BBC reporter Zeinab Badawi meets a prostitute – a common murder target for the gangs of Guatemala City. 6000 women have been murdered since the late 1990.

NEXT ON BBC WORLD NEWS: ONE SQUARE MILE

On the surface the capital of Guatemala – the small central American republic bordering Mexico – is a bustling, well-ordered city: neatly dressed schoolchildren spill out of schools, markets are full of produce, fast-food chains are thriving and the city efficiently supplies water, power and rubbish collection. But when I visited with a TV crew and BBC reporter Zeinab Badawi we found another, darker side: security guards with automatic weapons guarding shops (there are 8 private security guards for each policemen), walls festooned with razor wire and, reportedly, highly organised narco-trafficking gangs – some deportees from the USA – with their tentacles in every level of government – from the police to the judiciary.  There’s an average murder rate of 17 a day, making Guatemala City the third most dangerous place in the world. Women, particularly prostitutes, are most at risk from the macho culture of the gangs with an estimated 6000 raped and murdered since the official ending of the civil war in 1996.  A curfew is imposed at 1 am each day, making daylight hours as dangerous as the night. Over 200 bus drivers have been murdered for not paying protection money.

Guatemala City is a parallel society – the narco gangs are not insurgents seeking to overthrow the state, but their malign presence is everywhere. For instance we went on a bus ride and accidentally trespassed into a gang’s territory – motor bikers appeared with walkie-talkies; fortunately we had the protection of reformed gang members and were immediately alerted to the possible danger. Keeping to our Square Mile, Badawi and the crew were allowed into a maximum-security gaol where the tiny minority of criminals who are convicted end up. Zeinab Badawi also went out with a heavily armed 10 vehicle night-time police patrol where she experienced first hand the apparent determination of the authorities to wrest back control of the streets. Before, a dusk detour had taken us to a gang controlled-municipal rubbish tip where bodies are often dumped. Glue-sniffing kids followed our team as we found even here a community of extraordinary resilience – mothers cooking the evening meal and kids watching TV and playing marbles. But again Badawi quickly discovered a parallel world, with scarcely a mother not having a story of a brother or a father or close relative murdered by a gang.

The 3rd most dangerous city in the world – Zeinab Badawi puts on her flak jacket to go with a heavily armed police convoy patrolling the mean streets of Guatemala City.

Is Guatemala at risk of becoming a ‘failed state’? That was the question Badawi put to the minister responsible for security (the fifth incumbent of the current administration) and to the Spanish ambassador (Spain in 2009 was the country’s single biggest donor) and both unequivocally denied it was even a remote possibility. Everywhere, through schemes to beef up security, to support civil society and root out corruption in the judiciary, police and in local and central government they painted a picture of a society on the rebound, determined not to give in to the lawless elements. According to them, the forces that had turned countries such as Somalia or Afghanistan or the DRC into failed states – religious extremism, broken government, absolute poverty, politically-inspired insurgents – were absent in this Central American Republic.

Three former gang members, who were all being supported by the authorities to find a way back into society, guided us through Guatemala City’s mean streets. One of the first steps is to remove the tattoos that give away their membership of one gang or another.  All were scarred with bullet or knife wounds, heavily concealed as, unsurprisingly, no-one wants to employ a gang member who has been in and out of gaol all their lives. As in any society the daunting challenge for the forces of law and order is to eliminate the drug-fuelled culture that gives the poor little or no alternative to membership of the gangs. Surrounding them is the majority living apparently normal, peaceful lives. A population to be subverted and terrorised or to join.

In a country with a long tradition of unstable, corrupt government and that has only recently emerged from a 30 year-long civil war in which 200,000 perished and that has now been dragged into the narco-trafficking from Colombia, via Mexico to the USA, building what we would describe as a ‘civil society’ is the tallest of tall orders. It’s a vicious cycle because the biggest brake on development in the region is crime and violence, sapping confidence in the organs of the state to deliver security and depriving the authorities of the tax revenues they need to step up the work of civil society building.”

We received close to 1000 nominations and through a rigorous process of evaluation arrived at the dozen finalists from Africa, Latin America and Asia.  Currently, our crews are filming the stories and have received fantastic cooperation from all concerned.  Already, the first two stories have been edited.  We have a demanding schedule to fulfil before voting closes on at midnight on 20^th November.

World Challenge 2010 is the sixth in the series.  One big difference between now and the start in 2006, is that nearly as many nominators cite the Internet as the broadcasts as the principal means of finding out about the competition.  It’s great to see all the effort we’ve put into publicising online, payoff in terms of a huge volume and diversity of nominations.

We are continuing this year with the ‘catch up’ section at the end of each programme where we feature what happened since the project or business was first featured on BBC World News.  It is gratifying to find out how well they are doing.  Nearly all managers tell us that the publicity gave them a real boost — especially, those with a product to sell on the international markets.  So watch out for these follow-up stories this time around.

A new innovation for World Challenge 2010 will be ‘Soapbox’.  This time, we are giving finalists up to 30 seconds to make their appeals direct to the viewers to vote for their enterprise.  As ever, viewers will find it to be a difficult choice!

While many NGOs are working  with the Lao government to clear the lands of UXOs and destroy the remains of the cluster munitions, the sheer scale of operations involving thousands of hectares of land means it will take decades before Lao is completely UXO-free.

It was to reach the chosen Square Mile in the rural heart of the world’s most bombed country, that accompanied with Justin Mills, the Dev TV/One Planet cameraman we  first landed at Vientiane, the capital of Laos. A city with the soul of a small town, Vientiane still retains the flavour of a French colony that it was till the mid-twentieth century.  From the capital, we drove 10 hours to reach the province of Sepong, the town closest to the chosen village in the Square Mile: Shuang Tei.  The venue had been selected by the field office of Handicap International Belgium (HIB). It is one of the most active and appreciated of the de-mining groups. HIB’s fantastic co-operation throughout made it possible for us to film our Square Mile in Laos.

Shuang Tei  doesn’t even need UXOs to cripple its 600-odd people who belong to the Mongkong ethnic group.  Its inhabitants, mostly subsistence paddy farmers, are one of the poorest  you can find in Asia. Over-populated, under-nourished, the village is teeming with kids most of them naked. We found them digging their tiny hands into little bamboo baskets, to try fill their mouths with `Sticky rice’.  This Lao staple sometimes goes with meat, but that’s the exception so far as I could see.  Getting a square meal in our Square Mile is a constant struggle.

All through the journey through the Shuang Tei Square Mile, I spoke to the villagers through two interpreters – one to translate her question in English to Lao; the other to translate the Lao into their Mongkong dialect; as there are no Mongkong speakers who understand English.
Speaking this way, the Naibaan  (tribal chieftain, all of 25 years) told  me the forest  was their “all” – their only source of livelihood when the money from paddy and the cassava crop dries up, as it does often. The timber their fuel, the occasional wild deer their feast, he says. But what about the UXOs that could be lurking anywhere, in the fields, in the forests? “Yes we know, but is there a choice and we have to risk them?” says Naibaan.

Naibaan’s wife, younger at 21, her thin frame making her even smaller, is already a mother of three. Her youngest still suckles at her breast when she sits down in the midst of their paddy field to speak to me.  Her six-year-old daughter plays around with another sibling, and I could not help but being e distracted… what if the child lays hands on any UXO nearby? What if? The mother makes light of this dreadful prospect that they face every single day, but speaks about her dreams for her children. “I wish for my kids to get to go to school. But how can we when we don’t have money to even feed them enough?”

When it hasn’t killed the people who stumbled upon it, the UXO has left them crippled for life. A limb here, an eye there; and when an UXO explodes in a remote field, medical help can take hours to reach. But slowly clearing up these killing fields across the country are dedicated people, from Laos and donor countries such as HIB, who risk their own lives during the demining operations.  We accompanied one such ‘Roving’ team whose job is to respond to immediate requests from aggrieved people who have found UXOs around their houses and fields. After being given a safety briefing, we were taken into a paddy field to see for ourseleves how team members divide the area into sectors, which they then individually `rove’ with their metal detectors,  defuse possible detonators and then at the end of day, after cautioning and clearing the entire area of people, explode them from a safe distance. As reporter I watched one of those phosphorous bombies go up into the sky and form thick clouds, I couldn’t help  but think about the mammoth task ahead. We had witnessed in the capital the coming into force of the cluster bomb ban treaty. The signatories are committed to never using these weapons again, but in Laos and elsewhere there are decades of work ahead to complete the clearing up.

A World Challenge finalist can do a lot for their chances of winning by whipping up their support and online networks, but this isn’t the whole story. BBC World News goes out to over 200 countries and territories around the world, and has weekly audience figures of over 74 million viewers. As a well loved part if the channel’s output, the programmes we make must be seen by literally millions of viewers each year – so what is it that inspires viewers to vote?

Perhaps viewers vote for their favourite ideas – those genuinely innovative projects that bring a totally new way of looking at things to a development problem. Projects like the Elephant Paper story from 2006 – who won the top prize for their project that re-used elephant dung to make paper, providing local jobs and helping the Sri Lankan elephant population at the same time.

Or last year’s runner’s up BTTR Ventures, who were really thinking outside the box when they came up with the idea of growing mushrooms out of waste coffee grounds in San Francisco.

Perhaps instead people are inspired by more moral reasons, such as the Shanti Sewa Griha project, runners up in from 2008, a self-sufficiency group in Nepal that helped the marginalised leprosy suffers earn an honourable existence making and selling local handicraft.

Last years winner must fall into this category, where Dr Wijaya Godakumbura in Sri Lanka won for his Safe Bottle Lamps. Moved to act after years as a surgeon treating the victims of burns from unsafe DIY kerosene lamps, he set up a charity to distribute his safe lamp design to as many impoverished villagers as possible. I think his personal dedication to the cause really struck a cord with viewers.

Finally, I think some vote for technologies that already exist but that viewers feel need more publicity. All the way back in 2005 the Bio-fuel project in Malta publicised the use of cooking oil as a fuel, and ended up as close runners up to the eventual winners.

What do you think makes a good World Challenge project? Any idea which way you’ll vote this year? Be sure to let us know by dropping us an email with your views.

As one of our resident Asia experts here at One Planet you’re sure to see a lot of her work up on our website – in the World Challenge series alone she has put together 4 stories over the years, and worked on many more. Last year she was in Afghanistan to film the Afghan Hands project, which helps Afghani widows earn a good wage selling their beautiful hand-embroidered scarf’s and fabrics in the high-end world of American catwalk fashion. It’s worth checking them out, and the programme she made was my personal favourite pick of last year’s episodes.

In 2008 Romaine worked on two World Challenge stories – Independence Day and Plan Bee. And she achieved what all our Producer/Directors secretly compete for – a World Challenge winner in the shape of the Hashoo Foundation, an innovative project that supports the female bee keepers of northern Pakistan by helping them sell their honey to the mass market. Competition is fierce between the producers who not only win the right to go back and film a catch-up for the next series but also get bragging rights over their colleagues!

Romaine has also worked on our …on the Frontline strand on BBC World News, filming an episode in Nepal for Women on the Frontline amongst others. Other recent stuff includes lots work for the Heritage Heroes series including episodes in Ladakh and Nepal, an episode of Nature Inc in India and Bangladesh and parts of our two-part Food For Thought documentary. Follow the BBC World News Website for more news of these ongoing series.

Things are hotting up here in our production barracks in Soho. I’ve just packed Fiona Melville, on of our Producer/Directors, off on a safari to East Africa to film two of this year’s World Challenge finalists. By safari I don’t mean a tourist jaunt around the Maasai Mara – although you could be mistaken for thinking that after seeing her with all the various bits and pieces of camera equipment she had with her – but more in the Swahili sense of ‘journey’. She’ll be taking all sorts of internal flights and Mutatu buses around – let’s hope she doesn’t get too lost in translation.

If you’re a regular World Challenge follower you’ll have seen some of Fiona’s work before. She put together a piece on the Keystone Foundation for World Challenge 2008 looking at the Adivasi people of Southern India specialise in collecting honey from wild bee colonies on cliffs. The Foundation helps with processing and packaging the honey, adding value at the source of production. It also taught the hunters how to make valuable products such as candles and balms from the beeswax – previously the wax was thrown away.

When she gets back we’ll be putting her photos up on our Facebook page and we’ll also have a blog from her about her filming experiences. Stay tuned into Facebook and Twitter for updates!

Last year we featured half a dozen former finalists. We went back to check up on what had happened to them since appearing BBC World News. We’ve started early this year with a return to the Escuela Agricola in Paraguay.

PARAGUAY

Two years ago World Challenge filmed the story of an agricultural school in Paraguay where very poor students – mostly kids of smallholders – were trained in sustainable farming. The Escuela Agricola of the FundacionParaguaya mostly pays for itself by selling the products grown by the ‘student farmers. It was the brainchild of Martin Burt, a former Mayor of Asuncion Martin Burt and his School was chosen by viewers as runner up in our competition. Last month (April) we went back to film for the 5 minute ‘Catch Up’ section of the next series.

One of the students we filmed two years ago has now graduated. She came from an extremely poor family in the north of the country and now with the help of the school she is working as a small loan’s officer in a small rural town, providing credits to women groups that also benefit from her advice on how to make their small plots of land more productive. She drives her own motorcycle to her office at the micro-credit bank she now works in and has no doubts that it was her experience in the school that helped her change her destiny.

Martin Burt has also moved forward. The money from the award was used to improve facilities in the classroom but the real bonus was the publicity surrounding World Challenge that encouraged institutions like the Nike Foundation to invest in his concept of education that pays for itself. We visited a new school for girls he has just opened in a remote region of southern Paraguay bordering a National Park. This time his aim is not just to train students in better agricultural practices, but to create environmental professionals who also get jobs in forestry and take care of the Park.

Dear Robert Lamb,

I regularly watch World Challenge. I am always amazed at the creativity of the various contributors. World Challenge is an excellent program, not only for its superb production but because the program offers opportunity to those who would be hard-pressed to find those opportunities elsewhere.

HAMRUNIZ said:

An excellent programme which shows that are still people who care. Keep it up, Robert, because these types of programmes have restored my faith in human nature. People who try to help their disadvantaged brethren living in their own country or in foreign lands.

One Global Minds member discusses the programme with her students:

mcmind said:

Dear Robert Lamb,

Thank you for reminding us all of so many wrong deeds, wasteful actions practised by human beings, causing the planet’s destruction at various levels. But above all that there is the “World Challenge” leaving such a great positive impact in today’s people’s mind.

I found it particularly interesting, and also a humble attitude from you, while comparing your journalistic output when you started and these last couple of years. I would say that your “small” means “the biggest” in the most positive connotation for the world’s progress, in terms of sustainability. That’s why we praise your great job, as a journalist and citizen absolutely committed to saving the world’s communities throughout every step towards “World Challenge”.

I have been following the series almost since its launching, precisely for the impressive ideas built from the grass roots. I can even share this with you: I felt the need to take to my classes (at the secondary level) examples of some incredible stories of that entrepreneurship, commitment, innovation from poor local communities. Our students were very sensitive to those facts and showed great interest in discussing some issues.

We would also like to congratulate the BBC World News for such an achievement we hope can continue. “World Challenge” was/ is a “Bright Idea” likewise.

Best wishes,

Maria (Portugal)

Inzinga said:

I find the world challenge very inspiring, and it’s great to have some positive news for a change. it’s motivated me to find ways I can increase sustainable living.

what I don’t like, is blanket statements (equivalent to misinformation), for example that eating beef contributes hugely to global warming. eating beef from Brazil may. or grain-fed beef from the US. or subsidized, overproduced beef from Europe. but not from natural grassland-produced beef from South Africa, Zimbabwe or Argentina. it really depends on the farming methods. farming can be sustainable, or unsustainable, and the former should be encouraged, by consumers. so we need more accurate information, not blanket statements.

I’ll be watching with interest, and voting for my favourite nominee!

Some nice feedback that specifically mentions Shell:

henryjhs said:

Mr. Robert Lamb,

I´ve been following step by step the World Challenge since it started 6 years ago. This program goes beyond than to be a simple TV Show. It share with us experiences of another creative entrepreneurs and they inspires me, in particular, to work by preserving your environment in the mean time. The World Challenge, more than a TV program stimulates much more to all those people who are making their dream comes true and are becoming from little to big businesspersons and loving the nature. The World Challenge is development and an open door for each one of us. The World Challenge is an opportunity for hundreds and hundreds of projects around the world. I am thinking in my own project. I don´t know when but after watching on the World Challenge how many people are making their own dream, it is possible that I can do it, too.

Congratulation to the World Challenge and the BBC World News, Newsweek and Shell and to you, Robert Lamb for that great idea which is now on the road, building new ideas and making the news going beyond the headlines and crossing borders!!! Ideas without borders for one reason: Working preserving the mother earth!!

Mexicocity said:

I have seen your program through the years with amazement at human ingenuity, however, I have felt some frustration when it has become clear to me that there are no governments or international institutions ready to promote, finance or divulge many of these great solutions. Perhaps the next step is to try to put into practice in a significant degree many of the ideas shown in your program. That would provide many of us with a real sense of hope about the future, because, as you have explained so eloquently, the news remain terrible indeed.

Joy said:

Robert: how can you state that “…99.9% of humanity goes about their everyday business peacefully”? That is an incorrect statement! Millions are hassled and millions go in fear of their lives.

Sengupta said:

Excellent blog. We value the BBC news as most authentic and reliable. Unfortunately, the news media in our country, both print and electronic, devote maximum time and space to politics and that also is partisan , like hidden persuaders. Our Father of the nation, Gandhiji always called for cottage industries in preference to big ones. Things are quite different in India. We went for big industries. Agricultural land is being taken over by big industry barons. Here Rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and millions are still below the poverty line. and yet there are signals of small entrepreneurs in the field.

sfielding said:

Hello Robert,

I’m an avid follower and big fan of the World Challenge, so I read your blog with great interest and admiration. From the journalistic side, learning about the World Challenge projects or about the social entrepreneurships covered in Alvin Hall’s series makes them among the most fascinating, exciting and compelling programmes anywhere. And with all the discussion this past week about the role and future of journalism, I think this kind of reporting is the duty of all major news services. Precisely because environmental issues tend to slip from view for lack of “adrenalin”, you have an obligation to keep the public (and the politicians) focused on them, by hook or by crook!

What type of projects are most appealing? Well, any time someone sets out to make a positive difference to the environment and social circumstances of the poor and underprivileged, it’s a story worthy of being told. However, most exciting and gratifying are the projects conceived and initiated by individuals and groups among their own people. Like Dalits who have made good, coming back to help their suffering communities – we’ve had one or two on that theme.

Room for improvement? There is only one thing that seems unsatisfactory and that is the final programme showing the award ceremony. On the one hand, we are all very curious to see which projects have been most popular, and which has won. It’s also gratifying to see the finalists being rewarded for their efforts. On the other hand, all the projects are so wonderful that ultimately we (I at least) don’t care who actually wins – all are deserving. So I think this programme needs to be rethought. Following up on previous winners should continue (not necessarily as part of the final programme), but I’m wondering if maybe something like a discussion or debate would be possible in which some of the contestants participate, so that we can learn more about them and their views. Or some other source of added interest.

This year for the first time there is a project in Indonesia I would like to nominate, but I first have to check with the person in charge for permission and details.

Best of luck with this year’s World Challenge, and thank you for this marvellous initiative.