Health
The Kopernik Revolution
Kopernik is a technology marketplace that connects life-changing innovations (such as water purification and solar-powered devices) to the people who need them in the developing world. Co-founder Ewa Wojkowska explains how and why it came about.
Pictured above is a woman in Manado correcting her own vision with AdSpecs – self-adjustable eyeglasses that allow individuals to correct their own vision. This addresses the lack of trained optometrists who are able to prescribe properly corrected eyeglasses.
FLOW (For Love Of Water) Screening in Ubud
Bali’s Green School (www.greenschool.org) organised a screening of the award-winning documentary FLOW (For Love Of Water). Intense and provoking, the film explores aspects of the global water crisis, from polluted tap water and contaminated bottled water in the US to the privatisation of water services in developing countries, which often excludes the poorest from access to clean water.
Producer Steven Starr has been working with students of the Green School over the past week, and described how impressed he was by the “enthusiasm for life” he found on the campus. In March, a group of Green School students travelled to the Global Issues Conference for EARCOS (East Asia Regional Council of Schools) to present their research on water issues in Bali. This ongoing work is set to become the basis for a documentary film on the subject later this year.
IHS Booklovers’ Lunch Fundraiser featuring Elizabeth Pisani
As a fundraiser to sponsor emerging Indonesian writers to attend the 2009 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, the Indonesian Heritage Society is organising a lunch with Elizabeth Pisani on April 7th in Jakarta. Pisani’s life as an HIV prevention researcher has taken her from the brothels of southwest China to the gay bars of Bangkok, and in Indonesia she has worked with the health ministry to map HIV risk. She will speak about her experiences and her book The Wisdom of Whores at the IHS lunch, in a talk entitled ‘Landscapes of Desire: sex, politics and AIDS in Indonesia.’
Funds raised at the event will be used to send two or more Indonesian writers to participate in the October festival, and also to fund 5 Indonesian readers, students and aspiring writers to attend.
For more information and to buy tickets (Rp.300,000), contact IHS at +62 21 5725870.
