Photo By Kaila Colbin.

Poverty is often framed in numbers: national income thresholds, unemployment rates, or per capita GDP. But for Wawira Njiru, poverty is more personal. It’s a child showing up at school too hungry to learn. It’s an empty stomach sitting in a classroom full of potential.

Photo By Fair Planet (Company Logo)

In the highlands of Ethiopia, farming has always been the heart of rural life. Most families rely on small plots to feed themselves and to earn what little they can. For generations, farmers have worked hard, planting, tending, and hoping for rain.

Photo By World Health Organisation

For many countries, achieving near-universal access to childhood vaccines remains a long-term goal. For Rwanda, it became a non-negotiable.

Photo By Educate Girls (Website)

In the dusty hills of Rajasthan, the school enrolment numbers once looked better on paper than they did in real life. Officially, millions of children were in school. But many girls, particularly in tribal and remote districts like Banswara, were not. They were fetching water. Caring for siblings. Or being prepared for early marriage.

In Bundelkhand, a drought-prone region straddling the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, water scarcity is a daily battle. For generations, women have shouldered the burden, walking long distances, waiting hours at dried-up wells, carrying heavy loads home. But when it came to deciding how water was managed, women had no voice.

In the far north of Uganda, close to the South Sudan border, lies Moyo Town, a fast-growing community of nearly 30,000 people. But until recently, most of those residents had no access to clean, piped water.

Before 2020, only about 500 households were connected to the town’s ageing supply network. Everyone else, including refugee families, schoolchildren and traders, relied on swamps, unprotected springs or shallow wells. These sources were unreliable, easily contaminated, and located far from home.

Galena is a small village on the Yukon River in interior Alaska. It has just 400 residents, bitterly cold winters, and some of the highest energy costs in the United States. For years, Galena ran entirely on diesel, flown in by plane or barged upriver in warmer months. The system was costly, fragile, and polluting.

When Regina Honu graduated with a computer science degree in Ghana, she was ready to enter the workforce. But she quickly discovered that her qualifications weren’t enough to overcome outdated perceptions. Hiring managers saw her gender before they saw her skill. Doors didn’t open. Interviews turned cold. People were surprised that she even knew how to code.