This post from Gurvinder Singh, director and chief response officer at United Sikhs, is part of a larger blog series on faith and the fight against malaria ahead of World Malaria Day. Get involved in Faith at ONE’s “Shine a Light on Malaria” campaign on their website.
A guru is an individual who takes one from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge. The Sikh gurus bestowed and blessed not just the Sikh faith with the light to brighten humanity, but paved the way for the world to revel in that light.
United Sikhs Director Sundeep Kaur and volunteers working in Kenya for famine relief efforts.
Mosquitoes spread and inflict malaria under the mask of darkness, spreading a terrible and crippling disease which destroys the very fabric of families and communities. In the disguise of dark, the thieving parasite attacks and claims its victims. Unfortunately about 655,000 people die yearly from this ravaging disease, and the knowledge and action to counter it must not be masked in darkness. The need of the hour is to “Shine a Light on Malaria.”
Tim Hanstad, CEO and president of Landesa, an organization that ensures the world’s poorest families have secure land rights, reports on the difference that a land title can make for African women.
Four years ago, Asira Nzamwitaakuze, a Rwandan farmer and mother of four young children, more than doubled her harvest when she gained a powerful tool not normally kept in a barn or tool shed.
Asira working on her farm. Photo credit: Deborah Espinosa/ LANDESA
This post from Dr. Robert W. Radtke, president of Episcopal Relief & Development, is part of a larger blog series on faith and the fight against malaria ahead of World Malaria Day. Get involved in Faith at ONE’s “Shine a Light on Malaria” campaign on their website.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Harvey Wang for Episcopal Relief & Development.
When Jesus was on earth, his life was about ministering to people who were afflicted and marginalized, and bringing them physical and spiritual wholeness. This often included healing those with devastating illnesses such as leprosy, one of the scourges of his time.
UNICEF’s Shantha Bloemen reports from Mauritania, one of eight countries facing a food crisis in the Sahel. This article is reprinted from the Field Notes blog with permission of UNICEF.
A malnourished child and his mother in a feeding center in Mauritania. Photo credit: Palitza/ UNICEF
There is much talk these days of reaching the unreached. But as I drive with UNICEF colleagues through the remote Hodh Gharbi scrubland in Mauritania, in north-west Africa’s Sahel region, there is little sign of any outside effort making its way here where the whimpers and restlessness – the signs of hunger – haunt the mothers in one scattered home after another.
Have you ever been to the movies and seen a trailer for a film that you previously had no interest in seeing and then suddenly thought to yourself “That is a film I CANNOT MISS”?
That was the idea behind GAVI’s most recent production. It’s a three-minute film by Ryan Youngblood, a talented young American filmmaker, that I stumbled across in Kigali one day, and I think he and producer Doune Porter more than fulfilled their brief.
Joseph Kraus of EG Justice, an organization that focuses on improving human rights and good governance in Equatorial Guinea, provides an update on a UNESCO prize sponsored by President Obiang, and warns that President Obiang is trying to misuse UNESCO once again.
Reason and good sense do not always prevail. On March 8, 2012, UNESCO’s executive board voted 33-18 (with six abstentions) to award a renamed prize sponsored by President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea. The divisive vote marked the first time in UNESCO’s history that a prize was approved without consensus. Proponents voted in favor of the prize despite ongoing concerns over the source of the money provided to UNESCO to fund it. Discrepancies in the prize’s funding led UNESCO’s legal adviser to declare the prize to be “no longer implementable” in a legal opinion issued just days before the final vote. The prize’s original statute identifies a foundation bearing President Obiang’s name as the donor; in February, a representative of the Equatoguinean government provided evidence that the money for the prize instead originated from the state treasury, raising concerns that the government and President Obiang do not make a clear distinction between public and private funds.
In November 2011, a team from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) visited Zambia to produce a video on vaccination efforts -– their value, their implementation and the challenges they face. In the current global environment of austerity and ever-decreasing budgets, immunizations represent one of the pillars of global health that is a cost effective, proven intervention.
Right now, some of the world's biggest oil companies are fighting to keep some of their deals with foreign governments secret. Let's tell big oil we won't be bullied.
Cuts to poverty-fighting programs won't balance the budget, but they will set back progress on Canada's development priorities and risk jeopardizing existing investments.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
