With Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca all announcing this month that their vaccine candidates for COVID-19 are proving to be highly effective in clinical trials, the world is closer to finding a safe and effective vaccine to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the pandemic will not end with a vaccine, but when everyone, everywhere has equal access to it.
That’s why we launched our Vaccine Access Test in September. The Test provides the framework to answer one important question: Are the...
Arielle Witter
Megan Gieske is a storyteller and photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Under Cape Town Together, communities long-divided over racial lines are uniting to help those in-need.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing financial crisis in South Africa, Mzikhona Mgedle lost his job in the non-profit sector, but he wasn’t backing down. He started the Langa CAN, “community action network,” to meet the specific needs of his community, and he wasn’t alone.
Mzikhona Mgedle is part of a growing movement to...
As we’ve seen with education, work, healthcare, and other socioeconomic factors, COVID-19 is once again impacting women and girls disproportionately compared to their male counterparts. The pandemic is yet another illustration of the obstacles to gender equality that remain, explains Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, gender equality advocate and ONE’s France director.
Najat argues that the pandemic has left “women rendered invisible” and has “significantly worsened” their living conditions. COVID-19 is bringing new urgency to the global fight for gender equality.
“If we look...
The world is racing to find safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19, and world leaders are making deals for promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates and speaking about the need for vaccine equity. As this happens, we want them to know that we’re watching. That’s why in September, ONE launched the Vaccine Access Test.
The Test provides the framework to answer one question: Are the actions taken by world leaders and players moving us closer to or further from an equitable outcome...
ONE youth activists Vittoria Anelli and Andrea Mosca share why prioritising quality education is necessary during the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disruptive effect on public education all around the world. According to the UN, 1.6 billion children across more than 190 countries have suffered from school lockdowns, affecting approximately up to 98% of learners worldwide.
Unfortunately, even before the pandemic, millions of children did not have access to a good quality education due to conflicts and violence, cultural...
Six years ago, 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by armed men from their school in Northern Nigeria.
For such a horrific event, the identity of the girls was missing from the narrative. In the days and weeks following the tragedy, even as the story of their kidnapping found its way into the global consciousness via the “Bring back our girls” campaign, when it comes to the girls — who they were, what they liked, how they lived — they became a...
COVID-19 has presented many new social and economic challenges, and is exacerbating already existing ones. One such challenge is global poverty. Right now over 700 million people live in extreme poverty worldwide, which is defined as living on less than US$1.90 per person per day.
Right now, the pandemic is threatening to push up to 115 million people into poverty in 2020 alone. That would raise global totals significantly. That’s why understanding the severe impacts of COVID-19 on global poverty...
Megan Gieske is a storyteller and photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa.
On Steve Biko Street, taxi horns blare and horse carts trot down Gugulethu’s busy main road. But over a high wall, a woman has grown an oasis of green in the highly-developed, urban landscape of Gugulethu, where almost 100,000 share just 6.42km² (or 2.5 miles²) of land.
It’s here in Gugulethu where Nomonde Kweza, or “Mama Nomonde,” is reclaiming her agricultural heritage, and teaching her community to support...
Megan Gieske is a storyteller and photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Ingrid and Enersh, two teenage girls in white button-downs, maroon jumpers, grey skirts, ankle-length socks, and matching black shoes, chat by the roadside on their way home from school. They hold backpacks that hang heavy on their shoulders with books and homework. The brilliance of their smiles stand out vividly against the afternoon light — young, hopeful, and full of promise.
Ingrid and Enersh are two of the...
Falling on 11 October, International Day of the Girl Child is a United Nations day that brings attention to “girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world.” Empowering young girls early in life can give them the “potential to change the world — both as the empowered girls of today and as tomorrow’s workers, mothers, entrepreneurs, mentors, household heads, and political leaders.”
However, as we’ve seen with previous health crises, COVID-19’s lingering economic and social impacts on...