(A story by Paolo Quadrini / S4C NYC)

Cockfighting, locally known as Kukuda Ladhei, is a brutal tradition deeply embedded in the rural fabric of Odisha, particularly during winter festivals like Makar Sankranti. While the civilized world has largely banned this practice, India remains one of the few strongholds where this cruelty persists, often protected by a grey area between religious tradition and legislative loopholes.

Preparation and the Weapon The rooster is not left to its natural instincts. Months before the match, the birds undergo grueling training regimes and are fed specific diets. The most macabre detail is the metal spur (karat): a razor-sharp blade, 5 to 10 centimeters long, tied securely to the rooster's leg. This blade transforms every kick into a potentially fatal slash, ensuring the fight is brief and bloody.

The Ritual and Betting The arena is a circle of dust surrounded by hundreds of shouting men. Betting is the true engine of the event: in a single afternoon, anywhere between 500,000 to 1,000,000 rupees (thousands of euros) can change hands—a staggering amount for rural economies. The tension is palpable as "handlers" taunt the roosters against each other until the first blood is drawn.

The End of a Life The cruelty does not end with the animal's death. The defeated rooster, often mutilated by the blades, is sold on the spot for a few rupees to the spectators. It becomes mere meat, a cheap gastronomic trophy that closes the circle of an existence spent training to die for the entertainment of others.

Although cockfighting is deeply rooted, it is not a legal practice. In recent years, the Odisha police have intensified raids to enforce the ban imposed by the Supreme Court. There have been numerous instances where law enforcement stormed makeshift arenas, leading to the arrest of dozens of individuals and the seizure of vast sums of cash and hundreds of birds already fitted with metal blades. However, these operations often face stiff resistance from local communities, who view police intervention as an attack on their cultural identity, making the eradication of this cruelty extremely difficult.

 

 

(Italian and Spanish below)

We are thrilled to announce a significant step forward in the project for the Namaqua Kalahari Children’s Home in Gochas, Namibia. This initiative, as you may recall, is led by Shoot4Change Spain in collaboration with the NGO Foundawtion and aims to protect and support 60 vulnerable children of the Nama ethnic group, often victims of abuse, violence, and school dropouts.

Thanks to the vision of Theo Paulina Goliath, former director of the local school, and the dedication of the associations involved, the home will provide shelter, educational programs, artistic activities, and psychological support to help children build a better future.

The children’s home will be completed by January 2025, after four years of planning and construction.

To finalize the project, we still need your support to achieve these goals:

•Provide school materials and operational tools.

•Train local staff for effective and sustainable management.

•Offer educational and therapeutic activities for children in need.

 

Your support is crucial at this stage!

Starting Today, November 20, 2024, we launch a crowdfunding campaign on Goteo.org, active until the end of the year. Every donation is tax-deductible up to 80%!

You can also contribute directly via our dedicated bank account:

•SHOOT 4 CHANGE SPAIN

•IBAN: ES2900730100530505648861

•BIC: OPENESMMXXX

 

Help us and spread the word, please!

Follow us on Instagram (@shoot4change_spain) for updates and join the special events we will organize in November and December.

Together, we can create a safe, inclusive, and opportunity-rich space for these children. With your help, we can inaugurate the home in February 2025 and bring hope to a new generation.

Discover more about the project here:

•Article in El Periodico by Judit Figueras about the conditions of minors in Gochas, Namibia: “La escuela de los tumbados.”

•Web page about the architectural project: “Namaqua Kalahari Children’s Home - Foundawtion.”

•S4C first story summarizing the 2019 journey.

(in english below)

Testo e foto di Lorenzo Colantoni

In Giappone il Kumano Kodo, letteralmente “l’antica via di Kumano”, non cela solo i luoghi dei pellegrinaggi più antichi del paese, foreste sacre immerse nella nebbia, altari ricoperti da muschio secolare; i sentieri ora protetti dall’Unesco come Patrimonio dell’Umanità attraversano le rovine del satoyama, il paesaggio rurale giapponese cancellato da un abbandono delle campagne tra i più intensi e forse meno conosciuti al mondo.

 

Un cosmo alieno rispetto alle luci della non lontana Osaka, composto da decine di villaggi scomparsi nella foresta, templi persi tra gli alberi millenari dove si cercano di preservare i riti animisti dello shintoismo più antico.

Un mondo condannato all’estinzione, ma che qualcuno cerca di salvare: è la generazione degli i-turn, giovani e famiglie in fuga dall’insostenibile vita nelle megalopoli giapponesi.

Professionisti del marketing che diventano boscaioli, hippie che decidono di intraprendere il difficile percorso dei monaci shugendo, architetti che diventano autori di giardini giapponesi tradizionali, alla ricerca di una nuova prospettiva ambientale nelle antiche vie di convivenza tra il popolo giapponese e le sue foreste sacre.

Today I'm truly happy to feature Andre Liohn, an old friend, a friend of S4C and one of the best and most accomplished combat photographer of our times.

There is no need to introduce him. He became the first Latin American photojournalist to receive the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal by the Overseas Press Club for his work on the Libyan Civil War. He devoted his Life in documenting the most horrible social and humanitarian crisis around the World (his work documenting the challenges faced by health care personal working in conflict areas, has been used by the ICRC's Health Care in Danger project, denouncing cases violence against health care personal around the World) with an unusual sensible approach to storytelling and empathy for those who lived those stories.

What we show today are different pictures. 

These are not photos that could be published in newspapers or magazines, they are not pictures that tell the story of the events that were happening and that led me to be in that place and moment next to these men. These photos do not tell what happened before and also, they do not tell what could or would happen after they were made. These photos were made as if what had brought us there had stopped to exist. These photos show moments of relaxation amidst the eminent and often inevitable, final point in the lives of those who appear in them smiling. Many of the soldiers in these photos no longer live, some, lost their lives days and even hours after I photographed them. These photos remind me of dear friend Captain Walidi, a hero who died while helping his soldiers to rescue an injured friend. I feel flattered that I have met each of these people.

They pay a tribute to the men he crossed in Iraq. Most of them do not live anymore. Many died just after taking those shots. But many are still there, fighting terrorists in their own Land. They are the ones to whom we owe the fall of ISIS.

 

And there is also another image that struck my attention

 

A tribute to Photojournalism and to those who raise their camera every time to document the moments that define history.

Antonio Amendola

 

(a story by Alessandro Abrusci  and Jenni Crowther/ S4C Bari)

 

This is H. He is 12 years old and tells us he is working on the formula for quantum tunnelling (one of the most complex and mysterious concepts in quantum mechanics).

 

We met H. at a MAP (Methodist Asylum Project) drop-in centre for refugees and asylum seekers in Middlesbrough, a large town in the north-east of England. It's the school holidays and H. is at the centre because his parents are helping at the project and he's too young to stay at home. The family is from Iran and came to the UK two years ago, forced to leave their home country for sensitive reasons which, even though the family have permanent UK residency status, they did not feel comfortable to discuss with us.

 

Our attention was first dawn to H. as he was attempting to play pool with some of the older men who had come to the Wednesday morning drop-in event run by the local charity MAP (Methodist Asylum Project). A group of men and older boys from Somalia, DRC and Eritrea have spent the morning bonding with cues in hand, when one of the oldest, a man from Somalia who is awaiting the processing of his second or third asylum appeal, encourages H. to come and have a go. H. is unfamiliar with how to hold the cue, and the man patiently demonstrates the bent-knuckled hand position, to enable him to try to hit the ball.

 

Curious, we ask one of MAP‘s trustees for information about H. and are told that he‘s a bit of a Math genius and last year he won a prize in the UK Mathematics challenges. Interest piqued, we asked permission from H.’s father and mother to speak with him. They agree after consulting each other and H. to see if he would be willing to talk with us and possibly have his picture taken.

Speaking with H. is a wild ride. His passion and enthusiasm for his favourite subject is at once baffling and infectious. For a non-quantum buff, which is most of us, the conversation is an exercise in concentration and amazement. His speech is littered with rapid-fire theorem, as if his mind works at ten-times the speed of his tongue and it is a struggle for his linguistic expression to keep up. He tells us about his current work on the formula to try "to find a way to increase the wavelength of particles, or just create a particle that could change its wavelength”- (a key component of quantum tunnelling it seems). It's hard to know how to respond in more sophisticated ways than wide-eyed amazement, we start wishing we were more worthy conversationalists for him. We ask if H. could potentially invent time-travel, he says he hopes so, as it is theoretically possible using a wormhole.

 

Asked how long he has been interested in maths, H. says enthusiastically "Since I was born!" He started really studying at five years old, encouraged by his Mum, a maths teacher with a Physics degree, his Uncle who had a profound impact on him as an engineer, and his Dad, a financial manager, who suggests ”it's in his genes.”

 

He tells us that his favourite difference between school in the UK and in Iran is that, there, they only did maths a couple of times a week, but now it's maths every day. In Tehran he read books for research but now in Middlesbrough he mostly uses the internet.

 

His father tells us that mathematics education is strong in Iran and competition is fierce, but still H. reminisces that there was once a national competition when he was around eight-years old that was held five times per year and he won all five and set a new record. He says this made him very happy, as it was hard at the time, but looking back now the maths seems easy. Explaining why he loves maths competition he says "it makes you challenge your way of thinking and that's really interesting... helps you think outside the box... and this is the way to go to create new things".

 

His mathematical heroes (aside from his father) are Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein. After briefly explaining to us the finer points of E-MC2, he says the best thing Tesla did was the invention of free electricity, “which sadly never made it to market” H. muses, his enthusiasm for how this development could benefit mankind, evident.

 

As H. explains how he uses Google to travel to other planets and galaxies, and how he is keen to do this for real, we ask if he's seen Star Wars. He hasn’t, and adds that his interest in possibly watching the films would be to analyse the science behind it. He asks us if Star Wars is set in a 3.0 or 4.0 society, adding that our current society is probably about 0.7 as "... we can't use all our [single planetary] resources usefully."

 

We ask him if he is happy here (in Middlesbrough). "Yeah" he replies, elaborating on the differences between the two countries; ”Here’s a lot more advanced, a lot more forward technology, there's better-shaped homes, more football and more maths."

 

As for the future, he would like to continue to compete in the mathematics prizes, with an eye on studying Physics and Quantum mechanics at Oxford or Harvard. Perhaps this incredible youngster, could end up following in the footsteps of Caucher Birkar, another Iranian refugee, now a professor of mathematics at Cambridge who was awarded a Gold medal in the 2018 Fields Prize, the discipline‘s highest honour.

Whatever his future, there is no doubt that H. has the kind of mind and attitude that this planet needs more of in this time of environmental turbulence. He is phenomenally bright and deeply passionate about the potential of scientific and mathematic advances to help humanity solve our mounting problems.

 

This is a story of one young man with extraordinary potential, but without doubt, there are countless other stories like this, if one had the resources and interest to delve into the personal lives of the people who come to Europe seeking shelter and a chance for their children to grow up with access to education.

 

Without wanting to over-state the potential of young H. it is important to recognise that we can't predict which brilliant key individuals will be instrumental in ensuring the survival of our species and revolutionising our lifestyles. We can't know their nationality of origin or personal history. But what is almost certain is that they will come from H.'s generation and they will need all the support we can give them, whichever country they come from.

 

How fortunate we are in politically-stable countries to be able to offer access to our educational facilities to families from all over the world; and how fortunate our children are to be able to learn alongside children from other cultures.

 

The warm-welcome, resources, support and sense of belonging that the MAP project provides to H.’s family and wider refugee community in Middlesbrough offers a golden opportunity. MAP is demonstrating through action all of the noble qualities necessary to thrive in a vastly diverse community of global individuals.

 

As war, famine and political-oppression force people to seek safe, stable places to live. Perhaps we who receive them, are being presented with a gift not a headache. Perhaps by opening our minds and hearts, we are being given the opportunity to develop understanding and empathy for those whose suffering is far greater than our own.

We can choose to react with anger, born of fear and mistrust, or we can develop humility, gratitude and generosity; like the volunteers involved in MAP are so gracefully demonstrating, day-in and day-out, in this little-visited, seldom thought-of, friendly town in the North East of England.

Alessandro Abrusci and Jenni Crowther/ S4C Bari