Archive for category: Education

Information and stories on education.

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Girls’ Education in Sri Lanka Part of the Country’s Gender Equality Goals

Girls' Education in Sri LankaGirls’ education in Sri Lanka has significantly improved over the last two decades. Boys and girls have equal enrollment in primary schools, and girls outnumber boys in secondary schools. Additionally, in 2011 girls consistently scored higher than boys in key subjects in the National Assessments of Learning Outcomes.

The Successes of Girls’ Education in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is the only South Asian country that has already achieved the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal for gender equality at all levels of education. This is a great achievement for the small island nation, and it can be used as a model for other countries.

These achievements have been possible because the government has been committed to ensuring gender equality and improving girls’ education in Sri Lanka. In 1945, the government introduced free primary, secondary and university education for all children, regardless of gender. Additionally, the constitution provides for equal rights irrespective of sex and forms of affirmative action to ensure equality for women.

Continued Work Towards Complete Gender Equality

However, Sri Lanka does still have things to work on. While girls in the nation have access to the same education as boys and tend to do better than them in school, the statistics for adults do not quite mirror these trends. Women’s adult literacy is lower than that of men and the unemployment rate for women is two times higher than the rate for men.

This has been the case for the last three decades, indicating that while women have been given the same access to education, that education is not translating into equal employment later on in life. This is an issue that needs to be addressed by the government to ensure that girls’ access to education is really benefiting them in the long run.

NGOs Focus on Education

Of course, the Sri Lankan government does not have to face these challenges alone. There are numerous nonprofit organizations, such as the World Bank Group and the Asian Development Bank, that have partnered with the government to implement projects regarding gender equality and education. Additionally, there are a variety of independent organizations that focus on education in the nation.

Room to Read is one such organization that runs literacy and girls’ education programs in Sri Lanka, but there are also many others. The Sri Lankan government can utilize these resources and work with them to create equal opportunities for men and women both during and after their attendance at educational institutions.

Ultimately, girls’ education in Sri Lanka has been on the right track for many years. The country has shown a commitment to providing equal access to education regardless of gender, and this is a very commendable effort. While these accomplishments should not be forgotten, the government also needs to be aware of other issues of gender inequality, such as unequal employment and disparities in adult literacy. These are concerns that should be addressed through the development of new policies and collaboration with NGOs that work in the region.

– Liyanga De Silva
Photo: Flickr

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Girls’ Education in China More Accessible Than Ever

Girls' Education in ChinaChina, the world’s most populous nation, has made great strides and significant progress towards improving girls’ education. Since Deng Xiaoping’s societal reform and opening up, the country has not only made great economic improvements but has ensured growth and development in its education system. Although the country continues to take steps to improve girls’ education, there are still challenges that need to be further addressed.

Laws Mandate Girls’ Education in China

In 1986, the “Compulsory Education Law of the People’s Republic of China” Law took effect. This law required that all citizens obtain at least nine years of education, funded by the government. Before this, the greater value of males in society gave boys priority over girls to the right to an education. According to the journal Gender Inequality in Education in China, “Thanks to the compulsory education system and gender equity promotion, the gender gap in educational attainment has been greatly eliminated in the past decades.”

Rural Girls Still Struggle to Obtain an Education

As mentioned before, there are still many challenges in terms of girls’ education in China, including:

  • The priority of boys over girls to the right to education in poverty-stricken areas
  • Gender segregation between higher and vocational education
  • The education gap between urban and rural areas
  • Barriers for female educators and researchers in the workplace

A further challenge is the population of left-behind girls in China, a population of girls whose parents have moved from their village to the city to find better-paying jobs. Often times, parents are more inclined to take their sons to the city and leave their daughters behind. According to China Daily, 96.1 percent of girls in rural areas attend school from ages six to 11. However, only 79.3 percent have access to high school education. Additionally, these left-behind girls are often put in a position where they have to drop out of school and find work to provide for their aging grandparents.

Government and Nonprofit Programs Address Remaining Education Gaps

Nevertheless, the country’s government and international NGOs are working to improve such challenges to girls’ education in China. For instance, the State Council publicized its National Program for Women’s Development that worked towards development dealing with China’s women, making women’s education one of the six areas of priority.

In 2006, China’s new five-year plan incorporated more investments in education. In the same year, the state revised its compulsory education law that takes steps to improve rural students’ quality of education by “abolish[ing] tuition and miscellaneous fees for all rural students and guarantees free textbooks and subsidies for room and board.” Meanwhile, UNICEF has proceeded with its efforts in western China to improve the quality of education in poor areas, focusing on gender equality.

Furthermore, China has made significant progress in girls’ education in China in the last three decades. Female enrollment in higher education is on the rise. In 2012, female college students made up 51.4 percent of the total university student population. Women are beginning to take on more roles in science and technology. More and more programs are beginning to subsidize girls’ college tuitions. Although numerous programs have been put in place to further girls’ education in China, it is important to continue this work to improve gender equality awareness throughout the country.

– Emma Martin
Photo: Flickr

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Girls’ Education in North Korea a Modernized Aspect of Its Society

Girls' Education in North KoreaIn 2015, the tale of Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector whose story shed light the repressive and backward nature of North Korea’s government and society, took the international media by storm. However, contrary to the usual negative depiction, girls’ education in North Korea is actually more modernized and progressive than many other aspects of its society. The statement “women hold equal social status and rights with men” was promulgated in the 1972 North Korean constitution, and to a large extent, this statement is accurate in regards to girls’ education in North Korea.

Public Education in North Korea

Only after the opening of Korea to foreign countries in the late 19th century could more Korean females gain access to modern education, with Christian missionaries establishing girls’ schools. In North Korea, education is universal and state-operated, offering free compulsory education to the secondary level, which consists of 11 years of schooling at the minimum. North Korea’s “people’s school” (primary school) and “middle-high” (secondary school) curriculum encompasses Korean language, mathematics, literature and “socialist ethics”, which refers to political and ideological subject matter.

The reported literacy rate of North Koreans is 100 percent for both men and women over age 15. This number is self-reported by the North Korean government, making its reliability questionable, but if accurate, it makes North Korea one of the most literate countries in the world. There is no doubt that the secondary education is equally accessible to men and women.

Some Obstacles to Girls’ Education in North Korea Remain

Nonetheless, some differences do exist among the varied educational programs directed at boys and girls, and there are some restrictions on higher education for women, obstructing the potential greater progress for girls’ education in North Korea.

Traditional gender roles influence the educational system in North Korea. In this patriarchal society, this is seen in the practice of separating boys and girls into single-gender schools in both the elementary and middle school levels, preventing the two sexes from receiving a uniform educational instruction. Meanwhile, there are different curriculums for boys and girls, with more emphasis on “physical education for boys and home economics for girls”.

On top of that, at the university level of education, the limitation on girls’ education in North Korea is showcased more obviously. In contrast with the high accessibility of basic education for women and men, one of the top universities in North Korea, Pyongyang University for Science and Technology, has previously only had male students. However, recent reports have indicated increasing numbers of female students at this university.

North Korean Women Work for Educational Equality

Despite the prescribed gender roles and attendant images, there are many women majoring in medicine, biology, foreign languages and literature. These North Korean women are encouraging the breakdown of certain obstinate social norms and expectations imposed on not only women, but on men as well, that may discourage students from studying the subject of their choice.

North Korea is notoriously restrictive of its people’s freedoms, and the limits placed on girls’ education are but a mild example of the government’s repression. However, the fact that North Korean girls have the educational opportunities that they do is a heartening sign of progress, and can be of great benefit to girls and women now and in the future.

– Heulwen Leung
Photo: Google

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How to Stop Poverty: Seven Effective Actions

How to Stop Poverty
Even in the 21st century, nearly half of the world’s population, or three billion people, lives on $2.50 a day, and 80 percent of the world’s population lives on less than $10 a day. Focusing on how to stop poverty is very important, both in the ways that an individual can have an impact and on the wider changes that need to be made to bring an end to poverty.

How to Stop Poverty

  1. Create Awareness
    Social media has become an integral part of daily life, and now is the time to use it as a voice of social good. Sharing links on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms will allow people to learn more about global poverty and will increase the general consciousness of the issue.
  2. Take Action on Your Own
    There are a few simple ways we can help as individuals, such as funding a poor child’s education or by sponsoring a poor family and influencing others to do so. Raising money and donating it to a nonprofit can help as well.
  3. Donate
    Donations can help in so many ways. They do not always have to take the form of money. This can include donating books to a poor child or buying groceries for a poor family for a week to help fight hunger. Donating old clothes, furniture and toiletries can also help improve the well-being of the poor.
  4. Eliminate Gender Inequality
    With two-thirds of the world’s illiterate being female, the ratio of boys and girls should be made equal in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Girls that attend school are less likely to get married before age 18, thus decreasing child marriage rates by 64 percent worldwide. Similarly, literate women are less likely to spread diseases like HIV/AIDS due to a better knowledge of disease transmission, which helps to accelerate poverty reduction in the long run.
  5. Create Jobs Worldwide
    According to the International Labour Organization, 197 million people are without work worldwide. More employment options in a country mean more ways of how to stop poverty. To increase employment, non-literate people can be taught a few skills to make them employable.
  6. Increase Access to Proper Sanitation and Clean Water
    Access to clean water and sanitation directly affects health and education. Currently, 800 million people live without access to safe water and 2.5 billion live without adequate sanitation. Dirty bathrooms keep girls from attending schools, thus stopping them from receiving an education. Lack of clean water spreads diseases like diarrhea and cholera, which take the lives of more than one million children each year.
  7. Educate Everyone
    Education helps increase individual earnings for every member of a family. UNESCO points out that basic reading skills can lift 171 million people out of extreme poverty, ultimately reducing the world’s total poverty by 12 percent. UNESCO also mentions there are currently about one billion illiterate adults in the world.

Above are a few solutions about how to stop poverty, but first, it is important to understand the roots of the problems that cause poverty. Since different countries have different reasons for poverty, there will never be a single solution for all. However, these seven actions can do a lot to alleviate poverty anywhere.

– Shweta Roy

Photo: Flickr

The Top 10 Effects Education Has on Society

Effects Education Has on Society
Education affects society in many important ways. The Borgen Project is trying to improve education in improvised areas because of the many benefits that educations offers to the people in live in impoverished nations. Here is a list of the top ten effects education has on society.

The Top 10 Effects Education Has on Society

  1. Education is important in the creation of any democratic society. As Franklin D. Roosevelt says, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” People need a good education if they want a good democracy.
  2. Education is needed to make a society geopolitically stable. Without a proper educational system available to everyone, terrorists could use free education as a way to radicalize people. In other words, geopolitical stability is one of education’s most powerful effects on society.
  3. Education leads to economic prosperity in the global marketplace. One of the most important effects education has on society is giving the people who live in a society the skills they need to compete in the global marketplace, and the skills they need to produce technological goods that can be sold on the open market. Socrates best expressed this idea when he stated: “Prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory, the other perpetual.”
  4. Education gives people the knowledge they need to elect capable leaders. Plato stated, “In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill… we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.” Education helps the members of society see through the manipulations used by politicians to get votes so that the members of the society can vote for the leader who is best able to run the society.
  5. Education helps promote tolerance in a society and helps reduce common conflicts between diverse populations in an urban setting. Helen Keller said that “The highest result of education is tolerance.” Educating members of society about other people who either live in the society or its neighboring states have the power to reduce many conflicts.
  6. Education has the power to help societies, and the world in general, change for the better. According to Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. Malcolm X says that: “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” Education is a powerful tool that can be used to make the world a better place to live in.
  7. Education is important because it helps members in a society learn from the mistakes of the past. Plato has stated that geopolitical stability cannot be created by forming a democratic government; if the government is established by force or because of overthrowing an old regime, the new government could transform from a government that encourages peace and democracy into a new government that uses force to maintain power. Having an education is important because good education allows members of a society to learn from past mistakes and prevent the same mistakes from happening in the future.
  8. Education is the first step a society needs before giving rights to women and other minority groups. Education is a powerful tool that enables women and other minority groups to gain fundamental civil rights. It is important to treat women and other minorities with respect in the classroom. Abraham Lincoln stressed the importance that education has in helping people who live in a society to more fundamental civil rights when he said, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.”
  9. Education reduces violence and crime in societies. Teaching people to read has been shown to prevent people from engaging in crime. In fact, the Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment is a charity group uses education to combat violence and crime.
  10. Education creates hope for the future. Giving people hope that they can improve their lot in life is one of the more powerful effects education has on a society. John F. Kennedy best expressed the power of a good education when he said: “Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.”  JFK’s words about America apply to every society on Earth.

The READ Act

The Borgen Project works to help bring the positive effects education has on society to all through the READ Act. Education is valuable, and everybody needs to ensure education is widely available. A proper educational system can ensure people in any impoverished nation have access to both upward mobility and geopolitical stability.

– Michael Israel

Photo: Flickr

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The Benefits of Literacy: Five Ways Literacy Fights Poverty

Literacy Fights Poverty
It seems an obvious statement to suggest that reading and writing can improve one’s life. Is it as obvious, however, that if everyone could read and write, 171 million people would be lifted out of poverty? These taken-for-granted, simple skills have the power to change our world. Literacy fights poverty in often unheralded ways and the effects of literacy reach beyond the walls of any classroom.

The Economy of Literacy

An economy’s success lies in the spending power of its people. This comes only through more opportunities, more developed skills, better employment and higher salaries.

Employment creation has proven to be the most effective tool in poverty reduction and better employment only comes through better education. In fact, on average, one year of education is estimated to increase wage earnings by 10 percent, and in places like sub-Saharan Africa, by as much as 13 percent.

The numbers are clear. While literacy fights poverty and helps to stabilize the economies of developing nations, illiteracy costs the world about $1.19 trillion every year.

Literacy and Health

Literacy fights poverty in the healthcare arena as well. Being literate helps people better understand health concerns and better educate themselves when it comes to healthcare. This is especially important in developing countries, where disease can dictate a cycle of poverty. The statistics linking literacy and generational health provide clarity:

  • It is estimated that infant mortality rates decrease 9 percent for every year of education attained.
  • Understanding reading and writing makes it 24 percent less likely that children will be underweight or malnourished.
  • People being able to read and write slows the spread of infectious diseases.
  • Maternal education can help mitigate the effects of diseases like pneumonia.

Literacy Empowers

Inequality, specifically gender inequality, stifles economies and prevents generational growth. Two-thirds of the illiterate population of the world are women. It is no surprise, given the destructive social dynamics of so many underdeveloped nations, that every year 15 million girls under the age of 18 are married. Often, these girls see this as their only option when they cannot afford a good education.

Educated women become empowered and take control of their own lives. Education fosters personal autonomy and creative and critical thinking skills, which provide a wider economy and community. According to the World Bank, better-educated women tend to be healthier, have fewer children and marry later in life.

Resilience and Community

Literacy fights poverty through the power of the possible. Without literacy, a lack of choices commits millions to a prison of doubt. Reading and writing have been proven to increase self-confidence, help make informed decisions and provide new job prospects.

Additionally, literacy provides distractions and new pathways away from the prospects of crime or child soldiery. In fact, literacy makes it 50 percent less likely that people will commit robbery or murder.

Overcoming obstacles of this magnitude takes an enormous amount of resiliency. Education provides the will-power to build it up. In a world where 123 million 15- to 24-year-olds cannot read, the need for literacy has never been more apparent.

The End of a Cycle: Literacy Fights Poverty

According to the United Nation’s Global Education Monitoring Report, new evidence suggests that increasing the years of schooling among adults by two years would help lift nearly 60 million people out of poverty. If ending poverty is the ultimate goal, it may well be that literacy is a starting point. Literacy allows other development goals to happen.

Literacy creates opportunities for people to develop skills to provide for themselves and their family, while at the same time positively impacting each generation through raised expectations and increased self-esteem. Literacy fights poverty much like the feet of a duck fight against the water beneath it. Though it may not always be seen, much work lies below the surface.

– Daniel Staesser

Photo: Flickr

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Developing Education in Niger

Education in Niger
Niger is one of the least developed countries in the world, ranking last out of 187 countries on the Human Development Index. Education in Niger is affected by the country’s struggling economy.

With a gross national income of just $641 per capita, roughly 60 percent of Niger‘s population lives under the poverty line. One of the many causes for the country’s poverty is a high birth rate. As more children are born, more food is needed, but as more food is needed the area of arable land shrinks. Food becomes a daily difficulty for families and other necessities are overshadowed, including education.

Education in Niger

Niger’s population is 70 percent illiterate and the average length of time a student is enrolled in a school is only one year. Fortunately, this situation has not been overlooked as the Nigerien government and other global organizations have come to the table with several programs and other plans to address this issue.

The Nigerien government has partnered its own Niger Threshold Program with the Millennium Challenge Corporation to reduce corruption, promote land titling, register more businesses and improve girls’ educational outcomes.

This cooperation led to the involvement of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the development of the Niger Education and Community Strengthening (NECS) program. The goal of this program is to improve educational opportunities for children while fostering links between the state and local communities. NECS is to be implanted in 150 villages across the seven regions of Niger.

Planning for Improvement

The government has also implemented an education and training sector plan that began in 2014 and will go through 2024. The plan outlines the priorities for education in Niger:

  • Improve the quality of basic education by introducing native language in early grades
  • Recruit state-paid teachers
  • Increase girls’ enrollment
  • Extend preschool coverage
  • Implement school construction to match population needs
  • Improve learning environment
  • Improve higher education to create skilled human capital
  • Reach those who have never attended school or have dropped out

Accessibility for Children

Children are still more often forced to work rather than attend school. This is especially true during harvest periods and in the northern regions of the country where nomadic children have no access to school at all. To further increase literacy and education in Niger, schooling has been made compulsory for children seven to 15 years of age. However, attendance rates remain low, particularly for girls.

There are no complete and detailed statistics that showcase the number of schools, colleges, universities, teachers and students in the country. However, this data is not necessary to understand that education in Niger is still fundamentally lacking. Through the prudent programs and priorities of the Nigerien government, and from the help of global partners, education in Niger is certainly on its way to development.

– Aaron Stein

Photo: Flickr

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Top Poverty in Afghanistan Facts

Poverty in Afghanistan facts
In recent memory, people often think of Afghanistan as the nation of the Taliban, who provided sanctuary to terrorists like Osama bin Laden. However, they do not tend to think about how a country falls into the grip of such extremism. Often, when poverty is widespread, terrorism and instability take hold. Poverty in Afghanistan has been a serious problem for nearly three decades, starting with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

This instability can make poverty alleviation an uphill battle. According to the World Bank’s 2017 Poverty Status Update Report regarding socioeconomic progress in Afghanistan, the 15 years of growth that the country has seen are now jeopardized by a recent rise in insecurity. The World Bank Country Director for Afghanistan, Shubham Chaudhuri, explains that with poverty rising from 36 to 39 percent of the Afghan population, there need to be reinforcements to guarantee that economic growth reaches Afghan families. For further information about the living conditions of the Afghan people, here are 10 facts about poverty in Afghanistan.

Top 10 Facts About Poverty in Afghanistan

  1. According to Aryana Aid, poverty in Afghanistan stems from two factors: “food insecurity and the lack of a social security net.” As a result, 50 percent of Afghan children are stunted and 20 percent of Afghan women of child-bearing age are underweight.
  2. Food is distributed unequally throughout the country, going mainly to areas where there is heavy fighting. This puts more strain on people in other areas and contributes to the ongoing food insecurity,
  3. Furthermore, half of the people living in both rural and urban regions have no access to clean water.
  4. The government’s strategy to address food insecurity has been to focus on adequate calorie intake, but this has left people susceptible to food price shocks, meaning they lower the quality of their diet in order to afford food.
  5. The war in Afghanistan is one of the main contributing factors to poverty; 55 to 75 percent of the Afghan population is living in poverty in the worst-hit regions, whereas as other regions have lower poverty rates.
  6. According to Center for Strategic and Regional Studies, the poverty rate in Afghanistan has remained stagnant since the outbreak of war in 2001, even with increases in foreign aid.
  7. Only 28 percent of the entire Afghan population 15 years and older is literate.
  8. Because of the lack of water and other necessities, Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate in the world.
  9. Approximately 70,792 Afghan families are taking refuge in unclean makeshift camps; 25 percent of those families have been living there for more than ten years.
  10. Unemployment is a significant challenge in relocating these and other internally displaced people, as they are reluctant to return to rural areas where there are no jobs available.

To help bring some relief to these issues, Aryana Aid has been providing food packages to the people of Afghanistan since 2009. In early 2018, USAID’s Office of Food For Peace provided $25 million to the World Food Programme; an estimated 547,000 malnourished Afghan people were provided with emergency aid from local and regional marketplaces.

The World Bank projected economic growth for Afghanistan in 2017, by 2.6 percent compared to 2.2 percent in 2016. The progression is predicted to continue in 2018 with a 3.2 percent growth, which will help cure the many problems listed on the top 10 facts about poverty in Afghanistan.

– Christopher Shipman

Photo: Flickr

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Poverty and Peril: How the Media Misrepresents Haiti

media misrepresents Haiti
In recent years, the typical media portrayal of Haiti has consistently conjured up a static image of a beleaguered nation where visible indicators of natural disaster, political instability and extreme poverty abound. Though this representation is not entirely false, it is incomplete. Haiti is well-deserving of a more fitting image that conveys its dynamism and development.

Withstanding trial and tribulation, Haiti is among the most resilient nations in the world. Like any other developing country today, Haiti is continuing to make progress despite setbacks along its way. The media misrepresents Haiti to be a place that is completely devoid of progress, forever stifled by unfortunate issues of circumstance. To the contrary, Haiti enjoys a stunningly beautiful landscape and is inhabited by hardworking, happy people with the resolve to pursue better lives for themselves and a better legacy for their country.

Education Reforms

Ensuring that children have access to quality education is an important investment in the development of any nation. Elizabeth King, former Director of Education for the World Bank, said it best: “The human mind makes possible all development achievements from health advances and agricultural innovations to efficient public administration and private sector growth. For countries to reap these benefits fully, they need to unleash the potential of the human mind. And there is no better tool for doing so than education.”

To this end, Haiti has made quality education a top policy priority over the last decade. The Global Partnership for Education granted $24.1 million in funding to improve primary education access, school performance and enrollment in Haiti.

In the last four years, Haiti has enrolled more than 73,000 students in primary education, built six additional classrooms, developed and employed more than 3,500 qualified teachers at the primary level and implemented a learning assessment system for primary education. Furthermore, the grant has helped increase student attendance to 83.5 percent in disadvantaged areas and made nutrition and health programs accessible to more than 100,000 children.

Agriculture

Suggesting that there is a dearth of economic stimulus is a particularly damaging way that the media misrepresents Haiti. It is true that many Haitians live on less than $2 a day, but economic opportunity continues to develop in the country to counteract extreme poverty.

With a climate that supports the cultivation of important cash crops like cacao and mango, as well as several staple crops, Haiti has a promising agricultural sector. USAID has worked with the country to develop sustainable agricultural techniques that increase production, improve food security and strengthen agricultural markets, ultimately increasing agricultural incomes and helping to develop and support small and medium enterprises to spur investment opportunity in the country.

Tech

Much of the media misrepresents Haiti by failing to cover recent tech advancements at work within the country. Surtab, Haiti’s answer to Apple and Samsung, has become a shining example of successful tech innovation in the country. Surtab develops and delivers a range of electronic mobile devices throughout the Caribbean and the African continent. The company employs a highly-skilled workforce, many of whom are women, and is helping to drive private sector development.

In June, Haiti will host its second annual Haiti Tech Summit, which will be attended by local and international industry leaders, digital marketers and innovators. Keynote speakers include lead developers from Facebook and Google as well as several notable figures from around the world. Aggregating some of the best tech thinkers and creators in the industry, the Haiti Tech Summit aims to accelerate local entrepreneurship and to bring global attention to Haiti’s emerging markets.

Tourism

The media misrepresents Haiti by suggesting that the country is too poor and too battered by earthquakes and hurricanes to be beautiful. The Dominican Republic and Haiti are co-located on the island of Hispaniola. They both boast beautiful beaches with glittering turquoise waters, rolling mountains and temperate, tropical weather, but only the Dominican Republic is celebrated as a place that’s worth visiting.

Despite unfair media portrayals, Haiti has been gaining traction over the last five years as a tourist destination. Haiti offers potential travelers breathtaking landscapes, complicated history and rich culture. Resort towns like Jacmel and Cap Haitien boast scenic coastal views, opulent dining and luxe accommodations that rival those of top beach communities around the world.

According to MSN, expatriate designer Victor Glemaud recently returned to Haiti after having left more than a decade ago. The country he came back to shattered his expectations: “What I was expecting from the media, and all the perceptions around the world about Haiti, were nonexistent. I saw the same vibrancy, the same resilience I remember from growing up. . . I was expecting devastation, and I didn’t see that.” Contrary to popular portrayals of the Caribbean nation, Haiti is a beautiful, thriving country.

– Chantel Baul

Photo: Flickr

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The 5 Best Careers for Fighting Poverty and Making a Difference

Best Careers for Fighting Poverty
Many people are looking to make a difference these days through volunteer work, making donations and voting, but there are also many careers that can make a huge impact. The best careers for fighting poverty may be surprising to some, but each makes a difference in the lives of others.

Working in these fields makes the world a better place and improves the lives of the poor:

  1. Teachers
    Kids spend approximately 1,200 hours annually in the classroom. A teacher’s influence is vast and encompasses the education, mental health and safety of the children they teach. Education is vital in the fight against poverty and provides students with the tools necessary to make a living and gain the schooling needed to avoid poverty.
    It is important more than ever that female teachers gain employment in developing areas. This allows girls in culturally strict regions to be able to attend school, feel safe and receive gender equality in the classroom.
  2. Social Workers
    Those in vulnerable situations are able to receive support through their social workers, such as family counselors. Social workers work to improve the mental health of those seeking counsel, and help diagnose emotional issues, so that they can receive treatment and progress professionally.
  3. Doctors and Nurses
    Working in one of the best careers for fighting poverty, those in the medical field have the power to affect the health of people in poorer communities. They can even opt to go abroad with volunteer groups or Doctors Without Borders during seasons they choose.
    Doctors and nurses can also help vaccinate those in developing countries, provide health counsel and improve the health conditions of the community they work in. Citizens in good health are less likely to remain or fall into poverty in the first place. With good health, they are able to work full time, participate in the economy and attend school.
  4. Entrepreneurs
    People who start their own businesses are able to address issues that may not have already been addressed by their communities or nations yet. Entrepreneurs have the power to not only create jobs and positively impact their local economies, but are also able to create influential movements and businesses.
  5. Lawyers
    Lawyers are able to participate in pro-bono work, providing legal assistance to those who would not otherwise be able to afford the help. They are also able to prevent those wrongly accused from going to prison, which stimulates the economy and keeps people in the work force and out of crime.

There are many influential jobs that can reduce poverty in communities, but these are the best careers for fighting poverty that have the widest reach. The average person spends 90,000 hours at work in their lifetime and to be able to make those hours count is an impactful feat, accomplished by those who care enough to make a career out of making a difference.

– Emily Degn

Photo: Flickr