Five Modern Day Heroes That Are Changing The World

Heroes come in all shapes and forms. Here are some people who have helped change the world in ways you may not have realised.

Malala Yousafzai

The 17-year-old Pakistani sparked an international movement after being shot by the Taliban in 2012 while on the bus to school. She survived and has since become a figurehead and campaigner for children and particularly girls who are denied access to education. She was a co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. She now lives in Birmingham but spends time flying around the world as an activist, meeting with Barack Obama in the White House and the Queen at Buckingham Palace. And that’s all after writing a blog for the BBC from the age of 11 about what it was like to live as a schoolgirl under the Taliban, a job considered so dangerous that she did it anonymously.

Alfredo Moser

In 2002, sick and tired of the constant power cuts in his native Brazil, inventor Moser came up with a novel solution. The result was what’s become known as the Moser lamp – essentially a bottle of water fitted in a roof which refracts sunlight through it to create a “bulb”. The idea has sparked a world movement commonly known as Liter of Light, which helps cheap homes in developing countries get indoor “electricity”. A large, clear water bottle, generally recycled and between one-and-a-half and two litres big, is part-filled with water, while a small amount of bleach is added to stop germ growth. It is then attached to a dwelling’s thin roof by making a hole, putting it through and using polyester resin as an adhesive. The bottles can emit the equivalent of a 60-watt bulb and the technology is now being in dozens of places around the world, including Peru, Nepal, Tanzania and the Philippines.

Andre Geim & Kostya Novoselov

These two researchers won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 thanks to their groundbreaking work with graphene. What’s that you say? Well, according to scientists, it’s potentially the most important substance discovered in decades, at least as far as application goes. Geim and Novoselov were the first to properly isolate graphene in a lab, which they did at the University of Manchester in 2004. Just one atom thick and made from pure carbon (making it the world’s first 2D material), graphene is 200 times stronger than steel and is a brilliant conductor. In other words, Professor Geim and Dr Novoselov, who continue to work on the project, are at the frontier of huge potential leaps forward in nanotechnology, medicine, battery power, water purification and more.

John Prendergast

This 51-year-old human rights activist from Indianapolis has spent the last thirty years trying to stop atrocities and build peace in Africa. As founder of the Enough Project and strategic advisor to Not On Our Watch, he has worked with people like George Clooney to raise awareness and halt the problems of conflict minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo and genocide in Darfur. He has also worked for the US government, being part of the team that brought an end to the 1998-2000 Ethiopia/Eritrea War, as well as helping to bring peace to Burundi. In other words, he’s dedicated his life to making Africa a better place. And if that’s not enough, he even coaches basketball to kids.

Dr. Gino Strada

This unassuming 66-year-old Italian is the remarkable doctor behind Emergency, a non-profit medical organisation set up to treat the victims of war. In his capacity as its leader and figurehead, Strada – who trained as a heart and lung transplant specialist – has performed a staggering 30,000 operations on people around the world. Not only that, but he’s done it in some of the most conflict-heavy places on the globe, including Afghanistan, Sudan and Cambodia. Emergency now has 47 treatment centres and provides its care for free. Generally preferring to shun the limelight, last year he featured in an Oscar-winning short about injured Rwandan children. Talking to LA Weekly about why he’s not ready to retire, he said, “When you operate on a child and you see him walking again...or you operate on small children who come in with terminal conditions and you see them running in the garden a month later. That will give you the strength and the energy to work again.”