The New Heroes
Episode Descriptions
Episode One Dreams of Sanctuary
In India, Kailash Satyarthi rescues brutally enslaved children in daring and dangerous raids, and has a radical vision to put an end to the market for products made with forced child labor. In San Francisco, former drug addicts and criminals find training, employment and encouragement through "Delancey Street," which runs a restaurant, a moving company and other businesses to provide the first stable step to a new life. In Africa, Moses Zulu has created a home and school for AIDS orphans and other children in Zambia to nurture their growth into productive adults.
Episode Two Technology of Freedom
Technology that transforms life is often out of reach to the impoverished in the undeveloped world. This episode explores the ethics and work of exceptionally innovative "compassionate capitalists" who have created selfsustaining business enterprises that are designed to maximize human benefit, not profit. Applying the segmented labor process of a fast food restaurant to what is normally routine eye surgery in the Western world, an Indian doctor and American businessman have together created a healthcare and business model that provides 200,000 cataract surgeries a year to prevent unnecessary blindness. Recognizing that poor irrigation was diminishing the fertility of land in Kenya, the founders of ApproTEC invented a manuallyoperated low cost water pump that can double the yield of a small farm. In remote areas of Brazil, the population lives without electricity and therefore without the lights, refrigerators and other appliances that much of the world takes for granted. That is changing through the determination of Fabio Rosa, who has spent twenty years challenging corporate power, government bureaucracy and the diminished expectations of the poor that they too can have electricity.
Episode Three Power of Enterprise
We meet Muhammad Yunus, known as the "banker to the poor." With the simple but powerful realization that the poor need to be able to borrow money more than the rich, Yunus founded Grameen Bank, which has today provided 3.8 billion dollars in loans to 2.4 million families in Bangladesh and inspired similar credit operations in one hundred countries. Leveraging the traditional craft of women in Rio de Janeiro, Maria Teresa "Tete" Leal founded a sewing cooperative called CoopaRoca that produces highquality/high style clothes while maintaining fair labor practices for the women. Less glamorous as an occupation, but critically important, garbage collection is often a neglected service among the poor. In Peru, Albina Ruiz worried about the health impact of living in the filth of uncollected waste. Creating a microenterprise to do the job that the government was ignoring, Ruiz now has projects in 20 cities that provide garbage collection for over three million residents and employs 150 people.
Episode Four The Power of Knowledge
How do you provide an education for children that society doesn't value? An Indian schoolteacher who took the train to work, Inderjit Khurana could not help noticing the children of the slums who spent their days begging from train passengers instead of attending school. Her solution was to bring a school to the train platforms, where she could earn the trust of the children and introduce them to an education. In Egypt, Dina Abdel Wahab had never given much thought to the special needs of disabled children in her country until her son Ali was born with Down Syndrome. Welleducated and affluent, she was able to access services for Ali, but she determined that her son, and all preschool age children in Egypt, deserved a quality introduction to education. In Thai villages, the girls have become a commodity. Highly valued in the prostitution industry, instead of being a financial burden on their families they become a source of income. Sompop Janktraka, a loving and determined man, has started a school for young girls to give them an education and options for their future.