After nearly four years of conflict in eastern Ukraine, homes have been destroyed, schools ruined and families torn apart. Now, over half a million children live with the constant threat of being cut off from safe drinking water as a result of volatile fighting, including indiscriminate shelling of vital water infrastructure. The 11,000… Read more →←
Topic: Big picture
Belqees always dreamt of going to school. “My friends would come back to the village and talk about school, what they had been doing,” the 16-year old says. “I felt like, they are my friends, why am I behind?” At her home, in a remote village in Daykundi, a province in Afghanistan’s central highlands, Belqees explains how she… Read more →←
Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf and Grandma are on the school gymnasium stage. There are giggles, murmured whispers and wide-eyed expressions among the children – about 40 of them, aged 6 and 7. The audience seems entertained. Watching this, I remember my first years of school when the librarian would read me and my… Read more →←
Sometimes someone says something and it hits with such impact that hours, days, years later the phrase still swirls around in your head. “The doctors told us we shouldn’t get too attached to our baby. They said he was essentially a potato – a potato that had been badly cooked. Imagine a defect at the factory, your baby is a… Read more →←
How does a country improve HIV and sexual and reproductive health progress for adolescents? We may think it is tech innovation or new celebrity voices or novel social media. But in fact, it is much simpler. Analysis and planning will accelerate progress for adolescent health. Although Rwanda has high coverage of HIV services, the… Read more →←
Six girls – 16-17 years old – are currently being held 9.6 miles from the UN Headquarters at Rikers Island. These teenagers wake up not knowing how long until they will be tried or sentenced. Gigi Blanchard leads a biweekly writing workshop with these young women. “With my men’s and women’s classes, they all know their future,… Read more →←
It’s unclear who first invented the toilet. Early contenders include an ancient settlement in Scotland dating back to 3000 B.C. and a palace on Crete that was built around 1700 B.C. Fast forward to today: around 60% of the world – 4.5 billion people – don’t have a toilet or similar facility that safely manages human… Read more →←
I was seven months old when my mother took me to see a doctor in Suran, my hometown. I had a high fever, and she had noticed weakness in both my legs. It was then that I was diagnosed with polio. Polio is a highly contagious disease that attacks the nervous system. It can cause paralysis or even death among young children. While the… Read more →←
In the first few seconds of life, a newborn baby should be delivered and held in clean hands. As a baby enters the world, one of the simplest ways we can protect them is to make sure they are delivered in a clean environment. New mothers are also vulnerable, and require the same cleanliness to reduce the risk of disease and infection.… Read more →←
Landslides in Sierra Leone, flooding in South Asia, earthquakes in Mexico, and hurricanes in and around the Caribbean: On today’s International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, there is no shortage of reminders of the increasing risks posed by ‘natural’ disasters. The myth that disasters are ‘natural’ and therefore… Read more →←
