This piece is part of a reporting partnership between ONE and Refugees Deeply. Fatuma Omar Ismail currently studies chemical engineering at the University of Toronto in Canada on a scholarship. But she spent most of her childhood in Dadaab, a complex of refugee camps in northern Kenya, near the border with Somalia, where much of her family still resides. Below, she describes the daily challenges she faced as a 12-year-old determined to change her future. The muezzin calls the...
Who is changing the game in Africa? That’s the question NewAfricanWoman magazine put to the public as they prepared to host the New African Woman Awards 2017 – an annual ceremony that honors and celebrates Africa’s most influential and impactful women. After weeks of nominations a special panel of judges took on the tough task of narrowing the candidates down to just twelve winners. Here are this year’s winners: New African Woman of the Year: Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajan, Gambia Vice-President of the...
Neglected tropical diseases, or NTDs, are parasitic and bacterial diseases that can cause severe pain and long-term disability. In 2015, more than 1.5 billion of the world’s poorest people needed treatment or care for NTDs. That’s more than HIV, TB, and malaria combined. They cause severe pain, long-term disability, and are the cause of death for more than 170,000 people per year. In 2006, President George W. Bush launched an initiative to combat NTDs that was implemented by the U.S. Agency...
A famine has been declared in South Sudan for months now — the first time such an event has been announced anywhere in the world in the past six years. Nearly 100,000 people face starvation. Meanwhile, the people of Somalia, Nigeria, and Yemen are on the brink of famine as well, with nearly 20 million people total lacking access to enough food and water to survive. This is a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions. But there are many organizations working to help...
This interview was conducted by Mario Calabresi, Lola Huete-Machado, and Thorsten Jungholt and originally appeared in WELT, La Republicca, Le Figaro, and El País, all of the Leading European Newspaper Alliance, or LENA. One is wearing a tie and a suit, the other one a black t-shirt, boots, and earrings. One is the richest entrepreneur in the world, the other a rock superstar. They are sitting next to another; Bill Gates is drinking a Diet Coke and Bono a plain...
Less than a month ago we celebrated International Women’s Day! This year’s theme was #BeBoldForChange and called on global citizens to advocate for a more equal, gender inclusive world. Even though there are so many incredible people working towards a more equal, gender inclusive world, there are still plenty of places around the globe where women are not granted the same rights as men. The organization Equality Now is dedicated to making discrimination against women history, and tracks laws—including the ones listed...
When the White House Office of Management and Budget released an outline of President Trump’s budget request for 2018, it proposed a cut of more than one-third to the budgets of the State Department and USAID.  There’s been a lot of talk from elected officials, military officials, and faith leaders about why that’s not a good idea. But what exactly is foreign aid? There are a lot of misconceptions swirling around, so we decided to put together some noteworthy facts...
By Aaron Benavot, director of the GEM Report, UNESCO One answer: poverty. Despite every government in the world promising free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education to everyone, 130 million girls are out of school today. It’s difficult to comprehend what that means for each one of the one hundred and thirty million girl children and adolescents, but a new blog from the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report released for International Women’s Day helps to break down that number...
Pop quiz: what are the benefits of sending girls to school? You might answer that they will learn how to read, write and do arithmetic, all of which equip them to enter the workforce, earn an income, and contribute more to the economy … And you would be correct. But that’s only part of the answer. Beyond improving their knowledge, skills and earning potential, educating girls can have a big impact on their health, and the health of their...