Tunde Wey is on a mission to “unfetter diners from the tedium of modern American cuisine.” The Nigerian-born chef came to the United States at age 16 with plans to become a doctor. But, after living in Detroit for 15 years, he finally realized that what he really wanted to do was cook.
Geographically just about the size of Texas, Nigeria’s population totals at about 150 million people. Since the country is the most populous in Africa, Wey always felt perplexed as to why food from his homeland was not more obtainable in the United States.
After co-founding a restaurant in Detroit, the Nigerian immigrant began his own “pop-up” restaurant. He aimed to explore America, as well as to introduce people to the food he grew up with. The name of his business, Lagos, is the name of his hometown in Nigeria.
With Greyhound busses as his primary mode of transportation, Wey impressed diners in New Orleans, Chicago and Buffalo and then headed for the East Coast. He would rent out different spaces, sometimes a restaurant and other times communal kitchens, and make his crowd a delicious feast. After continued success, his one-night, one-man restaurant started selling out.
Each night, the chef brought along with him a bag filled with cooking supplies such as alligator pepper seeds, calabash nutmeg and uda, which is a kind of pepper. Wey likened it to a doctor’s medicine bag. He had no formal training and mostly went by what he observed in his childhood kitchen.
“I learned how to cook from watching my parents, my aunt, a lot of YouTube videos… The benefit that I have is that I grew up with this food, so I know exactly what it’s supposed to taste like,” he said.
In fact, as he gained footing in his own kitchen, Wey became more and more aware of how much he missed his family, who he had not seen in over seven years. It is rare, but in some instances, children are sent over to the United States on their own and then later sponsor family members to emigrate and join them. Charitable groups and advocacy organizations help with this process.
Wey was getting major attention from top-notch chefs and was asked to go to Los Angeles to cook with celebrity chef Roy Choi in February 2015. But, his trip came to screeching halt when a team of border patrol agents stopped his Greyhound bus near El Paso, Texas. They discovered that his Nigerian passport had long expired.
It was back in 2007 when he allowed his student visa to expire. Wey said, “I just thought: I’ll fix this. I’m going to go back to school, finish and adjust my status somehow. And so it was something I kept putting off.” Nearly 50% of all illegal immigrants are in the same predicament. They let their visas expire and fail to renew them.
Wey spent a few months detained in El Paso and felt as though all of his success in America had hit a wall. Fortunately for him, he had a clean record and many friends and family members who managed to raise $6,000 to bail him out and keep him from being deported.
The backup in immigration court means that Wey’s appointment is not until 2017. A judge will then determine his fate: whether he can stay or whether he must say goodbye to all of his dreams and go back to Nigeria. Until then, he plans to keep cooking and has achieved a prime spot for a new restaurant in New Orleans’ St. Roch Market.
Wey is one of 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, according to the U.S. Center for Immigration Studies. The Pew Research Center reported in 2014 that illegal immigrants make up 5.1 percent of the U.S. labor force.
– Lillian Sickler
Sources: NPR, Lagos, Metro Times, Eater, Laws, New York Times, Pew Research
Photo: Pinterest
Thailand: An Experiment in Family Planning
In order to combat this decline, Mechai Viravaidya decided to start at the root of the issue — the women who had no control over how many children they would bear. After discussing family planning with several women, they decided that providing a pill was a great option for some women. However, this only covered around 20 percent of the population.
This did not hinder them.
Adapting the Coca-Cola model, Viravaidya and his team sought out well-respected individuals in each community to provide locals with family planning advice and devices, primarily birth control pills and condoms. It was the condom that took off. They were sold at local stores, on floating markets, handed out by the police, given to children in school, handed out in key chains, they were taking the nation by storm.
Soon, the team met some push-back from the religious community, but after talking with leaders, several monks actually blessed the condoms and contraceptives with holy water, thus making them something that everyone could utilize without feeling as if they were sinning. They then went to the military, which helped to advise local populations on the risks of HIV and AIDS, and they handed out condoms at traffic stops. Mechai became Thailand’s own “Mr. Condom.”
They soon went to the schools to educate children on the risks associated with unprotected sex, but they made it enjoyable. The team developed games that promoted family planning initiatives and condom balloon competitions, and in five years trained over 300,000 teachers in family planning methods. This meant that students now had people to talk to should they have any questions, and were thus able to advise their own parents on proper methods of family planning.
By 2000 the average amount of children per family was 1.5 and the growth rate had dropped to 0.5 percent, which meant that there were fewer individuals living in poverty and more children with greater opportunities for education and work in the future.
As the AIDS epidemic hit Thailand, their contraceptive commotion kicked into high gear, they were providing education on safe sex throughout all the villages, targeting high school students who then taught younger students, who then taught their parents. Thanks to the safe-sex brigade, Captain Condom and several other key players, the AIDS rate in Thailand went down by 90 percent, and the World Bank estimates that 7.7 million lives were saved because of this.
Thailand should act as an example for the rest of the world. Currently, sex and contraceptives have such a taboo upon them that several kids are petrified to even ask questions about basic safety precautions. They are afraid of judgment from store clerks and doctors, but if we normalize sex as a part of culture, we allow people to be more open and thus safer. If we take away the taboo associated with sex and perhaps even hand out free condoms and have free consultations with nurses and midwives about pills, we can reduce the rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs in our own nations. Although Thailand is a relatively small nation, it has shown us that small changes can make a huge difference.
– Sumita Tellakat
Sources: TED talks, Advocates for Youth
Photo: Flickr
Are Drought-Resistant Crops the Solution to World Hunger?
However, genetic engineering remains a technique of key significance in food sciences. Researchers have aimed their endeavors towards manipulations of crop genome that could alleviate hunger and malnourishment worldwide. New strains of food crops are being engineered that are better in nutritional value and resistant to environmental disasters.
One of the most significant research areas in this field focuses on making the crops drought-resistant. Drought remains one of the biggest challenges in the provision of food worldwide. Most of the world’s undernourished population is geographically concentrated in the driest areas of the world; this makes their food supply even more susceptible to droughts. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reports droughts to be more severe in effect than any other physical hazards. The recent droughts in Kenya and China are proof of the calamitous effects of droughts on food production.
To offer a solution to this problem, many researchers globally are focused on introducing drought-resistant genes into common staple food crops, such as wheat, rice and barley.
In any plant organism, there are multiple genes that interact to form a complexity of arrangement that affects the plant’s response to a stressor, such as drought. One of the most important known plant chemicals that affects a plant’s reaction to the environment is abscisic acid.
Abscisic acid is a plant regulatory hormone that controls a plant’s osmotic responses to external stimuli at a cellular level. As the water level available to the plant drops, abscisic acid regulates the ionic flow through the cellular membranes. This changes the osmotic pressure within the cell, which ultimately leads to closing of stomata — the pores in the leaves of a plant that are responsible for loss of water to the environment. This conserves water within the plant, allowing it to survive in dry conditions.
To enable the plant to survive in dry conditions, the loss of water from the plant body has to be minimized. This can be achieved through abscisic acid dependent regulatory pathways. This is done by increasing the expression of abscicic acid, but only under certain conditions.
Transcription factors in a genome are non-coding parts of the organismal DNA that control the rate of transcription of a particular gene, and therefore the amount of transcribed product—usually a protein—produced. By increasing the amount of osmotic regulators in the plant as a response to environmental stimuli, the plant can conserve water resources and tolerate drought much better. The abscisic acid molecule then regulates the gene expression of other genes within the genome that are induced or repressed to tackle external stress on the plant.
So far, much progress has been made in this field: successful transgenic manipulations have resulted in more drought-resistant lines of wheat and rice. However, as with all genetically engineered products, the progress made is only a fraction of the knowledge that is necessary for reliable products. The genome of any plant is vastly complex: many different genes, transcription factors, and regulators interact simultaneously to generate any desired phenotype, such as drought-resistance. More research efforts are necessary in successfully implementing these crops as an effective solution to hunger.
– Atifah Safi
Sources: National Center for Biotechnology Information 1, SpringerLink, National Center for Biotechnology Information 2, Oxford Journals – Journal of Experimental Botany
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Drug Wars Wounding HIV Prevention in Brazil
The strategy meant that citizens who would be caught using drugs, such as crack, would be sent to health facilities to be rehabbed, thus allowing law enforcement to deal with more pressing concerns, such as drug trafficking cartels.
Brazil is known to be one of the most dangerous and captivating places in the world. It is also one of the most active drug trafficking countries in the world. According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report, Brazil has become the largest cocaine market in South America.
In 2014, the Brazilian government allocated over $2 billion on the “Crack: É Possível Vencer” law, which literally translates to “Crack: It Can Be Overcome.” The law is supposed to be managed by the healthcare, education and social justice ministry, but also includes funds for drug interdiction along Brazil’s borders.
Providing drug users with treatment would allow them to rejuvenate their life and help strengthen their communities. Unfortunately, standards such as the crack law have led to blurred policies that are crippling the healthcare system, specifically in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
Police raids have led to many youths being incarcerated in the two cities. Most of these children are petty users or traffickers for bigger cartels. The police remove them off the streets and pressure them to feel that they need rehabilitation and treatment.
In turn, pressure from politicians in the city forces medical personnel to give these children medical treatment, even when it is unnecessary. Although it is campaigned as a successful and strategic method to clean up the city, it is in fact wasting precious resources that could be used to successfully fight problematic drug abuse or other diseases, such as HIV.
Brazil has one of the highest HIV rates in Latin America. This is troubling especially in light of the fact that it is considered to be one of the most developed countries in all of South and Central America. According to UNAIDS, Brazil, whose total population was about 200 million, had an HIV/AIDS population of 730,000 in 2013. Compare this to India, a country whose population is five times the size of Brazil’s but whose HIV/AIDS population is only 2.1 million.
HIV prevention and testing have suffered greatly due to these policies. There was a 32% increase in HIV testing between 2004 and 2013. By 2014, that progress had decreased by almost 13%. This is because resources are being strained by the drug prevention laws.
A shift in policies and implementation is needed in order to combat the real health issues in Brazil, which are diseases such as HIV. If the Brazilian government does not allocate resources correctly, the war on drugs will have failed on both fronts: Brazil will have failed to prevent both drugs from entering the country and HIV populations from increasing.
– Adnan Khalid
Sources: UNAIDS 1, UNAIDS 2, UNAIDS 3, UNODC, Washington Office of Latin America
Photo: WBUR
How Poverty Encourages Generational Prostitution in India
One percent of the population of women in India are sex workers, accounting for 6,230, 000 people. Among that population, over 90% of the sex workers experience generational prostitution. In the Indian culture, in some castes it is traditional to engage in familial prostitution. The caste system in India is quite strong, and, therefore, most children will never have the opportunity for education or non-sexually based work. Most sex workers are born into it. In many areas in India, women have very little chance to escape the ramifications of being poor, regardless of a caste system or not.
Prostitution in India is an accepted way of life and it is confirmed through societal norms. Generational prostitution occurs at almost every brothel. Most brothels are owned by women who were former sex workers, who now employ their children because sexually enslaving one’s children is seen as a means to avoid living in complete poverty. The sex industry provides a large amount of income for urban areas. In New Delhi alone, $2 million is the annual profit of the sex and brothel workers. The average client pays $2.
In the village of Nat Purwa, India, the population suffers from abject poverty. In this community, prostitution is considered to be a hereditary occupation, passed on from one generation of women to the next. As a result of the “family dimension” to the sex trade, men are often involved, which makes sex work an important aspect of the family economy. Women and female children who sell themselves are often the family’s only source of income. Women are purchased for 500 rupees, or $8, and girls aged between 12 and 16 are purchased for 2,000 rupees or $32 dollars. Other villages that are similar to Nat Purwa are Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Bedias, Faasi and Banjar.
Generational prostitution is occurring around the globe in various countries even outside the areas of Asia and Africa, where it occurs most often. In Russia, married women work as prostitutes in full view and with encouragement from their husbands. Often, a husband will suggest this type of work for his wife and any female children they have.
The issue of global poverty needs to be addressed in order to address issues of human rights injustices, including generational prostitution. Generations to come are predetermined to their fate of becoming sex workers. Efforts to end this epidemic have made many countries strengthen their laws against human sex trafficking, prostitution and the purchasing of sex. In both Sweden and Norway, the purchase of sexual services has been made illegal. Studies from those countries indicate that having these new laws has had a profound impact on demand, causing human sex trafficking to decrease significantly. Proven results in other countries indicate that methods to curtail sex working as a generational means of survival is feasible.
– Erika Wright
Sources: Al Jazeera, Ashraya, BBC, Global Issues, PBS, Swasthya Mundial
Photo: Business Insider
Improved Data Standards Will Improve Development Efforts
Improving data standards for organizations, particularly those administering aid in countries abroad, will help elucidate the work being done and facilitate collaboration and communication between groups in different sectors. These standards also allow for interoperability, which is defined as the ability for technology and software systems to communicate, exchange data and use this data for researchers to draw conclusions about projects.
Needless to say, higher standards for information will improve the efficiency and speed with which organizations analyze and improve their efforts and also allow them to share their efforts with other groups who can replicate them. Doing so will not only improve the way information it is collected but it will also make it more widely available — improving access to and understanding of the latest projects organizations all over the world that they are engaging in.
In investments directly related to foreign aid, such as those in healthcare, education, agriculture and water access, higher data standards will allow organizations to share the outcomes of their projects with donors who can track the flow of their funding. They can also publicize their findings with other organizations that can then compare and collaborate to find more efficient, cost-effective solutions.
Something as seemingly small as transforming and improving the way with which organizations report their statistics can make drastic improvements to people’s health and way of life all over the world. Examples of this are logging administration and efficacy of immunizations, schools or communities with the highest risks, spread of disease and robustness of food resources. Interoperability allows organizations and donors to link up and improve the work they are doing.
Development Initiatives and Publish What You Find hope their data allows people to make more efficient use of data, whether by directing the flow of funding or improving aid projects. Efforts like these will improve access to information on development flows and therefore their efficiency. This project is ambitious in its design of overhauling sector-level systems, but the change it will bring about will be much broad, influencing the lives of people all over the world.
– Jenny Wheeler
Sources: Omidyar, Devinit
Photo: University of Mary Washington
Nigerian Immigrant Becomes a Successful US Chef
Geographically just about the size of Texas, Nigeria’s population totals at about 150 million people. Since the country is the most populous in Africa, Wey always felt perplexed as to why food from his homeland was not more obtainable in the United States.
After co-founding a restaurant in Detroit, the Nigerian immigrant began his own “pop-up” restaurant. He aimed to explore America, as well as to introduce people to the food he grew up with. The name of his business, Lagos, is the name of his hometown in Nigeria.
With Greyhound busses as his primary mode of transportation, Wey impressed diners in New Orleans, Chicago and Buffalo and then headed for the East Coast. He would rent out different spaces, sometimes a restaurant and other times communal kitchens, and make his crowd a delicious feast. After continued success, his one-night, one-man restaurant started selling out.
Each night, the chef brought along with him a bag filled with cooking supplies such as alligator pepper seeds, calabash nutmeg and uda, which is a kind of pepper. Wey likened it to a doctor’s medicine bag. He had no formal training and mostly went by what he observed in his childhood kitchen.
“I learned how to cook from watching my parents, my aunt, a lot of YouTube videos… The benefit that I have is that I grew up with this food, so I know exactly what it’s supposed to taste like,” he said.
In fact, as he gained footing in his own kitchen, Wey became more and more aware of how much he missed his family, who he had not seen in over seven years. It is rare, but in some instances, children are sent over to the United States on their own and then later sponsor family members to emigrate and join them. Charitable groups and advocacy organizations help with this process.
Wey was getting major attention from top-notch chefs and was asked to go to Los Angeles to cook with celebrity chef Roy Choi in February 2015. But, his trip came to screeching halt when a team of border patrol agents stopped his Greyhound bus near El Paso, Texas. They discovered that his Nigerian passport had long expired.
It was back in 2007 when he allowed his student visa to expire. Wey said, “I just thought: I’ll fix this. I’m going to go back to school, finish and adjust my status somehow. And so it was something I kept putting off.” Nearly 50% of all illegal immigrants are in the same predicament. They let their visas expire and fail to renew them.
Wey spent a few months detained in El Paso and felt as though all of his success in America had hit a wall. Fortunately for him, he had a clean record and many friends and family members who managed to raise $6,000 to bail him out and keep him from being deported.
The backup in immigration court means that Wey’s appointment is not until 2017. A judge will then determine his fate: whether he can stay or whether he must say goodbye to all of his dreams and go back to Nigeria. Until then, he plans to keep cooking and has achieved a prime spot for a new restaurant in New Orleans’ St. Roch Market.
Wey is one of 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, according to the U.S. Center for Immigration Studies. The Pew Research Center reported in 2014 that illegal immigrants make up 5.1 percent of the U.S. labor force.
– Lillian Sickler
Sources: NPR, Lagos, Metro Times, Eater, Laws, New York Times, Pew Research
Photo: Pinterest
Biking Across Canada to Raise Funds for Female Farmers in Ghana
Former interns at the Mennonite Economic Development Associations, or MEDA, French and Fehr were both inspired by their experiences and have since topped $100,000 in their crowdfunding campaign approaching Ontario. “Complete strangers have opened their homes, hearts and wallets to provide a place to sleep, a complimentary meal or a friendly face in unfamiliar places,” said French. “We’ve met so many people who are inspired by our efforts and MEDA’s work. Mary and I in turn are equally touched by their generosity and kindness.”
During their internships with MEDA, both saw poverty firsthand, witnessing it in Nicaragua and even experiencing it for themselves in Tanzania. One issue that stuck out to them was the inequality that female workers faced. In both Nicaragua and Tanzania, many women worked to help support their families, but they either couldn’t contribute as much as men could or they were single parents, among other situations. French and Fehr saw an opportunity to help change that with a project called GROW, which stands for “Greater Rural Opportunities for Women.”
In order to help families grow, each member who is contributing financially should be able to reap fair benefits, no matter the gender. Check out https://www.meda.org/bike-to-grow to donate and find out more information about Bike to Grow. The journey ends September 1, 2015 in Newfoundland.
– Anna Brailow
Sources: MEDA 1, MEDA 2, Upbeat
Photo: Lsuag Center
Ending Child Marriage in Bangladesh
In October 2014, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, pledged that she would bring an end to child marriage of children under age 15 by the year 2021. She also promised to decrease the number of brides age 15-18 by a third and eventually end all child marriages by 2041.
Bangladesh made child marriage illegal back in 1929 and set the minimum age for marriage for girls at 18 in the 1980s. Unfortunately, the government neglects to legally enforce it or handle the problems that cause girls to get married so young.
HRW asks that the government authorize a plan to stop child marriages that would include required marriage registration for religions, an increase in national birth registration and help for young girls recently married or adults that were married below the minimum age.
Despite the government’s promises to tackle the problem, they have not followed through. Instead, it did not reply to HRW’s demands and Hasina has mentioned revising the Child Marriage Restraint Act (CMRA) by lowering the age limit for girls to just 16. The Act was originally passed to give family courts the ability to cancel marriages if necessary and mandate a penalty of two years in prison and a fine of Tk50,000 (US$647).
HRW responded in frustration, “The Bangladesh government has said some of the right things, but its proposal to lower the age of marriage for girls sends the opposite message. The government should act before another generation of girls is lost.”
HRW is not the only one displeased. Plan International Bangladesh, Save the Children and Girls Not Brides have all insisted that minimum age be left unchanged. Girls Not Brides is an organization made up of 450 members from more than 70 countries. They look to create national and global policies to bar child marriage.
HRW published a report, “Marry Before Your House is Swept Away,” that details the struggles of 59 girls and young women who were married before age 18 since 2010. One girl was married at just 10 years old. The 124-page report reveals what contributes to child marriage and how it affects these young brides. It contains interviews with parents and community leaders that help draw a larger picture of the situation.
In 2011, UNICEF estimates that 65 percent of women in Bangladesh aged 20 to 24 were married by the time they were 18, 29 percent by age 15. According to Girls Not Brides, one-third of girls worldwide are married before age 18. That is 5 million girls every year— 28 girls each minute. Some are as young as 8 years old.
In developing countries, girls are viewed as burdens to their families. It is one more person to feed, clothe, school, etc. The dowry a family must raise can be less if the girl is young and uneducated. Bangladesh is troubled with more natural disasters and effects from climate change than most other countries. These manage to bring people into worse poverty and even steal away their home and land.
Besides governmental intervention, education is necessary in the fight to stop child marriage. Studies find that when girls attend school for seven years or more, she marries, on average, four years later. Education is a source for empowerment, important skills and networks of support — essential tools needed to lift her family out of poverty.
The U.N. approved a resolution in November 2014 that encouraged countries to adopt new laws and policies to stop child marriages. Hopefully, laws to eliminate child marriage will be a part of the new Sustainable Development Goals to be implemented by the U.N. in September 2015.
– Lillian Sickler
Sources: The Guardian, Girls Not Brides, Dhaka Tribune, HRW, Al Jazeera
Photo: The Guardian
USA Food Waste: 7 Surprising Facts
1. Let’s Talk Calories
The volume of American annual food waste might be better understood in terms of calories. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that each year, a staggering 141 trillion calories are gone unconsumed. This is equivalent to around 1,300 calories per capita, per day. This is approximately the number of calories consumed by a small adult or child in a day, meaning that these wasted calories could go toward nourishing several hungry people.
2. Just How Much Food Is 141 Trillion Calories?
Not everyone likes to count calories, and even fewer know what exactly a calorie is. To put it in different terms, over a third of the entire U.S. annual food supply is wasted, a total of 133 billion pounds. That equals more than 20 pounds of food per person per month. Most everyone knows what pounds are, and that’s a lot of them.
3. Americans Waste Some Foods More Than Others
According to the USDA, the top three kinds of food thrown away in 2010 were dairy (25 billion pounds), vegetables (25 billion pounds) and grains (18.5 billion pounds). These are three of the essential food groups on the food pyramid.
4. The U.S. Navy Throws Away What It Can’t Fit In Its Boats
The government provides the brave men and women of the U.S. Navy with the food and drink necessary to make their sea excursions bearable, but sometimes it isn’t possible to get all the food that is given to them into the storage space of their vessels, which are often very small. One might suppose that when this happens the food is donated to a local homeless shelter or food bank.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Because the U.S. government could be held liable for any sickness that might result from the consumption of a donated food product, the Navy is forced instead to throw surplus provisions away. The extra microwave pizzas and cereal pouches might not seem like much, but this wasted food could be used to feed a family in need.
5. Americans Throw Out More Food Than Pretty Much Anything Else
Food waste makes up over a fifth of American garbage, and half of the waste accumulates at landfills. America tosses more food into the trash than paper, plastic, metal or glass—with 5 million tons as the smallest discrepancy.
6. Food Waste Hurts The Environment
The aforementioned landfills are filled with decomposing organic waste that produces methane, a greenhouse gas that is 20 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide. These landfills are the largest producer of methane emissions in the United States, making up almost a quarter of the total emissions, according to the NRDC.
7. On the Bright Side…
The amount of food wasted, not only by the United States but by other nations as well, suggests that alleviating world hunger isn’t a matter of producing more food. Instead, it is a matter of better managing the food that is already produced, by preserving it and distributing it more thoroughly. There is enough food to feed all 7 billion people in the world. It just needs to get to put in mouths instead of in the trash.
– Katharine Pickle
Sources: NPR, Washington Post
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Malala Celebrates Birthday with New School for Syrian Girls
The Malala Yousafzai All-Girls School is supported by the Malala Fund, Yousafzai’s nonprofit organization, which believes every girl should be able to achieve her dreams through education. The school will serve 200 Syrian girls between the ages of 14 and 18 living in refugee camps in the Bekaa Valley region along the Lebanese border. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, Lebanon hosts more than 1 million of Syria’s 4 million refugees.
According to the Malala Fund’s blog, the school’s curriculum allows students to receive baccalaureate or vocational degrees through the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education. It also gives students who cannot commit to the four-year baccalaureate the option to receive skills that will aid them in finding work and generating their own incomes.
At the inauguration of the Malala Yousafzai All-Girls School, Yousafzi said “I am honored to mark my 18th birthday with the brave and inspiring girls of Syria. I am here on behalf of the 28 million children who are kept from the classroom because of armed conflict. Their courage and dedication to continue their schooling in difficult conditions inspires people around the world and it is our duty to stand by them […] On this day, I have a message for the leaders of this country, this region and the world — you are failing the Syrian people, especially Syria’s children. This is a heartbreaking tragedy—the world’s worst refugee crisis in decades.”
Malala also called on world leaders to invest in “books not bullets.” She had previously asked world leaders to give an additional $39 billion each year to secure 12 years of free schooling for children around the world. According to the Malala Fund:
Isn’t it time we changed that so the world’s poor can have the opportunity for a better life?
– Paula Acevedo
Sources: The Malala Fund, NPR, PBS