Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises Archives

October 10, 2014April 9, 2018

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I dream of a future when all girls can go to school

In honor of the amazing news today and International Day of the Girl tomorrow, I am dedicating this post to one amazing young woman who risked her life for her belief that all girls should have the right to go to school. Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban two years ago for her desire to learn was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this morning along with Kailash Satyarthi of India, a campaigner for the end of child labor and freeing children from trafficking.

At 17, Malala is the youngest ever winner of a Nobel Prize. Since the shocking news hit the world that young Malala was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman, Malala has fought tirelessly for the rights of girls worldwide to go to school. After her remarkable recovery in a British hospital, Malala has become a global icon for girl’s rights. To further her work, she co-founded the Malala Fund with her father Ziauddin Yousafzai (an educator and social activist) and Shiza Shahid (a Pakistani social entrepreneur and activist) to amplify, advocate and invest in girl’s education. To read more about the amazing work Malala does around the world for girls, click here.

Congratulations Malala on following your dreams! You are amazing and truly changing the world.

These girls need you and others to stand up for their right to education.

October 9, 2014October 3, 2017

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#Nourishthefuture: Plumpy’Nut Nutritional Paste is Saving Lives

“Recognizing and addressing the world’s malnutrition problem as one of the major underlying impediments to eradicating global poverty and economic growth will not only save lives, it is critical to the success of the U.S. government’s ability to advance our global development objectives.” – Edesia

A dear friend of mine and fellow social good blogger, Elizabeth Atalay (documama.org) is a mother of four, living in Rhode Island and is following her passion to help mothers and children around the world through advocacy and using her voice as a blogger. Elizabeth recently began working with local Rhode Island non-profit Edesia who produces a nutritional paste called Plumpy’Nut that is used globally by the World Food Programme, USAID and UNICEF to treat severe malnutrition.

Severe malnutrition impacts millions of children around the world and is highly preventable.

According to UNICEF, there are at least 51 million children in our world under the age of five suffering from acute malnutrition, a condition directly responsible for at least 1 million young child deaths each year.
Stunting occurs in children who have access to food but for whom nutrition and hygiene are inadequate; 165 million children are stunted and will experience lifelong cognitive and physical deficits that cannot be overcome. The irreversible stunting that occurs in children as a result of prolonged under nutrition, causes children to underperform in school and have lifelong health problems, furthering perpetuating economic loss and the cycle of poverty for families, communities, and countries.
Malnutrition contributes to an estimated 45% of all child deaths as it makes a child more susceptible to other life threatening diseases and illnesses. Malnourished children are 9 times more likely to die from diarrhea and 6 times more likely to die from pneumonia.
Malnutrition is called the silent killer because often it goes unnoticed until it is too late.
The economic toll of malnutrition costs countries millions of dollars each year.
Proper nutrition in the first 1,000 days of life – from conception to two years of age – is critical to a child’s healthy development and future productivity in society.

Children in Burkina Faso who have benefited by Plumpy’Nut nutritional paste. Photo Credit: Edesia

Navyn Salem began her journey in helping malnourished children in 2007 as a stay-at-home mom of four young girls. Horrified by the growing numbers of malnourished kids around the world Navyn decided to do something about it. She began with operations in her father’s homeland, Tanzania, and worked with the government and the French company Nutriset to produce Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods known as RUTFs. A factory was built in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital and today they provide RUTFs to nine neighboring African countries.

Child Labor, Marriage, Education and Survival Food Security Global Health Global Issues Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises SOCIAL GOOD

October 6, 2014October 3, 2017

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EngenderHealth launches “Where’s the Family Planning?!” campaign

EngenderHealth works to improve access to maternal and reproductive health care in more than 20 developing countries. At the end of September, EngenderHealth launched their new campaign, “WTFP?!” (Where’s the Family Planning?!) to raise awareness among Americans of global access to contraception.

Although for many Americans, access to contraceptives is relatively easy, around the world, this is not the case and there remains a huge, unmet need. In fact, over 220 million women in developing countries want contraception and family planning but lack access. There are a variety of reasons regarding why women do not have access – poverty, lack of education, lack of health care facilities, culture and religion – however it is proven that when women have access to contraception they are more likely to survive childbirth, have healthier children, and go further in their education.

Mother holding her 9th child in rural Ethiopia.

Global Health Global Issues Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises SOCIAL GOOD Women and Girls

September 30, 2014April 15, 2018

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WaterAid: Providing Safe Water and Sanitation in Ethiopia

Water is essential to life. Without water, humans and our world would not survive. Yet, 11% of the world’s population – 783 million people – do not have access to safe water. Although many people living in the western world including myself often take water, sanitation and hygiene (collectively known as “WASH”) for granted, there are millions of people around the world who do not.

In fact, the figures are shocking:

2.5 billion people – almost 35% of the world’s population – do not have access to adequate sanitation. (WHO/UNICEF)
More than 500,000 children die every year from diarrhea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation – that’s almost 1,400 children a day. (WaterAid 2012/WHO 2008/The Lancet 2012*)
The weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is commonly 40 pounds, the same as an airport luggage allowance.
Providing water, sanitation and hygiene together reduces the number of deaths caused by waterborne diseases by an average of 65%. (WHO)

When I was in Ethiopia this past June, I witnessed firsthand the drastic unavailability of water and sanitation services. It could be seen every time I left the nation’s capital, Addis Ababa, and headed out along the roads leading to the rural population which make up 90% of Ethiopia’s 90 million people. Woman walking for hours with yellow jerricans on their backs. Mule carts loaded with empty and full jerricans. Even children carrying jerricans and walking miles in search of safe water.

Africa Ethiopia Global Health Global Issues Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises SOCIAL GOOD TRAVEL TRAVEL BY REGION

September 19, 2014April 15, 2018

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The Long Walk to Deliver

On one of my last days in Ethiopia as a fellow with the International Reporting Project we visited Project Mercy, a not-for-profit relief and development agency that provides services to help alleviate human suffering and overcome systemic poverty in Southern Ethiopia. The visit ended up being one of the most enlightening moments of our entire trip.

In order to combat Ethiopia’s high maternal and newborn mortality rates, Project Mercy opened a “Lie and Wait” home for rural woman to come to stay before delivering their child at a nearby hospital. In a country in which an estimated 90% of women deliver at home with little or no trained birth assistance, a Lie and Wait house ensures women from the far away, remote villages will come to wait to stay and deliver at a hospital with a trained midwife or doctor. Lie and Wait houses have saved many lives of both mother and child.

Many of these expectant mothers walk miles on foot on various terrains and topographies to reach a Lie and Wait house. At Project Mercy in the Yetebon community of Southern Ethiopia, pregnant women can walk hours through rugged, mountainous terrain to reach the Lie and Wait home. It is a true test of endurance to walk on foot carrying almost a full term baby.

Reaching the Yetebon community on rough gravel roads that end when they hit the mountains where most of the population live.

Africa Child Labor, Marriage, Education and Survival Ethiopia Global Health Global Issues Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises Poverty SOCIAL GOOD TRAVEL TRAVEL BY REGION Women and Girls

August 27, 2014April 15, 2018

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AHOPE for Children: Providing Love and Hope for HIV Positive Children in Ethiopia

Before I travel to a new place, I make it a habit to read a couple of books on the country I’m visiting in order to get an overview of a country’s history, culture, politics and other pertinent issues. When I was selected to go to Ethiopia as a fellow with the International Reporting Project where I’d be learning about newborn, child and maternal health I found several fabulous books highlighting these issues.

One of the most powerful non-fiction books I read before I left for Ethiopia this past June was “There is No Me Without You” by award-wining journalist Melissa Fay Greene.

Greene’s moving book chronicles the life of one woman’s fight to save Ethiopia’s AIDS orphans during the height of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Before reading the book, I honestly had no idea that Ethiopia was the second most impacted country in Africa by HIV/AIDS. Greene herself was unaware of the severity of the AIDS epidemic until she came across a New York Times Article in the summer of 2000.

On page 20 in her book, Greene writes:

Per the United Nations, in 2000 Africa was “a continent of orphans.” HIV and acquired AIDS had killed more than 21 million people, including 4 million children. More than 13 million children had been orphaned, 12 million of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. 25% of those lived in 2 countries: Nigeria and Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, 11% of the children were orphans.

Greene realized she could not turn a blind eye to this horrible tragedy and spent the next several years researching the origin and history of the HIV/AIDS, the development of antiretrovirals, the impact of AIDS in Africa and the plight of an entire generation of AIDS orphans. Her research resulted in her powerful book “There is No Me Without You” which is all shown through the eyes of one woman, Haregewoin Teferra, who dared to rescue these children, deemed untouchable and tragically left behind in the aftermath.

A book written on Amelezewd’s life.

It was within this mesmerizing, heart-breaking true story that I learned about Amelezewd and AHOPE for Children. Amelezewd Girma and her two younger brothers were AIDS orphans living with Haregewoin when it was discovered Amelezewd and one of her brothers were HIV positive and too sick for her to care for.

At the time, Ethiopia was overwhelmed with HIV/AIDS orphans (there were over 1.5 million in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2005) and Haregewoin searched desperately for a place that she could send Amelezewd and her brother to be properly cared for. Through Haregewoin’s search, she found Enat House for HIV-positive children which later was renamed AHOPE for Children, and Amelezewd and her brother Michael were placed there.

Sadly, it was too late for young Amelezewd who as a young teenager dreamed of getting an education and becoming a professor someday. Life-saving anti-retrovirals (ARV) that were widely available in the western world were still unaccessible in Sub-Saharan Africa where they needed them most. ARVs were not available in Ethiopia until 2005. Amelezewd passed away leaving behind a legacy of heartbreak and hope while her younger brother Michael survived thanks to the availability of ARV treatment. AHOPE meant that there was finally a hope for HIV positive children and they were no longer being sent to a place to be cared for before they died.

It was against this backdrop that I contacted AHOPE for Children and scheduled a site visit to meet with the director Mengesha Shibru during my reporting fellowship in Ethiopia this past June.

Africa Child Labor, Marriage, Education and Survival Ethiopia Global Health Global Issues Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises SOCIAL GOOD TRAVEL TRAVEL BY REGION

August 11, 2014April 14, 2018

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Ellilta Products: Helping women off the streets

You cannot change the world, but you can change someone’s world.” -Mother Teresa

One night in 1992, Serawit “Cherry” Teketel, a young Ethiopian college graduate was driving home from dinner with her family when they came upon a moment that would change Cherry’s life forever. As their car pulled to a stop at a street corner in Addis Ababa, they saw a young woman flash them. The sight of this desperate prostitute who had no other way of earning a living, started a debate and made Cherry question her own circumstances in life. Although she was a recent university graduate, she had been unable to find a job for over a year but thankfully she had her family to fall back on. What if she didn’t have that luck? What if she was uneducated, poor and a single mother with no job? What would she do? Cherry’s questioning and compassion inspired her lifelong quest to get women off the streets and into a productive life away from prostitution.

After spending time on the streets, talking with girls and learning more about their issues, Cherry founded Women at Risk, a one-year rehabilitation program that aims to get girls and women out of prostitution and into a sustainable, self-reliant job and lifestyle. Women at Risk works on many different levels of rehabilitation. For the first six months, the women go through an extensive mental, physical and spiritual rehabilitation program that deals with addiction problems, health issues and psychological healing. The next six months involves skill training. Since Ethiopia has an extremely high unemployment rate and most of these women lack an education and come from severe poverty, vocational training is not an option. Cherry and her team realized that the women would need to have skills that would require little education and minimial training yet would provide them a livable income. After much brainstorming, Women at Risk implemented training courses in weaving, cooking and hairdressing.

During the year rehabilitation program, a woman must desire and commit to changing her life. In addition to the rehabilitation and skill training services, she will receive health care, day care, pocket money and groceries each week. Once she successfully completes the program, Women at Risk helps her gain employment or start her own small businesses a viable alternative to prostitution. Today, Cherry’s program has been a wonderful success. Women at Risk has helped over 360 women and over 90% of them have continued to live lives away from prostitution.

Ethiopia has one of the highest levels of poverty in the world. Many women are forced to work or live on the streets to support their family.

Close to the end of my two-week trip in Ethiopia as fellow with the International Reporting Project, my friend Elizabeth Ataley and I went to visit one of Women at Risk‘s partners Ellilta Products. We had heard about their gorgeous scarves through our social good blogging and work with ONE and fashionABLE. Both Elizabeth and I are proud owners and supporters of the Ellilta scarves sold in the US through fashionABLE so we wanted to meet with the women behind the scenes.

Global Issues Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises SOCIAL GOOD Women and Girls

July 15, 2014April 15, 2018

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Maternal Health: The Forgotten Millennium Development Goal

This past June, I visited Ethiopia as a fellow with the International Reporting Project with the primary goal of examining the impact of Ethiopia’s success at achieving Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 – reducing child under age five deaths by two-thirds – well before the 2015 MDG deadline. Granted it is a stunning achievement that has put the spotlight on Ethiopia, it can also be argued that Ethiopia as well as many other countries around the world are failing to reach critical milestones for other MDGs such as maternal health. MDG 5 – to reduce maternal deaths by 75% and achieve universal access to reproductive health – is trailing way behind the other goals coming in near the bottom.

According to a recent article published in The Lancet*, only 16 countries out of the 189 United Nations member states who committed to the goals are expected to meet MDG 5 by 2015. The consequences of this are devastating to women and their families.

The tragic facts about maternal deaths

Every day, 800 women die from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth.
When a mother dies, the risk of death for her children under the age of five increases by 50%.
The number one killer of 15-19 year old girls worldwide is pregnancy and childbirth. Every year, 70,000 young women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth – over 70% of these deaths are preventable.

Access to universal reproductive health, the other piece of MDG 5, is also lagging behind. There are millions of women, mostly poor and rural, who have no access to family planning and are unable to space or plan their children. Furthermore, this year alone it is estimated that nearly 22 million unsafe abortions will take place around the world resulting in millions of preventable maternal deaths and longterm disabilities.

Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa, is one of the five most dangerous places to be a mother in the world. One in 27 women die from complications of pregnancy or childbirth (25,000 annually) in Ethiopia.

With a population of 90 million, it is estimated that anywhere from 80-90 percent of mothers give birth at home with no trained assistant. In rural areas, where over 85% of the population live, it is even worse. Only an estimated 5% of mothers give birth in a health center with a trained delivery assistant. The chart below illustrates where Ethiopia falls compared with her neighbors:

How Ethiopia fares compared with her neighbors. Source: Marie Stopes International

This means that Ethiopia’s maternal mortality rate is estimated at 420 per 100,000 live births (2013 WHO/UNFPA) which lumps Ethiopia along with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, as the top five highest maternal mortality rates in the world. As the population continues to boom in Ethiopia, it is critical that improvements are made to women’s access to family planning, safe abortions and labor and delivery care which would significantly reduce the number of women dying and having serious injuries during childbirth.

The alarmingly high ratios of health care professionals per patients is another factor in high maternal mortality rates in Ethiopia. It is estimated that only 34% of women have received prenatal care and 57% of women have received no pre or postnatal care during pregnancy. Source: Marie Stopes Ethiopia.

Seeing a huge, unmet need for family planning and reproductive services, Marie Stopes International begin working in Ethiopia in 1990. Marie Stopes International works to provide sexual and reproductive healthcare to millions of underserved women around the world and has been delivering family planning, safe abortion, and maternal health services to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable women for over 35 years.

“Women are dying because of lack of services and information. Having better access to family planning helps improve the lives of women and their families”.

– Marie Stopes Ethiopia Director Abeba Shibeau

Marie Stopes works in seven administrative states in Ethiopia, and runs a three-tier level of service throughout the country through Marie Stopes clinics, Blue Star franchises (600 Blue Star clinics in Ethiopia) and a call center that works nationwide. Before Marie Stopes entered Ethiopia, only 13% of the private sector clinics provided services in family planning yet the demand for contraceptives to space and limit children was and remains high. Only 29% of married women in Ethiopia are actively using contraceptives (Marie Stopes, Ethiopia) and an enormous unmet need exists for family planning.

Marie Stopes has filled this need by providing a call center and clinics that offer education, information and low-cost contraceptive options, pre and post natal care, HIV/AIDS prevention, diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, and safe abortion when permitted, to woman and their families.

Expectant mothers checking in at a Marie Stopes Clinic in Addis Ababa.

“Ethiopia is a much better place to be a mother today than when my mother gave birth”.

– Nurse Shewaye, the Central Area Manager for all Marie Stopes Clinics in Addis Ababa.

An expectant mother relaxes a bit at a Marie Stopes clinic with her husband and son.

Another area that is helping save lives of women in Ethiopia and around the world is the provision of safe abortions.

Worldwide, one woman dies every 11 minutes from an unsafe abortion. Yet providing access to reproductive healthcare is one of the simplest and cheapest ways to save women’s lives. The World Health Organization (WHO), estimates that 5.5 million African women have an unsafe abortion every year. As many as 36,000 of these women die from the procedure, while millions more experience short- or long- term illness and disability. (Source: Guttmacher Institute)

Infographic on the impact of unsafe abortions. Source: Marie Stopes International

In 2005, Ethiopia expanded its abortion law making abortion legal for cases of rape, incest, fetal impairment, and if the pregnancy or delivery endangers a woman’s life. A woman may also legally terminate a pregnancy if she is a minor or physically or mentally unable to raise a child. Despite the changes in the law, almost 6 in 10 abortions in Ethiopia are unsafe causing 13% of all maternal deaths.

A woman entering a place to have an unsafe abortion in Ethiopia. Source: Marie Stopes.

Progress has been made yet continued expansion of affordable and accessible family planning and reproductive services is critically needed especially for rural women who represent 82% of all women of reproductive age in Ethiopia.

There are many reasons for pursuing an unsafe abortion however most of the time it is due to the false belief that it is the cheapest method while in fact many of these underground illegal abortions cost more than a safe one.

Furthermore, religion, fear and cultural issues are other reasons why women especially young and rural ones, will pursue an unsafe abortion and risk their lives.

The Make Women Matter Campaign

As the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals draws to a close, Marie Stopes International has launched a new campaign called Make Women Matter. The goal of the campaign is to ensure that maternal mortality remains at the top of the world agenda for future development goals. It also calls for achieving women’s rights and empowerment, universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, and ending unsafe abortion.

World leaders will be meeting in New York this September during UN Week to discuss the future of MDGs. To ensure that maternal health gets the critical attention it deserves, please spread the word by sharing this post. You can also personally make a difference by signing Marie Stopes petition at change.org by clicking here.

#makewomenmatter

Newborn baby in Hawassa, one of 10-20% of Ethiopia’s 3 million children born in a health facility.

I was in Ethiopia in June as a reporting fellow with the International Reporting Project. To see all my stories from the trip, click here.

References:

Material in this post was provided by Marie Stopes in Ethiopia and the UK. To learn more about Marie Stopes International, please visit their webpage here. #makewomenmatter

USAID, Achieving the MDGs: The Contribution of fulfilling the unmet need for family planning, Washington DC: Futures Group International, 2006.

*The Lancet: Global, regional, and national levels and causes of maternal mortality during 1990—2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013

Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health, Technical and Procedural Guidelines for Safe Abortion Services (2006)

Guttmacher Institute Ethiopia brief

The Millennium Development Goals Report 2014 – UN

Africa Ethiopia Global Health Global Issues Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises SOCIAL GOOD Women and Girls

July 9, 2014April 15, 2018

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SOS Children: Providing Ethiopia’s orphans the home they need

“A Loving Home for Every Child” – Motto written on a sign at the entrance of a SOS Children’s Village in Ethiopia.

A SOS Mother with one of her daughters.

One of the most heartwarming afternoons during my two-week trip to Ethiopia as a fellow for the International Reporting Project was spent visiting a SOS Children’s Village. SOS Children is an independent, non-governmental international development organization that provides loving homes for abandoned and orphaned children in 133 countries for almost 82,100 children. It was founded in 1949 by Austrian Hermann Gmeiner with the first SOS Children’s Village built in Imst, Austria as a home for children orphaned by World War II.

Today, SOS Children works to provide abandoned, destitute and orphaned children with a loving, family based home. Every child in a SOS Village belongs to a family and is provided with a SOS Mother and “siblings” who are the other SOS Children living under the same roof. This allows the children to grow up in a family being loved and feeling secure. Within each village, there are up to fifteen families living together in a community and each family has up to ten children per house. It is a wonderful model and has had a huge impact on the children’s lives and futures.

SOS Children started working in Ethiopia in 1974 with the opening of the first village in Mekelle and over the years it has added six other villages caring for 1,645 children in SOS families. SOS Children’s education and training program unit has also benefited over 3,400 children and youth as well as children coming from the neighboring communities who are in need of services.

A child watches me curiously within one of SOS Ethiopia’s villages.

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June 20, 2014October 3, 2017

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First Day on the Ground Learning about Maternal and Newborn Health in Ethiopia

This is a slightly modified version of a post that published first on World Moms Blog, “Field Report #Ethiopia Newborns: An Overview of Maternal, Child and Newborn Health. All the photos below are my own taken during my visits to villages and health care centers in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in Africa with a population of 90 million people, stunned the world by achieving the Millennium Development Goal #4 of reducing the mortality rates of children under age 5 by two-thirds well ahead of the 2015 deadline. In a country in which 95% of the population lives outside of an urban center in rural, remote and hard to reach areas and a shocking 80% of women birth at home without a midwife. Health Extension Workers (HEW) have been the key ingredient to Ethiopia’s success. However, sadly the rate of newborn survival in Ethiopia has not shown nearly as much progress.

Children in Mosebo Village 42 k away from Bahir Dar in Ethiopia.

As an international reporting fellow with the International Reporting Project, I am in Ethiopia for two weeks reporting on newborn health. I am meeting with a diverse variety of people around the country such as doctors, health officials, mothers, NGOs, midwives and health extension workers to learn about Ethiopia’s maternal, newborn and child health systems, policies and strategies for improving newborn health. On Monday, we had a presentation on maternal, newborn and child health in Ethiopia given by Dr. Abeba Bekele, the Program Manager at Save the Children Ethiopia’s Saving Newborn Lives Program.

Child Labor, Marriage, Education and Survival Global Health Global Issues Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises SOCIAL GOOD TRAVEL TRAVEL BY REGION Women and Girls

June 3, 2014June 5, 2014

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The #PassportPartyProject: Inspiring underserved girls to discover the world

Did you know that less than 40% of Americans have a passport? Have you ever wondered what percentage of this number includes underserved communities?

Meet Tracey Friley, award-winning travel writer and philanthropist, founder of The Passport Party Project and named one of National Geographic’s 2013 Traveler’s of the Year. I had the honor of first meeting Tracey in person at BlogHer 2012 in New York City. Tracey gave a presentation called Travelanthropy and I was fascinated by her talk. Her words and mission in life touched me deeply and we’ve kept in touch ever since.

Tracey Friley

Tracey caught the travel bug early and has been fortunate to have traveled to many wonderful parts of the world. Yet Tracey realized that many people in this country especially underserved communities do not have passports and have no means of international travel.

Inspired by her own passion for travel and making a difference in people’s lives, Tracey decided to act upon her disenchantment for the way the world works and find a way to help underserved girls travel. In the summer of 2011, Tracey gathered a group of local kids in the San Francisco Bay Area and spent the day with them talking about travel. By the end of the day, she had given the kids money for their first passports. Little did she know, this was the start of something bigger: The Passport Party Project.

Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises SOCIAL GOOD

May 30, 2014April 14, 2018

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A Snapshot of India

Sometimes it is true that a picture can paint a thousand words. This week’s photo challenge: A Split-Second Story, inspired me to dig deep throughout my vast archive of photographs, each one telling a story of a certain place and time. In my opinion, there is no place on earth that a simple photo can tell so much about a place than India.

India, one of the most populous countries on the earth, is full of color, contradiction, glory and pain. It is a place of wonder, sorrow, fear and hope. India bursts with humanity on every street or corner you pass. You can see it all there – poverty, wealth, good, bad, happy, sad, beauty and tragedy.

Behind the beautiful, lavish parts of India always lies the most abject poverty imaginable. Nothing can prepare you for the stark reality of desperation, misery and despair of walking through a real live slum in the heart of India’s capital. Sometimes the most severe poverty is hidden behind the walls and within the confines of a slum. Other times, it stares right back at you like a hard slap across your face. You try to look away, and ignore the creeping, uncomfortable nagging guilt. But you can’t.

Dignity

Woman leaving the newly constructed toilet compound thanks to WaterAid.

Irony

Women living on the street, outside the walls of the American Embassy near Vivekananda Slums in Delhi, India.

In the background of the lush green, beautiful grounds of the American Embassy lies the Vivekananda Camp, one of many unauthorized slums that surround every single part of Delhi. I visited this slum as part of a tour with WaterAid, a global NGO that provides safe drinking water and sanitation to areas around the world that do not have access to it.

The stark contrast between the neighboring American Embassy and the Vivekananda Slum were almost too hard to morally comprehend. These two places represent the immense contradictions and inequalities that can be found all throughout Delhi and India as a whole. One of the greatest inequalities ever seen anywhere in the world is right there staring into your face, making it impossible to not feel deeply distraught.

In the Vivekananda Camp, a slum of approximately 500 households, there is no running water, no sewer lines and people live in absolute dire circumstances. Thanks to WaterAid, improvements to sanitation have been made by the building of a Community Toilet Complex (CTC), a compound containing 20 toilets for women, 20 for men and a few for children as well as a couple of showers, providing some sort of dignity in a place where dignity hardly exists.

When I saw the old woman leaving the Community Toilet Complex, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was moving slowly, at a snail’s pace, with the help of an old wooden cane. She was heading back into the deep confines of the dirty, dingy slum, to her home. I watched her gait with wonder and hope. She had to be in her eighties and most likely spent almost all her life without a proper toilet. Finally after all these years she had the one thing every human being on this earth is entitled to: Dignity. It brought tears to my eyes for the simple things we take for granted.

Less than a third of people ( 772 million people) have access to sanitation in India, and 90 million people in India do not have access to safe water per WaterAid. Over 186,000 children under five die from diarrhea every year. With 17% of the world’s population (over a billion people), the water crisis in India is only getting worse and is becoming life or death for millions of people.

-WaterAid

This post was inspired by the Weekly Photo Challenge: Split-Second Story. To view more entries, click here.

Note: Right after I posted this today I saw the following tragic press release from WaterAid. Lack of toilets reportedly linked to murder of Uttar Pradesh girls . Via @WaterAidAmerica

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Thirdeyemom

Traveling the World and Doing Good

Category: Global Non-Profit Organizations and Social Good Enterprises