Since 2002, 70,000 children have benefited from Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha’s 20 solar-powered floating schools. Bangladesh, a nation plagued by incessant monsoons, often has a disrupted school year. During the rainy season, roads become impassable, closing upwards of 4,000 schools for months at a time. Global warming is an omnipresent reality in Bangladesh, with climatologists projecting […]
Latin America and the Caribbean provide valuable examples of how family planning can reduce poverty. Family planning involves strategies to delay childbirth, space births over time and avoid unintended pregnancies. When women and men can control the size of their families, they are more likely to have the resources to support their children. A recent […]
Child poverty in Wales is currently one of the largest issues facing the United Kingdom. Under the U.K. government’s Child Poverty Act, which was recently scrapped due to poverty levels across the U.K. remaining high, a child is defined as living in poverty when they are “living in a household with an income below 60 […]
The purported benefits of hosting mega-events such as the Olympics have been increasingly criticized by economists and journalists, and questions are being raised. Are the host nations for the Olympics or similar events making a good investment? Could the money be better leveraged to help the poor via other means? What makes hosting mega-events beneficial […]
In the poverty discussion, it is easy to forget Mexico. Although less than two percent of the country lives below the international poverty line set by the World Bank, poverty and lack of economic and educational opportunity is very prevalent throughout the country. It is estimated that 42 percent of the population lives in some […]
The World Health Organization has included the progesterone contraceptive vaginal ring (CVR) on its 2015 Essential Medicines List. Developed by the Population Council, this contraception method is unique because it is safe and effective for lactating women after they have given birth. It can be used as early as four weeks after childbirth for up […]
USAID’s mission to fight global poverty has just received significant support with the recent addition of the Global Development Lab. USAID has long been the leading government agency seeking to alleviate poverty, yet their mission has primarily been that of implementation. The agency is now not only committed to the physical deployment of aid, but […]
With the 2016 Presidential election approaching rapidly, candidates are beginning to differentiate themselves from the competition by advocating for unique platforms. While some candidates have built a large portion of their campaign around illegal immigration, one candidate has made it clear that he will focus on an issue here at home. Bernie Sanders has emerged […]
Malaria, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis. One of these must be the biggest cause of deaths in the developing world, right? Wrong. It is pollution, not diseases, that causes the most deaths in developing countries. Around 8.4 million lives are claimed each year by various kinds of pollution. That is three times more deaths than those caused by malaria, and […]
The United States Agency for International Development, USAID, is the United States’ lead agency for international development and poverty reduction. The organization is credited with a multitude of successes, but in recent years it has faced organizational problems that have for the most part gone unnoticed by governmental higher-ups. These organizational pitfalls threaten the agency’s […]
