17/08/2009

Available for over a year

Personal stories behind the news from all over the world. With George Arney. India school suicides; farming in Iowa; the father who ran Auschwitz. Inidian school suicide. India has one of the highest suicide rates of teenagers in the world. According to a ministry of health report, an average of five and a half thousand teenagers commit suicide each year. The government has now committed itself to addressing the problem. We hear from a voluntary suicide counsellor who for 12 years has worked for the Delhi based Sumaitri organisation which offers help to suicidal people and is now on the front line in trying to stop school children from killing themselves. Farming families in the United States. Over the next two weeks on Outlook, in collaboration with John Biewen of the Centre for Documentary Studies at Duke University, we'll be examining the lives of five farming families across the United States. Once upon a time, most people in the USA were farmers, now only about one in a hundred works the land, and yet most of the country's agriculture is still run by farming families. We begin with the story of Craig and LaVon Griffieon and their four children who have an 800 acre farm in Iowa. As we hear, Craig and LaVon have very different ideas about the best way to farm. Family secret We hear how a daughter has been trying to come to terms with her father's past. Barbara Cherish's father was a leading member of Hitler's SS and the Kommandant at the notorious Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz.