Day after day our screens are filled with harrowing images of hospitals overrun, lines of people waiting desperately for a hospital bed or oxygen for a loved one. As the number of cases keeps climbing, the threat inches ever closer to home, family members, colleagues, friends, and neighbours. I feel so helpless right now. Helpless at my… Read more →←
Topic: Insider
March 2020. India had recently completed a massive vaccination campaign of more than 300 million children against measles and rubella – two potentially life-threatening diseases. I was posted to New York for a health communications assignment which involved sharing my experiences from the public health communication drive that had… Read more →←
As my assignment in Afghanistan was coming to an end, I found myself reflecting on two years in this beautiful and troubled land. If there is a common theme from my many missions and discussions, it’s the strength, resilience and selflessness of women here. The mothers and grandmothers and daughters who remind me, in so many ways, of… Read more →←
How can we positively impact the self-perception of millions of adolescents in Brazil? I confess that Dove’s call for proposals aimed at strengthening adolescents’ self-esteem and body confidence as part of the Skills4Girls initiative gave me butterflies. The challenge seemed harder considering my country’s racial and ethnic… Read more →←
About two years ago, I was meeting a group of adolescent girls and boys in Aravan, a rural area in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan, to talk about their lives, their plans and visions for the future. Something that struck me was that girls were very keen on continuing education, learning new skills and building a professional career. They… Read more →←
Cookbooks and sanitary pads are not the first things that come to mind when thinking about ways to support women and girls who have survived violence. But for a group of female innovators in Ecuador, these low-tech, yet innovative, “secret women’s codes” could combat the COVID-19 pandemic’s hidden crisis – increasing rates of… Read more →←
When Pakistan’s polio vaccination campaigns were suspended in late March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my work researching vaccine acceptance in the country was also suspended. Lockdowns made it difficult to continue working with local communities about their vaccine beliefs, misconceptions and concerns. Soon after, Deepa Pokharel,… Read more →←
The COVID-19 lockdown spelled disaster for Emiliya*, a refugee and married mother of two living in Bulgaria. She was already struggling to assimilate to a new life with lower paying jobs, fewer social opportunities, and a language she still hadn’t mastered. Then the pandemic hit. Schools closed and her son and daughter were learning… Read more →←
I never expected Malaysia or the world to be thrown into such a unique and stressful situation as the COVID-19 pandemic. What a shock for us all both professionally and personally. The standard programming for UNICEF Malaysia is mostly: upstream work with the government, advocacy with civil society and research with academic institutes.… Read more →←
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Afghan women and girls were hard to reach. With no or limited access to telephones, radio, television and the internet, the most common way to spread information was through women going door-to-door or attending women’s groups. When lockdowns started, traditional forms of communication were further… Read more →←