Good ideas

Die beiden Ideen, die wir hier vorstellen, haben eins gemeinsam: Sie sollen unser Leben verbessern oder zumindest leichter machen.

Full marks to…

…Greensole for providing free footwear to Indian children.

Radha has a four-kilometre walk to school, round trip. With nothing on her feet, she couldn’t bear the walk in the summertime and would often miss school. Now that she has new flip-flops from Greensole, Radha attends school more regularly.

Greensole was founded by Shriyans Bhandari and Ramesh Dhami to provide shoes to the tens of millions of Indian children who have none. So far, the entrepreneurs have donated more than 150,000 pairs of flip-flops and slippers. Bhandari told

The Guardian that his “ambitious mission is now to make sure that every person in the country has a pair of shoes by 2023”.

The flip-flops and slippers are made from footwear collected by big-name companies, including Adidas, Sketchers and H&M, which also absorb the cost of the conversion process.

Bhandari and Dhami have started selling their recycled footwear through shops and online portals and have set up a skill centre to train ethnic-minority women in recycling the shoes. With heart and “sole”, the entrepreneurs are taking steps to improve the lives of Indians in need.

https://www.greensole.in

Full marks to…

…MATES in Construction for taking steps to reduce suicide among Australian construction workers.

A construction worker is lost to suicide nearly every second day in Australia. There are many reasons why suicide rates in the industry are so high. Research shows that many construction workers have difficulty discussing their feelings with colleagues because they are worried about seeming “unmanly”.

While MATES itself doesn’t provide any professional mental-health services, it offers three training programmes to people working on participating sites who want to help: GAT (general awareness training), connector and ASIST training.

Connector training is for on-site volunteers who help connect troubled people to the right professional help, be it finance, drug or alcohol-related, or for those mourning the loss of a loved one.

ASIST training is for volunteers who respond when somebody is thinking about commmitting suicide. The goal is to make a “safe plan” with the worker. In this way, volunteers are similar to on-site first-aid officers.

The MATES website states that “suicide is everyone’s business”, and everyone in the building and construction industry has a part to play in preventing it. http://matesinconstruction.org.au