During Amsterdam’s chaotic rush hour, nine-year-old Lotta Crok cycles to a very busy crossing. “Look,” she says. “There’s traffic coming from everywhere. Four buses from four different directions. For a child on a bike that’s really confusing!”

Lotta is the first junior cycle mayor in the world and her working area is the Dutch capital. You would think this challenge would be superfluous in a city known as the bicycle capital of the world. The number of bicycles in Amsterdam is estimated at 810,000 more than the city’s 750,000 inhabitants and 63% of the population cycle daily.

But children who cycle in Amsterdam face challenges. Lotta says: “The three biggest problems for us are cars, cycling tourists and scooters(小型摩托). The cars take up too much space, the tourists are always swinging side to side and stop when you least expect it, and the scooters simply run you over.”

Lotta became junior cycle mayor in June last year when she won a contest in which school children were asked to come up with plans to make cycling safer and more fun. Her idea was to add children’s bikes to the popular bike share programme.

Since Lotta was appointed junior cycle mayor, she has been busy giving interviews, opening cycling contests in the city and being a jury member during the Amsterdam Light Parade, an event in which Amsterdammers decorate their bikes with lights.

She is now planning a meeting with the city’s mayor to discuss ideas that children have come up with: “One of our proposals is a bicycle park where children can learn how to cycle. Right now, most of us learn it in the street, which can be quite busy. Another idea is to create an app for tourists to teach them the rules of cycling, because most of them really don’t know.”

Following the success of the Amsterdam plan, cycle mayors around the world are now planning to appoint junior colleagues. “They see it works really well,” Boerma, the senior major, says. “I talk to the parents. Lotta talks to the children. And if you look at the city through the eyes of a child, you will also make it accessible for others. A city that’s good for an eight-year-old is also good for an 88-year-old.”

Although born seriously deaf, Troi Lee was surrounded by music. After getting a walkman for his 14th birthday, he wandered through his neighbourhood playing songs. “It was pure joy, ” he says. With his hearing aids, he could hear certain frequencies of his walkman through a magnetic wireless signal. “We need to change the myth that deaf people can’t enjoy music,” Lee says. “I don’t let my deafness affect me. I want to show the world that deaf people can play music as well as the hearing peers.”

With one in six people suffering from hearing loss in the UK and around one in 1,000 children born seriously deaf, having access to live music for deaf people is really a big challenge. Deaf fans believe that too little is being done to serve their needs. “I don’t go to live shows very often as they’re not that accessible, ” says deaf writer Rebecca Withey.

Troi Lee has taken matters into his own hands. In 2003, he founded Deaf Rave, a quarterly event designed for deaf club members. The inspiration came from his experiences at warehouse parties in the early 1990s. “It’s something I can’t quite describe, ” he says, “the lights shining in the place and the biggest sound systems I have ever seen or felt, shaking the entire warehouse. ” From that moment in 1991, he set out to convince the deaf community that joining the club was as much a part of their culture as the hearing people.

Deaf Rave celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, but Lee says there is still much to be done. Deaf people are twice as likely to suffer from depression as hearing people. There is still a huge shame attached to being a deaf music fan. “We are one of the most marginalized groups in society, owing to our isolation, unemployment and the daily frustrations of communication barriers. We organized Deaf Rave because we have the same feeling in our community. ”

Mayen was born on the way to a refugee camp (难民营) in Uganda during wartime. His parents fled from South Sudan and its decades-long civil war. For 22 of his 24 years of life, he grew up there, with no electricity. When Mayen saw a laptop at a registration station for the refugee camp, he told his mother he wanted one. She saved up for three years to buy one for him. When she gave it to him in 2013 , he burst into tears.

He took it to an Internet café, charged his computer and discovered the joy of playing games. He didn’t know how video games were made. But he knew in his heart he wanted to learn to code.

He needed instruction. A friend gave him coding tutorials as well as a copy of video game: Grand Theft Auto, which encourages players to take violent actions. But as a child born in a violent war, Mayen thought about how to create a game that could inspire peace. He taught himself to make games and formed his own company, Junub Games.

“I realized the power of gaming,” he said. “Games can be helpful for peace and conflict resolution.”

With the inspiration, he created a game called Salaam (an Arabic word that means peace), about protecting communities from destruction. Mayen shared the game on his Facebook page, and that’s when he started attracting international attention.

In 2018, Mayen appeared at The Game Awards in Los Angeles, where he was named a Global Gaming Citizen for using gaming to promote “positivity” and community. His vision is to use the game to inspire empathy for refugees. He’s working on a charitable component so that when players make in-app purchases of extra resources in the game, a portion would go to an organization at a refugee camp. In this way, they’re supporting actual refugees’ lives.

Mayen now lives in Washington, D.C. working with a small team on a virtual reality game. “Maybe one day, my dream will come true, making the biggest video game studio that makes games for peace,” Mayen said.