almost 22,000 people across six countries. By saving 75 per cent of the time required to wash clothes, he says, women and girls will be freer to pursue education. "The feedback was overwhelmingly positive," Sawhney says. His goal is to deliver 8,000 machines to 10 countries over the next three years.
2 SMALL COUNTRIES THAT MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE
Denne historien er fra January 2023-utgaven av Reader's Digest India.
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Denne historien er fra January 2023-utgaven av Reader's Digest India.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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ME & MY SHELF
Siddharth Kapila is a lawyer turned writer whose writing has focussed on issues surrounding Hinduism. His debut book, Tripping Down the Ganga: A Son's Exploration of Faith (Speaking Tiger) traces his seven-year-long journey along India's holiest river and his explorations into the nature of faith among believers and skeptics alike.
EMBEDDED FROM NPR
For all its flaws and shortcomings, some of which have come under the spotlight in recent years, NPR makes some of the best hardcore journalistic podcasts ever.
ANURAG MINUS VERMA PODCAST
Interview podcasts live and die not just on the strengths of the interviewer but also the range of participating guests.
WE'RE NOT KIDDING WITH MEHDI & FRIENDS
Since his exit from MSNBC, star anchor and journalist Mehdi Hasan has gone on to found Zeteo, an all-new media startup focussing on both news and analysis.
Ananda: An Exploration of Cannabis in India by Karan Madhok (Aleph)
Karan Madhok's Ananda is a lively, three-dimensional exploration of India's past and present relationship with cannabis.
I'll Have it Here: Poems by Jeet Thayil, (Fourth Estate)
For over three decades now, Jeet Thayil has been one of India's pre-eminent Englishlanguage poets.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Penguin Random House India)
Samantha Harvey became the latest winner of the Booker Prize last month for Orbital, a short, sharp shock of a novel about a group of astronauts aboard the International Space Station for a long-term mission.
She Defied All the Odds
When doctors told the McCoombes that spina bifida would severely limit their daughter's life, they refused to listen. So did the little girl
DO YOU DARE?
Two Danish businesswomen want us to start eating insects. It's good for the environment, but can consumers get over the yuck factor?
Searching for Santa Claus
Santa lives at the North Pole, right? Don't say that to the people of Rovaniemi in northern Finland
