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All over the world, many active citizen projects are taking place every day: from fighting pollution to simply organising a yoga class in a park.

The founders of 100In1Day took this idea of active citizenship at the heart of social transformation and amplified it: in a single day, the citizens of participating cities must collectively carry out at least 100 positive, inspiring or reflected civic initiatives to help create a better world.

This year's edition will take place on June 1st. Many cities around the world are taking part in the project, including Canadian ones. You can have a look on 100in1Day's website to see if your city is part of it. If your city does, you still have time to register an idea and do something great on Saturday.

To really understand how it works, we spoke to Diego Cuadros Rojas, cofounder of 100In1Day.

Diego Cuadros Rojas, co-founder of 100In1Day giving a talk Monday evening at the Maison de l'innovation sociale in Montreal. Photo:Maison de l'innovation sociale

What's 100In1Day?

For Diego Cuadros Rojas, this event is “a festival of active citizens in which we gather 100 or more positive actions in one day. It is a call to active citizens to look at the city in a positive way and express their love for the city.”

The event is organic and spontaneous. To participate, you just need to have something in mind that could improve the way you or your neighbours live for example. It can go from a small action in your garden to hosting a workshop on how to recycle.

Then, you just have to register your action on the website.

The 100In1Day team is here to support and help the participants but all the resources come from the ones who take action.

We will not sponsor the ideas but we are going to help people get their idea sponsored.Diego Cuadros Rojas, cofounder of 100In1Day

“We are letting the people have this process of understanding that if you want to do something good, you should look at which resources you need to do it. Have this entrepreneurial process in which you think of an idea and get the people involved.”

What is really important for Diego and his team is that people understand that they can do something for others and they don’t have to wait for anyone to get it done.

100In1Day looks more at the experience itself and what could come out of it in the future:

Even if the actions of 100In1Day are not sustainable in the time, the people that took part in 100In1Day will keep on taking action.Diego Cuadros Rojas, cofounder of 100In1Day

The event has already been organised in more than 57 cities, in 16 countries around the globe. In Canada itself, Montreal was the first to host the concept and this year, twelve cities from coast to coast to coast are taking part in 100In1Day.

If you want to register an action in Montreal, you can do it easily via their website.

One of the things that happen with social leaders is that sometimes they work isolated. So with 100In1Day we wanted to bring all these active citizens in one place.Diego Cuadros Rojas, cofounder of 100In1Day

Here is a video of the event 100In1Day held in Montreal in 2018 (available in French only)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6ql1ZzcKMM

How did it all start?

The idea does not come from one person but from a group of young students explains Diego:

We were already doing some urban interventions in Bogota, and we wanted to stop complaining about all the problems in the government and we wanted to see if citizens could do something for the city and not just wait for the city to get things done.Diego Cuadros Rojas, cofounder of 100in1Day

You can listen to Diego talking about the early days of 100In1Day here:

Diego Cuadros Rojas explains how it all started. Photo: JessAerons/iStockEN_Interview_7-20190530-WIE70

They're doing some celebrating and some commemorating in Montreal this week about an event in a hotel bed that took place 50 years ago.

A lot of minds and eyes were pointed in Montreal's direction back in late May and early June of 1969, trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono were sitting in their pyjamas, painting signs and holding press conferences, mostly talking about peace.

The Queen Elizabeth Hotel, May 1969. (cbc. ca)

They also did a bit of singing.

They had recently married and since John was not allowed into the United States because of a marijuana conviction, Montreal was the place where they were going to make a statement and, maybe, sell some records.

After all, Canada had nothing to do with the war raging in Vietnam, and the prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, was considered something of a peacenik. He was, everybody said, friends with Fidel Castro.

So on May 26,1969 at midnight John Lennon and Yoko Ono checked into room 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

Lennon and Ono are flanked by journalists in Room 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. They settled into the corner suite rooms 1738,1740 and 1742 at midnight on May 26, 1969, and over the following seven days spoke and sang about peace with visiting guests. (Jacques Bourdon/Le Journal de Montreal/Montreal Museum of Fine Arts)

They would spend the next week there joined by various and sundry fans, critics, supporters, musicians, disc jockeys, hangers-on and U.S. draft resisters, including Joseph Mark Glazner, whose book Life After America provides a whole of lot of insight into all of it.

Like many events of the 1960s, the Montreal bed-in has been idealized as the legend has grown, but as Glazner explained Thursday in a phone conversation from Toronto, everything wasn't as simple or straightforward as it might appear from a distance.

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Radio Canada International reporter Hanna Nowakowska (standing) at John Lennon and Yoko Ono « bed-in . Hanna Nowakowska, Montreal, 1969.

Canada’s first ever national hotline for human trafficking has just opened on Wednesday morning and is already receiving calls from all over the country.

The Canadian Centre To End Human Trafficking (CCTEH), who is behind this service, wants to help victims and survivors of human trafficking but it also hopes the hotline would fill crucial gaps in data and public knowledge about the issue.

We spoke to Barbara Gosse who is the centre’s chief executive officer to know more about this new hotline.

Definition of human trafficking

As its name suggests, this new resource is looking at human trafficking. But what is human trafficking, how do we define it?

“It is the illegal luring, grooming, transporting, harbouring and controlling of individuals for profit,” said Barbara Grosse.

It usually takes two forms in Canada: forced protitution and forced labour.Barbara Gosse, CCTEH chief executive officer

It is also good to know that human trafficking differs from human smuggling. With regard to the latter, Human smugglers facilitate, for a profit, individuals entering a country illegally.

But a victim of human traffic “can be moved across city boundaries, provincial boundaries and even international boundaries as well” explains Barbara Gosse.

Barbara Gosse defines human traffickingEN_Interview_7-20190529-WIE70

A project inspired by other countries

When created three and a half years ago, the CCTEH was aware “that one of the best tools that were available in other countries [...] was a hotline."

The best mechanism to not only, most and foremost, provide victims of human trafficking with a victim centre, localised response that could assist them to connect to the support they indicate that they need or with law enforcement and also collect data was a hotline.Barbara Gosse, CCTEH chief executive officer

The centre is working with an international company that is the “world leader in human trafficking online” and has helped set up similar services in other countries such as Mexico and the UK.

They have been working with them for over a year and last October, they have been joined by Public Safety Canada who provided funding for the hotline for the next five years.

https://youtu.be/Nh2Lc8Xi6Gk

Video: The Canadian Centre To End Human Trafficking

A double purpose

The main purpose of the line is “to provide any victim or survivor with a localised response, wherever they are located in Canada, and that we can connect them to services and support that they may need within their location," explains Barbara Gosse.

The second aspect is collecting data on the incidence of human trafficking: “not only the number of incidences and where they occur but things like ‘who is involved in human trafficking?’, ‘what kind of human trafficking this is taking place?’ and ‘what kind of resources are needed to address the needs of victims of survivors?’”

Miss Gross also adds that they also accept any tips from members of the public who may suspect that an incidence of human trafficking is taking place within their neighbourhood, community or even their child' school.

It will be a multi-functional hotline.Barbara Gosse, CCTEH chief executive officer

The centre will also provide information on data and human trafficking in general.

The centre’s chief executive officer emphasised on the fact that this line will be totally confidential and any data collected will also be anonymised.

We will make sure that anyone who calls in know that this hotline is confidential.Barbara Gosse, CCTEH chief executive officer

Barbara Gosse talks about the purposes of the new hotlineEN_Interview_6-20190529-WIE60

A service in more than 200 languages

The service will be operating in more than 200 languages, including indigenous languages.

To do so,

Asian countries are getting angry about waste sent to them for recycling from Canada and other western countries.While they may have, in the past, agreed to recycle waste, the problem is that some of it is contaminated with non-recyclable substances and is no longer easy or cheap to process.

Canada’s environment minister says no permits have been issued for companies to send waste overseas since the government changed the rules in 2016 to prevent the practice. So, it’s not known how Canadian waste is still appearing in Asian nations. The Philippines is threatening to ship 69 containers of trash back to Canada no later than next week. And Malaysia wants Canada and other countries to take back their contaminated recyclables.

Canadians may dutifully put items in bins for recycling but environmentalists say much of it does not actually get recycled. (iStock)

Trash is difficult to trace, says waste campaigner

“One of the problems with waste is that it’s really hard to know where it’s come from,” says Emily Alfred a waste campaigner at the Toronto Environmental Alliance. She notes that Canadian cities and towns collect recyclables from homes and that they must follow rules set out by their provincial or territorial governments about where it all goes. But private companies like offices, factories and shopping malls have fewer requirements and less reporting to do about where trash is sent.

Canada is said to be one of the world’s biggest producers of trash. Canadians and people in many parts of the world have become increasingly reliant on single, disposable products, says Alfred. Companies are offering more products like plastic bags, containers for take-out foods and disposable coffee cups. And often the products contain two kinds of materials, like blister packs, that make them difficult to recycle.

British Columbia is said to have one of the most efficient recycling programs in Canada. (Christian Amundson/CBC)

Some provinces make or consider making producers responsible

“One of the problems with our recycling system in Canada and everywhere is that the companies that are making these packages aren’t necessarily thinking about what happens at the end of the life of those products,” says Alfred. “So, one way to solve it is to tell companies, ‘if you can’t recycle this and you can’t guarantee that it is recycled here in our country, you shouldn’t be allowed to sell it in our country.’”

Some of the provinces are passing producer responsibility regulations obliging companies to collect and make sure what they produce is recycled. One of them is British Columbia where the same recyclables are picked from every city and town by companies like Nestle, Pepsi and Unilever. And there are new recycling plants opening in that province to process them. Ontario and other provinces are considering following suit.

At the same time, some cities in Canada and the world are banning things like plastic bags, straws and coffee cups.

“There’s a lot of things we can do,” says Alfred. “And, as individuals we can make choices to reduce our waste. But it’s a lot easier if we use rules to level the playing field for everyone and then we all shift our behaviour a lot faster.”

Hear Emily Alfred tell why she thinks governments must set rules to reduce recyclable waste and to make companies to take responsibility for it.

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(Toronto Environmental Alliance)

It was truly frightening, and deadly for far too many, but it had to be done.

On June 6, 1944, about 150,000 Allied troops aboard flimsy landing craft being hit by bullets, shellfire, and underwater mines, pushed through the waves and onto the Normandy beaches to begin liberating Europe from the Nazis. Some 14,000 were Canadian who were to wrest control of a central area from Vaux to St. Aubain, including Courseulles and Bernieres. The beach liberated, the Canadians pushed inward against determined and bitter resistance in the Normandy Campaign.

A new project seeks to  tell this tale through an innovative use of virtual reality.  Valour Canada is a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to help educate Canadians about their shared military history.  Peter Boyle is  President of Valour Canada.

Peter Boyle, president of Valour Canada talks about a new D-Day EN_Interview_1-20190528-WIE10

After over a year of filming on locations from the beach to the various battle sites across Normandy, the project is now complete and the D-Day and Normandy campaign portal will be unveiled and available on the Valour Canada website on the anniversary, June 6th.

Peter Boyle, president of Valour Canada, describing the Battle of May-sur-Orne and Verriers Ridge from Point 67 in France. (Nancy Saxberg)

Having already completed the “Dieppe” battle portal as a template, the D-Day/Normandy portal will allow students to navigate on their own in a 6-axis 360-field across the battle sites, with a variety of special locations with links to details on the particular importance of that site.

Boyle is quick to point out the virtual reality site is not designed to be, and certainly isn’t anything like a video game.

It is instead a unique learning tool for education of an important time in Canadian history.

War Diaries: June 8, 44 Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry Highlanders (of eastern Ontario)

Boyle says that while the standard use of books and even film documentaries can teach students about history, the use of virtual reality allows them much greater control about what they’re learning and so probably much greater interest and retention. He says its important for young Canadians to learn about the character of Canadians of past generations, along with the use of war, when it is needed, when not, and the terrible costs.

He says young people need to know this as they will grow to be the voters and political leaders of the future.

additional infomation

Valour Canada- Juno 75 virtual reality

Valour Canada- Dieppe virtual reality project tour 

CTV: S Greer: Jun 6/14:D-Day 70: First building liberated (+video)

Laurier Military History Archive: War diaries

Windsor Star:S Hill: May 16/19: Veteran going to 75th (+ video)

The Heart & Stroke Foundation is urging the government to pass its proposed law which would ban the advertising of foods high in fat, salt and sugar to children. The consumption of these foods is links with chronic diseases and premature death.

“Over the past 30 years we have a crisis in Canada, and in the world actually, of diet-related obesity which starts in childhood,” says Yves Savoie, CEO of the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada.

He says bad habits acquired at an early age have a great impact on cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases. “And we see those impacts in terms of quality of life. But we also see it in terms of mortality, premature death.”

Under the proposed law, advertising for chocolate milk would be banned because a small glass of it contains five tablespoons of sugar. (iStock)

Quebec law is effective, says Savoie

Savoie is convinced that a law prohibiting the advertising to children under 13 of foods high in fat, salt and sugar would reduce obesity levels. He points to the province of Quebec, where all advertising to young children is banned. Francophone children who watch local television are least at risk of being overweight or obese compared to children in the rest of the country. The risk is higher among English-speaking children in Quebec who watch more programming from the United States which is not subject to the advertising ban.

Savoie says 90 per cent of the advertising aimed at children involves foods that are high in salt, fat and sugar and it has a huge impact on children who then demand their parents buy these foods.

The commercial food industry opposes the law

The legislation banning the food ads to children is stalled in the Senate and health advocates are worried that if it is not passed soon, it will be dropped because of the coming government recess and an election slated for October 2019.

Savoie says he hopes legislators will not cave in to the enormous opposition to the law posed by the commercial food industry. He thinks the law would not harm farmers and would only oblige the food industry to come up with healthier choices.

The government of Canada says nearly 1 in 3 Canadian children are overweight or obese. 

Hear Yves Savoie explain why he believes it is important to pass legislation that would ban the advertising to children of foods high in fat, salt and sugar.

ListenEN_Interview_2-20190528-WIE20

Technology has lured Canadians into spending more time sitting in front of screens, but it can also offer great tools to help people become more active.

There are wearables that can be used to set goals and measure activity, apps you can download on your phone to remind you to move and connect with other people, and videos which you can use at home if you don’t want to go to the gym.

Activity levels decreasing in Canada and world

“For...decades, we’ve been seeing a downward trend in how active Canadians are, and that’s not just Canadian adults. We’re seeing it starting as young as...infants, toddlers and preschoolers. And unfortunately, activity levels tend to decrease with age,” says Leigh Vanderloo, exercise scientist with PartiACTION, a non-profit which promotes physical fitness.

ParticipACTION says it’s important to choose a workout video for one’s particular level of fitness and one that is led by a certified trainer. (iStock)

Going for a walk is good too

She says it’s important to choose technology that fits the individual. Some are designed for high-end athletes, others for beginners and everyone in between. Vanderloo cautions that not every option is good.  One way to choose a trainer, for example, is to see if he or she has been certified by the Canadian Society of Exercise Physiology or the U.S. equivalent, ACE.

ParticipACTION has its own program for beginners. And she says anyone can start with something as simple as going for a 15-walk a day, and then make it longer, faster and perhaps include steps or inclines.

Try different things, advises scientist

It’s good to try different things and see what works for the individual. And Vanderloo says it’s fine for there to be ups and downs, but the goal to elicit behavioural changes over time that increase activity and decrease time spent sitting.

This, she adds, is good for physical health and averting cancers, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. It can build stronger bones, improve sleep, energy and focus. But it can also improve resilience and help stave off anxiety and depression.

ParticipACTION's Leigh Vanderloo offers advice on choosing technology to help one become more active.

ListenEN_Interview_2-20190527-WIE20

Stress, anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion and burnout are felt more by farmers and ranchers in Canada than by people in other professions, according to a university researcher. A survey of more than 1,100 farmers found 45 per cent reported high stress, 58 per cent had various levels of anxiety and 35 per cent reported depression.

New sources of stress

Pressure caused by weather and animal disease have troubled farmers for generations, but there are new sources of stress.

“Some of the animal disease outbreaks that we see, we see on a much wider scale now,” says Andria Jones-Bitton, a professor at the University of Guelph who has been studying farmers’ stress. “The financial pressures that farmers experience are certainly much higher than they’ve ever been. There’s more social isolation as farms have grown larger but also are more spread out so that some of the rural communities that used to exist don’t exist anymore.” What’s even newer, says Jones-Bitton, is stress caused by animal activists and criticism on social media.

Ranchers have to be on guard against disease. (iStock)

Farmers face obstacles to getting help

Because of scarce health resources in rural Canada and the stigma around mental health problems, many farmers have not been getting the help they need. Jones-Bitton says attitudes are changing and more farmers are seeking help. But she says, not enough are, there is still a lack of resources and health professionals sometimes don’t understand the nature of agricultural work enough to provide appropriate care.

One in eight Canadians work in agriculture and the agri-food industry, and the sector contributes over $100 billion to the country’s annual GDP. Jones-Bitton is advising governments on what she has found and urging them to provide more resources for the mental health of Canada’s farmers. “I think we’ve got a population here that provides an essential service to the country and we could do a better job of supporting  them.”

Prof. Andria Jones-Bitton describes farmers' mental health issues and what's needed to help them.

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..clean energy industry

Amid all the talk about reducing pollution and going green, there’s not been much general awareness of the fastest growing area of the Canadian economy.

Clean Energy Canada commissioned a report which analyses Canada’s clean energy industries.

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The report is called “Missing the Bigger Picture”.

Joanna Kyriazis is senior policy advisor at Clean Energy Canada (supplied

While politicians and media are preoccupied by issues of job loss in fossil fuels, mining, and other “traditional” industries, the report notes that the clean energy industry is creating more jobs than these other areas combined.

Canadian-made electric busses and trucks from New Flyer and Lion Electric are just two more examples of Canadian firms growing the clean-tech sector (New Flyer)

It also points out that the sector is attracting billions of dollars in investments.

The report defines the clean energy economy as: “The technologies, services and resources that increase renewable energy supply, enhance energy productivity, improve the infrastructure and systems that transmit, store and use energy while reducing carbon pollution".

Two huge solar panel farms east of Cornwall Ontario, along with a vast multitude of smaller and even individual solar installations provide clean renewable energy to the province (Google Earth)

That definition is further refined to indicate that the expansion of this activity must be helpful for achieving Canada’s 2030 greenhouse gas targets, and  that historical data must be available to allow estimates of clean energy activity to be made.

Employment breakdown of the clean energy sector in Canada (Missing the Bigger Picture report)

Kyriazis says that the sector includes sources providing energy produced from zero carbon sources such as renewable (as in hydro) or nuclear and technologies to reduce emissions from fossil energy sources.

The Canadian firm Carbon Cure Technologies, has created a process that injects CO2 collected from industrial processes into the concrete mix to make a stronger product while reducing CO2 in the atmosphere. The technology is easily retrofitted to concrete manufacturers plants (Carbon Cure Technologies- Halifax)

Other areas in clean tech include transmission-distribution and energy storage, along with green building materials and construction technique, and emission/energy reducing technologies such as smart thermostats, and energy efficient appliances.

Kyriazis also says an international report on “clean tech” companies lists 12 Canadian firms in the world’s top 100 such firms, and that exporting these products and technologies is an increasingly important aspect in promoting Canada as an emerging leader in this field.

From New Flyer, and Lion which make electric busses and trucks, to Enerkem which converts non-recyclable and no-compostible waste into fuel, and a host of other firms such as those specialising in energy efficient and zero emission construction, she says the Canadian clean energy sector is booming.

Farm Radio International- 40th year.

It was a small idea by a Canadian broadcaster who saw a need in sub-Saharan Africa and realised his skill could help.

Begun by George Atkins, the idea was based on a Canadian radio concept of the 1940’s and 50’s which had brought Canadian farmers across the country together around the radio to get farming advice and hear tips and experiences of others.

Farm Radio International is now in its 40th year playing an important role in Africa where that importance and help continues to grow.

Kevin Perkins is the executive-director in Ottawa

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The non-profit Farm Radio International began with a handful of typewritten scripts on farming tips and advice sent by mail to 34 radio stations in Africa.  It now involves well over 1000 scripts, accessed weekly online by more than 800 stations and 2500 broadcasters across 40 countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ottawa-based Kevin Perkins, Executive-Director of Farm Radio International, shown here the studio of Radio Savannah in Tamale, Ghana on World Radio Day (February 13, 2019 (supplied)

The broadcasts are also translated into several languages and locally again into a variety of dialects.

The programme and idea has of course expanded to include feedback from crop and livestock farmers to the station and to other listeners.

A Farm Radio International worker consults with local farmers to collect feedback about the broadcasts (FRI)

While technology has advanced, radio is still the easiest and least expensive way to reach a wide audience in those countries in the effort to fight poverty and food insecurity in an era of changing climates and conditions. To make it entertaining as well as informative, they have also created some radio stories with the farming tips woven in.

The FRI broadcasts now reach almost 50 million rural adults (FRI)

Along with the actual broadcasts, the Ottawa-based Farm Radio International produces radio resources, and technologies that help broadcasters improve their programs and the reach of the broadcasts to small-scale farmers, all in the effort to achieve better livelihoods and health outcomes.  In 2017-18 it was estimated that F.R.I. reached an estimated 49 million rural adults with radio programming.

The non-profit operation is funded through private donations and Canadian government agencies along with some international agency funding.

additional information

Farm Radio International