At the Kfar Kedem park in southern Galilee, visitors can ride donkeys whilst surfing the web, thanks to routers round the animals’ necks. . Report by Sophie Foster.
Afghanistan is trying to unify the country through a new national educational curriculum. But a lack of security, books, trained teachers and schools is making it very challenging. Sharon Behn reports from Kabul on the difficulties faced by Afghan students.
Published on Apr 18, 2012 by uscensusbureau
Feb. 1, 2012 at 9 a.m. (EST) — The U.S. Census Bureau hosted a forum with the National Urban League on the black population at Black Entertainment Television studios. This event highlighted statistics from the 2010 Census, providing a portrait of the black population in the U.S. Following the presentation, an expert panel discussed the statistics and their implications.
The Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range is one of Mexico’s most precious natural treasures, boasting lush forests with rich biodiversity. It also serves as a vital carbon sink for the country. The corridor, which is under threat, has long been designated a natural reserve. Now, authorities are doubling their efforts to protect the area, teaching local communities and villages, too, how to take responsibility for their land. Reporter Michael Wetzel shows us the region’s rich diversity, from its cloud forests to wetlands to pine groves and arid zones, and he shows us how authorities are educating the locals on the urgency of protecting the nature around them.
Our earliest descendants were hunter/gatherers who foraged for their food, were in tune with their surroundings, and ate with the seasons. After foraging was essentially replaced by agriculture, people became increasingly detached from where their food came from. Foraging offers people a way to reconnect with nature and shows that food is all around us.
Honeybees, which are very important to agriculture, continue to disappear at alarming rates in the United States. And the cause of this disappearance is still elusive. While at least one recent study seems to point to pesticides as the problem, the US Agriculture Department has also found parasites causing general weakness among bee colonies. Producer Zulima Palacio spent some time with both scientists and beekeepers and brings us this story — narrated by Elizabeth Lee.
Organic waste from fields and parks in South Africa’s metropolis have been rotting away in landfills. But now a local company has turned the smelly business into big business by using the waste to produce high quality compost. The farmers are happy – the compost helps them improve soil quality without the aid of expensive fertilisers and chemical pesticides. The climate also benefits – composting the waste reduces the emission of large quantities of methane, a climate killer and by-product of rotting waste.
A 1952 documentary showing small town 50′s America from morning to evening. Many kinds of people doing many kinds of work, and then bowling. 1952, B/W.
Twenty million of the world’s 30 million people living with HIV/AIDS are in Africa. So what better place to experiment with ways to make them more self-sufficient, improve their diet, and help overcome the social stigma of AIDS? VOA’s Peter Heinlein in Addis Ababa reports one promising solution involves growing vegetables.
The United Nations says there is enough fresh water for everyone on earth. Yet nearly 1.6 billion people still face water shortages, due to inadequate infrastructure, uneven distribution and wasteful practices. There’s an organization in California, (called “Well Done,”) that is working to lessen this global water crisis, by implementing new approaches to an old problem. VOA’s Monaliza Noormohammadi has more.
Football – the American form of the sport – is an iconic part of American high school life, especially in small towns, like Macomb, Illinois, and everyone gets involved. Selah Hennessy report from Macomb, Illinois.
The image of a Native American warrior racing across the Western plains on horseback is an iconic one. The animal’s long relationship with some native tribes is celebrated in a new exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. VOA’s Susan Logue reports.
Community supported agriculture (CSA) has gained popularity in the U.S. since it was first introduced about 25 years ago. People invest in CSA farms by buying shares, which entitle them to a percentage of the harvest. It’s a way to get healthful, local produce on a regular basis. One CSA farm near Washington, D.C. supports the community not only by growing vegetables, but by providing employment for the developmentally disabled.
It was known as the Noble Experiment. In this video, http://www.WatchMojo.com explores the period of history known as Prohibition in the United States.
If this film was designed to stimulate thought, it succeeds. We follow the lives of three small town high school buddies; “Gil Ames” who is rich and happy; “Dave Benton” who is poor and doomed; and “Ted Eastwood,” who is middle class and doomed. Gil is sent to an Ivy League school (where he meets “men of his own kind”), returns home wearing a bow tie, and takes over his father’s very profitable business. Dave gets married, has lots of kids, and winds up working in a gas station. Ted wants to be an artist, but he falls in love with “Mary” and becomes a white collar bookkeeper.
Mary, however, wants a man with a bigger bank account, so she dumps Ted, who then decides to move to Manhattan and “make something” of himself. After many years of hard work as an advertising artist and art director, Ted lands a painfully dull white collar job in an advertising agency and gets to play golf with rich men. This is “vertical mobility,” the narrator explains, “particularly characteristic of the United States.” Ted returns home wearing a snappy hat, but Mary has married Gil, and both really don’t want anything to do with him.
This film was produced to explain basic concepts of sociology, but ends up presenting a rather dark view of social class and mobility in America.
Producer: Knickerbocker Productions
Sponsor: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc.
