by Diane Latiker -USA- After eight children, 13 grandchildren, and two husbands, I was blessed with a passion that fills my soul. My mom raised me to be independent, married or not. She taught me to always stand for something...
by Paromita Pain -USA- Birthdays mark milestones. For Terry Arnold, one birthday changed the course of her life. “I had just turned 49 when one morning I woke up with one breast significantly swollen,” she says. “Soon I went from...
by Katie Palmer -Canada- Child sex trafficking is rampant throughout the Philippines. Both anti-trafficking non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and government agencies estimate that 60,000 to 100,000 Filipino children, a majority between the ages of 14 and 17, are trafficked each year...
by Pushpa Iyer -USA- "Turn around, turn around,” my Nepali friend instructs our driver as we drive around Pokhara. She asks him to stop next to a small field. I get out of the car not really sure of what...
by Manar Ammar -Egypt- When Marwa* arrived at the hospital, her left arm was dangling beside her body like a lifeless piece of cloth. After examination, the doctors told her that her upper arm was shattered in three spots, and...
by Stephanie Koehler -USA- The vision of “Female Perspectives on Ending Sexual Violence” is to unite women from all over the world to document the pain they suffer as a result of sexual violence and the healing approach they have...
by Priyanka Bhardwaj -India- Every afternoon 8-year-old Raj Kumar and his younger sibling trudge along the ten kilometer expanse of Golf Course Road to take free classes at a school ensconced in a posh pocket of Gurgaon in the Indian...
by Michelle Tolson -Mongolia- One night while relaxing at home after a long day of horseback riding, I heard a loud banging on a door downstairs. It was a man adamant to be let in. He was probably drunk. This...
by Susan Enuogbope Majekodunmi -USA- My maternal grandfather’s mantra was, “Educate a woman, and you feed and educate her family.” He educated his daughters when Nigerian fathers rarely did. My grandfather was also very interested in my education and often...
by Zubeida Mustafa -Pakistan- The story of Parveen Lateef and her home school was first published on October 22, 2010. This version includes an update on Lateef and her students. It is as relevant today as it was when it...
by Mandy Van Deven -USA- An unfortunate oversight of the recent media attention on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) bullying is the advocacy potential that decades-old legislation has to prevent gender-based harassment in schools. Title IX of the...
by Rachel Muthoni -Kenya- Since they were evicted from the Mau Forest complex two years ago, more than 10,000 families have known no better life than that of suffering, sleeping in the cold, hunger, and lack of access to basic...
by Chumile Jamela -Zimbabwe- Lisa Kunene’s* path to higher learning has been a painful one. A 20-year-old first-year engineering student at one of the top universities in Zimbabwe, she was born to a poor communal farmer in rural Matebeleland South,...
by Lesley D. Biswas -India- Poverty, illiteracy and gender disparity are engrained in the Indian society. Key indicators of social development such as health and education are below average. The World Bank estimates India is home to 456 million people...
by Louise Hancock -Afghanistan- Nazifa is typical of millions of Afghan girls. She was forced to drop out of school as a teenager when the Taliban came to power and began to close down girls’ schools. For three years, she...
by Alexandra Marie Daniels -USA- The Lottery, one of two films about American public education to make the short list for the 83rd Academy Awards, gives hope that public awareness about the dire state of American education will continue to...
by Liz McGinn -UK- My eldest daughter is going to university in 2012. She is academically gifted and wants to study mathematics and French. She has no idea what she wants to do with her degree, but she wants to...
by Zubeida Mustafa -Pakistan- Floods in 2010. Earthquake in 2005. Pakistan has been severely battered by the elements. Thousands have died and millions have become internally displaced. But even without Nature’s unkind revenge, life in Pakistan is not easy for...
On Saturday, October 2, an estimated 175,000 people joined together at the Lincoln Memorial for the One Nation Working Together rally for jobs, justice, and public education. Marian Wright Edelman is a lifelong advocate for disadvantaged Americans and is the...
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Rebel was the theme of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The message was everywhere: On screen before every film; on the front cover of the film schedule, which read “This Is Your Guide to...
by Priyanka Bhardwaj - India - Education remains an emotional subject in a poor and developing country like India, where it is seen as the primary means for social and economic mobility. Indian families are known to sell land and...
by Rachel Meyer - USA - As I sit and write this, a young man sits in County Jail awaiting his sentence. Three years ago he was involved in a fight while in juvenile hall for drug related charges. This...
by Miaad A. Hassan - USA - For a long time she resisted, but four years ago Amal started to wear the hijab - her bright and shining youth draped in black. She is a 25-year-old Iraqi woman, and she...
by Katharine Daniels Executive Editor, The WIP California’s Women’s Conference, one of our nation’s largest annual forums for women, took place in the port city of Long Beach October 26th and 27th. Hosted by Governor Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria...
by Shreyasi Singh - India - Sometimes, just asking for a small cup of milk to brew your tea can bring domestic violence to a halt. Sounds too simple a solution? Well, it need not be as a recent public...
by Shreyasi Singh - India - The weakening global economy is helping reverse India’s much-lamented “brain drain” as hundreds of techies, scientists and corporate managers, primarily from the US, are homeward bound. India’s booming economy has aided this influx. Its...
by Jessica Mosby - USA - During its midcentury glory days, Weequahic High School was a prestigious public school located in a predominantly Jewish enclave of Newark, New Jersey. Students were expected to excel post-graduation, as evidenced by noteworthy alumni,...
by Lesley D. Biswas - India - Situated in the coastal regions of West Bengal and parts of Bangladesh, Sundarbans is the largest deltaic mangrove forest in the world and home to the endangered Royal Bengal Tiger. According to a...
by Emily Rose Herzlin - USA - Katie’s eyes twinkle mischievously from across the classroom, sparkling from behind her red hair falling over her face. I wave at her, and her gaze never totally meets mine. She raises her hand...
by Megan Tady - USA - Connie Toops would be content photographing birds all day long. In fact, she’s made a business of it, working as a professional freelance nature photographer. Her office could be her backyard – she moved...
by Katharine Daniels Executive Editor, The WIP - USA - As many as a third of California’s teachers may retire over the next decade leaving California with a shortage of approximately 100,000 teachers. While budget cuts limiting opportunities for new...
by Kimberly N. Chase - USA - In an age of ever-busier schedules, escalating costs and dwindling funding for public education, the image of the full-time college student, loafing in libraries and flipping through volumes of political theory in campus...
by Katharine Daniels Executive Editor, The WIP - USA - It’s clear that school budgets are woefully inadequate and underfunded. But, will simply throwing money at a system that is flawed, broken, and unequal successfully nurture the academic achievement of...
by Sumukha S. Ravishankar - USA/India - In Indian society, where everyone aspires to be perfect in all matters, learning disabilities are not discussed, even within families. Where it is socially acceptable and even encouraged to blatantly compare and contrast...
by Pushpa Iyer - USA - It was close to 8pm on a Saturday two months ago. I was walking down a big, busy street in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with a colleague, returning to our hotel after having dinner. As...
by Melissa Hahn - USA - Charles Kapuscak and his wife Sharon moved to the Phoenix metropolitan area from Pennsylvania over thirty years ago. They installed low-flow toilets, a low-water-usage washing machine, and they under-water their plants. Unlike many transplants...
by Janelle Weiner - USA - As school districts across the United States brace for midyear budget cuts, nervous teachers are whispering about the layoffs that could follow. In this bleak economic climate, where one state’s proposal calls for eliminating...
by Blaire Dessent - France - For the 2008 Dak’Art Biennial, an international art exhibition held in Dakar, Senegal, a group of artists and thinkers associated with the Action Lab project of the Brooklyn-based freeDimensional (fD), collaborated on the production...
by Rupa Chinai - India - On August 5, 2008 a young “HIV-positive” couple in Mumbai - Babu Ishwar Thevar, 39, his wife Amothi, 33 - committed suicide after killing their three children, sons Venkatesh and Mani, ages 10 and...
by Zakeer Fehmida - India - Not long ago, a young man named Srinivas and his friends had just planted saplings along one of Chennai's busy thoroughfares and stood wondering how they could ensure the plants' survival amidst the sidewalk...
by Afsaana Rashid - Indian-administered Kashmir - Kashmir’s ongoing armed conflict over the past two decades has had physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral consequences for everyone living in the valley. Although no official figures exist, everyone agrees there has been...
by Diane Solomon - USA - Like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. before them, when Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez organized California’s exploited and marginalized farm workers into the United Farmworkers of America (UFW) in the 1960s...
by Cathy Oerter - USA - I ran through the Iowa countryside, young and carefree, unaware of the life I had been richly blessed with. It was just me and the breeze and the green methodical cornfields. The gravel roads,...
by Sarah Wyatt - USA - Years of hardship and backbreaking labor in the riot-stricken slums of Kibera in south Kenya have worn 18 year old Eshe Koome to the bone. A single mother of two, she walked out on...
by Rose-Anne Clermont - Germany - While children around the world are taught that God loves all people, even the most pious of nations repress homosexuals; marginalize and abuse women; neglect the rights of children and wage war on fellow...
by Rose-Anne Clermont - Germany - Before we had our own children, my husband and I began sponsoring a child in Senegal named Absa, a pretty little girl with clever eyes. • Absa in Senegal. Photo courtesy of World Vision...
by Rose-Anne Clermont - Germany - As a child, my parents told me almost every day to be grateful for the food on my plate. When I occasionally grimaced at the offerings, my father would say, “No problem, we can...
by Michelle Chen - USA - Angela Greene has a tough job: she and her workcrew scale the rooftops of Richmond, California to run wires, lay racks, and bend metal piping. Yet in the end, when she unfurls a gleaming...
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Including the word “orgasm” in the title of your documentary film is a bold move. After seeing the film Passion and Power: Technology of Orgasm at the Mill Valley Film Festival, I wanted to...
by Constance Manika - Zimbabwe - On October 23rd, I sent my young sister Farai off to the Republic of South Africa (RSA) to seek employment. In 2005 she graduated from the University of Zimbabwe with a BSc Honors in...
by Jessica Mosby USA 100 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa will have been infected with HIV/AIDS by the year 2010. Another 26 million children will be orphaned by the virus. The idea that two ordinary people could affect, much less...
by Neeta Lal - India - Kaveri Nambiar, 25, a Brahmin woman from Chennai in southern India, married a farmer’s son in Punjab, up north, a few months ago. But rather than glowing with the happiness of newly married bliss,...
by Nancy Van Ness USA As director of a performing ensemble, one of the joys of my life is to support other artists and witness their work. There is nothing more satisfying than watching my young colleague Lena Gilbert unravel...
by Delphine Zulu - Zambia - • Zambian school children. Photograph by Jennifer Milner. •The number of children being defiled in Zambia has continued to increase dramatically because of a widespread belief that having sex with a virgin will cure...
by Delphine Zulu - Zambia - The prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Zambia among adults aged 15-49 is currently at 16%. For every infected man, three women are infected with the virus....
by Janelle Weiner - USA - Johnny realized late in his high school career he needed to make a change or face the fate of not graduating with his class. After cutting school regularly his first two years, he decided...