Khaled Hosseini has worked hard to give back to his native country of Afghanistan over the years. His novels show the ravages of poverty, gender discrimination, militant oppression and children being orphaned in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, what he describes in his novels is not limited to fiction. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports […]
Currently, there are over six million child deaths every year. However, there are few countries on earth more deadly for children than Angola, a Southwestern African province with one-fifth of its children dying before the age of five. Despite this figure, Angola is also home to one of the most flourishing oil and mining industries, […]
A handful of celebrity actors have donated their skills for the creation of a children’s education project, GivingTales, which features Hans Christian Andersen stories, and aims to benefit UNICEF U.K. Sir Roger Moore, a twenty-year UNICEF ambassador, heads the venture that animated several of Andersen’s tales. Moore implored the help of Ewan McGregor, Stephen Fry, […]
The Gates Foundation and the company TechnoServe have developed a solution to the endemic poverty of smallholder farmers in Africa — The Coffee Initiative. Across Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and more, the Initiative empowers each wrung of the business ladder involved in the coffee-making process, increasing income and lifting communities out of poverty. Today, around […]
Since the Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000, global poverty has nearly halved. There have been huge advancements in medicine and more people than before having access to clean drinking water. However, despite these advancements, women and children are still the most at risk. Because of the uneven progress in reducing global poverty for […]
“Africa’s greatest growth challenge is energy, and there’s a serious need to quickly get additional generation capacity in place to meet increasing energy demands,” says Luc Graré, senior vice president EMEA at REC Solar. In a renewed effort to meet the vast demand for economically sustainable energy resources within developing regions, REC, a U.S. solar […]
Redemption Hospital is the only free general hospital in Liberia’s capital city. During the Ebola outbreak of 2014, it became the epicenter of the contagious virus. At its peak, the outbreak in West Africa killed 5,000 people in Liberia alone. The hospital in Monrovia was unable to manage the flood of ill patients. It lacked […]
In 2011, Newsweek and The Daily Beast published a list of countries, titled “Best Countries for Women,” that ranked the living conditions for women in various parts of the world. Out of 165 countries analyzed, Afghanistan ranked second-to-last at 164th. Afghanistan is well known for its cultural and religious mistreatment of women. During the height […]
Drinking water ATMs? In recent years, severe water shortages have challenged an already energy-starved Pakistan. Now, Punjab province is installing solar-powered ATMs that can distribute clean water to residents. The small, two-foot boxes function just like normal ATMs, with one notable difference. Instead of cash, the machines dispense clean drinking water, which in times of […]
In Pakistan, one in 89 women die because of pregnancy and childbirth-related complications, and Pakistan’s Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) is 299 per 100,000 live births. Twenty percent of the deaths of women of childbearing age are caused by maternal complications. The majority of these deaths are caused by postpartum hemorrhaging. Hemorrhages can be extremely problematic, especially […]
