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 Jemma Williams -Australia- The gondola glides smoothly up into the Andean hills on the outskirts of Medellín, Colombia, as I peer through its clean glass windows in fascination at the world below. Slums sprawl over rugged green hills, with...
by Caroline Achieng Otieno -Netherlands- The Netherlands is a beautiful country. A typical Dutch postcard displays Friesian cows grazing in lush green fields with huge windmills looming in the background. Others are adorned with colourful tulips of the Keukenhof gardens,...
by Katie Palmer -Canada- Recently I partnered with a colleague from OneChild, a children’s rights organization, to travel throughout Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand for several weeks to investigate prevalent social issues affecting children and youth in the region. Such issues...
by Rachel Muthoni -Kenya- With the current inflation in Kenya, the number of Commercial Sex Workers (CSW) in Nakuru, the capital of the most populated Rift Valley province, is rising steadily – a trend that began after the 2007-2008 post-election...
by Michelle Tolson -Cambodia- On January 12th, 2012 I traveled 45 km outside of Phnom Penh with a group of human rights workers and journalists to a relocation site for the evictees of the Borei Keila slum, which had been...
by Jessica Mosby -USA- Charlie Barker is a guy who has it all – almost. He has a beautiful successful wife, a large New York City apartment, a loyal best friend, and a once-promising acting career that he is hoping...
by Moyara deMoraes Ruehsen -USA- UPDATE: Yesterday, the IMF’s board blocked Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer from the race for the top IMF job. -Ed. With her distinctive silver coiffure and impressive couture wardrobe, it is hard not to...
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 Sarah Irving -Australia- Across the West Bank the sound of construction work seems incessant. The grind of diggers and the steady thud of pile drivers reverberate around cities like Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Nablus. The construction boom has been hailed...
by Lesley D. Biswas -India- Anjali Das, an elderly woman, sits in her bright yellow Bou cart at a strategic road crossing in Salt Lake City, Kolkata. She is selling hand packed edibles, spices, jute handicrafts, dry fruit, and colorful...
by Alice Alech -France- The British have discovered an uplifting, social, healthy way to promote sustainability - care for the environment by growing their own fruits and vegetables while at the same time interacting with fellow gardeners. Allotments, or small...
by Nusrat Ara -Indian-Administered Kashmir- It is Sunday noon. I am standing outside the only functional cinema in all of Indian administered Kashmir. Located in the city of Srinagar, the shabby Neelam Cinema sits quiet. It looks more like a...
by Sarah McGowan - USA - If you’re one of the millions of Americans affected by the credit crunch – unemployed, uninsured and unsure of your future, or working yourself to death just to live - Shannon Hayes’ book Radical...
by Priyanka Bhardwaj - India - Last year’s World Economic Forum study on gender parity gave India a dismal ranking: 114th out of 134 nations. Only 77% of women are literate and just 23% are employed. UNICEF’s 2009 State of...
by Nusrat Ara - Indian-administered Kashmir - After the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted to a major mistake in its 2007 report, which asserted the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, skeptics and opponents alike went on...
by Katharine Daniels Executive Editor & Founder, The WIP This past weekend I was invited to keynote the Global Women’s Conference at CSU Fullerton. It was a great opportunity for me to reflect on the journey that we’ve been on...
by Emel Baştürk Akca - Turkey - Once one of Turkey’s biggest public producers of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, TEKEL has outlets and factories all over the country. But ever since the Turkish giant opted for privatization and terminated...
by Wazhmah Osman - Afghanistan/USA - Today Afghanistan finds itself in a state of collapse and at the center of a powerful network of global terrorism. Kabul is a city filled with anxiety, insecurity, instability, trauma, and uncertainty; lost souls...
by Kimberly N. Chase - USA - In an unmarked meadow by the side of the road at The Geysers, the 30-square-mile steam field about 70 miles north of San Francisco, California, the air smells like sulfur. Clouds of steam...
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 Wazhmah Osman - Afghanistan - While reports of systemic corruption and fraud are just beginning to surface in the international press as Western governments are becoming aware of it, this is old news to local Afghans. They know that...
by Michelle Chen - USA - A typical suburban supermarket aisle today will feature free-range turkeys and grass-fed steak glistening in shrink wrap—a sign, perhaps, that Americans are growing more conscious of the connection between tonight's dinner and the environment....
by Wazhmah Osman - Afghanistan/USA - I was born in Kabul, Afghanistan during the good years, in the early seventies. Among my fondest memories is walking to and from school holding the hand of my stylish mother who was then...
by Brittany Shoot - Denmark - Copenhagen is an odd mix of frustrating inertia and vigilant protest as week two of the COP15 UN climate conference at the city’s Bella Center continues in tandem with Klimaforum09, the people’s summit, and...
by Vera von Kreutzbruck – Germany - They were East Germany’s dream couple in the eighties. But shortly after the fall of the Wall, which divided East and West Germany from 1961 until 1989, a scandal would taint the image...
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 Priyanka Bhardwaj - India - At the insistence of the United States, India has been granted global “nuclear exception” status despite being a non-signatory on nuclear non-proliferation treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban...
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 Kimberly N. Chase - USA – Walking through any one of America’s big cities, the wind may brush a candy bar wrapper across the street and giant bags of trash might choke the sidewalk. Some people think nothing of...
by Natasha Dokovska - Macedonia - "I have 15 years seniority over the human resources officer and the highest level of education. Eight years ago, I was the head of the department, but in the last two years I have...
by Katharine Daniels Executive Editor, The WIP - USA - Recently, I had an insightful conversation with Linda Tarr-Whelan, author of Women Lead the Way: Your Guide to Stepping Up to Leadership and Changing the World. As the founder of...
by Moira Birss - Colombia - The sparse media coverage of Colombia tends only to give vague descriptions of a violent country with a thriving drug trade. But I’ve come to understand in my 15 months living and working here...
by Stine Eckert - USA - When the Malaysian government expelled Bangladeshi migrant workers from the country in 1998 because it needed jobs for its own people, 32-year old Sheikh Rumana was one of them – after having worked under...
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Highland Park, Michigan would seem an unlikely candidate for water access problems – the city is located on the Great Lakes, the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world. The Great Lakes are...
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 Aralena Malone-Leroy News Editor, The WIP - France - In 2006, my husband and I decided to move from San Jose, California to Paris, France. The choice between Silicon Valley and the City of Light may seem like a...
by Binalakshmi Nepram-Mentschel - India - In July I spoke before the United Nations General Assembly in honor of the tens of thousands of people who have lost their lives to gun violence in my part of the world. The...
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 Melissa Hahn - USA - “I just thought our life would be different.” My mother Deborah Cruze is reflecting on the devastation this recession has wrought on her generation. In her view, the rules of the game changed when...
by Constance Manika - Zimbabwe - There have been many obstacles that threaten the already shaky power sharing agreement between the ZANU PF and MDC political parties, stalling much needed progress in Zimbabwe. Convincing the donor community to assist or...
by Shreyasi Singh - India - Divorce seems to have acquired a new label – Made in India! Data shows the country, known to be tradition-bound, conservative, and family-centric, is in the throes of a divorce spiral, with the number...
by Brittany Shoot - Denmark - In Demark, despite strict immigration laws, it isn’t uncommon to see large groups of young Filipina women congregating on train station platforms or giggling together in public. In Copenhagen, state-sanctioned domestic workers are often...
by Melissa Costa - USA / Brazil - Regina sings to loud Brazilian country music while her skillful hands turn old Santa Claus hats into dresses and pieces of beverage cans into ornaments. Immersed in nostalgia, Regina relives her difficult...
by Melissa Hahn - USA - “They start arriving an hour before we open, and by the time we unlock the doors at 9 am there is a crowd of people waiting to get in. Within seconds, all of the...
by Sarah-Eva Carlson - USA - The concept of investing in what matters is not new to me. In fact, it’s where my life as an investor began. I was in the 8th grade and had won a cash award....
by Jessica Mosby - USA - For almost two years, I have been reviewing documentary films for The WIP. I have spent countless hours in dark movie theaters so moved by what is on screen that I promise myself that...
by Nancy St. Clair - USA - “Going green is not going to transform our planet unless everyone can embrace the movement on their own terms and scale… If we don’t embrace reducing and reusing, the green movement cannot make...
by Constance Manika - Zimbabwe - It has been a year since I last wrote for The WIP and it’s really good to be able to share what has been happening in our country. Every weekend for the past eight...
by Jozefina Cutura and Hope Lozano-Bielat - USA - Kristina was at Google before the Internet giant became a household name. She worked as a training specialist for six years, taking pride in her job and enjoying Google’s famously easy-going...
by Michelle Chen - USA - The landscape of Guiyu, a remote town in China’s Guangdong province, embodies a collision between past and future. Amid acidic plumes of smoke and vast mountains of trash, migrants scour for valuable scraps using...
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 Afsaana Rashid - Indian-administered Kashmir - With soaring unemployment and a private sector still in troubled infancy, for the last few decades, government has provided the bulk of Kashmir’s jobs. Yet today this may be changing; on the heels...
by Maria H. Lewytzkyj - USA - Every day in Sonoma County, Michelle Sanchez gets around in her wheelchair at Grosman Apartments in Santa Rosa, California. As a teenager, she hid her increasing equilibrium problems from her peers. Once she...
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 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 Jenna Mulhall-Brereton - USA - Elsa Gómez Mamani sits on the ruins of a stone wall on a cold but sunny morning in a field high on the Andean altiplano. We are in southern Peru, on the shores of...
by Rosemary Okello - Kenya - In the face of escalating of sexual violence in Kenya, women with disabilities are more vulnerable than ever. A recent study by the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya (FIDA-K) - a women’s rights...
by Suad Hamada - Bahrain - Adhari was at one time a legendary site that attracted many tourists to the tiny desert island of Bahrain. Named for a beautiful girl whose tears flowed endlessly because she could not marry her...
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 Linda Tarr-Whelan - USA - Here’s a news flash: in one week, two major economic articles in national newspapers raise the same point – we need more women in top leadership. Why? Because we need more balanced risk-taking, more...
by Zubeida Mustafa - Pakistan - In Pakistan, people with disabilities are generally missing from public places such as shopping malls, restaurants and even universities. But it’s not that the country doesn’t have its share of the disabled; on the...
by Melissa Hahn - USA – On January 20th, John Marshall* joined the ranks of US homeowners who have foreclosed on their homes. The thirty-year old African-American is struggling to make sense of his surreal situation....
by Nora W. Coffey - USA - As we tighten our belts at home and abroad, we are all accountable for the burden of national debt we pass along to future generations. Local and international relief efforts for the poor...
by Mridu Khullar - India / USA - For five years, Jitender Kumar was unable to find employment. He gave interviews every week, was rejected constantly, and sank into depression as sources of income dwindled and he became increasingly dependent...
by Olivia Loyd - USA - My industry is hemorrhaging, the pink slips keep coming, the center is not holding. Almost 30,000 people in the media industry have been laid off in the past year. Mastheads are shrinking. Newspapers are...
by Alice Alech - France - Since the French revolution, town councils have been responsible for water management throughout France. Yet, most municipalities have been delegating the job to private water companies. As a result, 72% of French people use...
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 Wenonah Hauter - USA - Think of the last time you turned on a tap while washing dishes, brushing your teeth or grabbing a glass of water. If you’re like most people, it probably doesn’t stand out as a...
by Jasmin So-Armada - Canada - Walk into a convenience store, coffee shop or supermarket in Calgary and chances are you’ll be waited on by a temporary foreign worker (TFW). Though they come from many countries, they share one story:...
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 Priti Sehgal - India - The United States was once a dreamland for many of us Indians. The US label – whether American-brand apparel, a pleasure trip to the US, a higher education degree from anywhere in America, a...
by Genie Z. Laborde - USA - Most people do not see themselves as financial experts. However the strong emotional response we’ve seen lately shows that many people feel the government’s bailout bill reflects the machinations of a Congress that...
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 Kulsoom Nizamuddin - Indian-administered Kashmir - - In a continuing cycle of conflict, fresh violence broke out this week in Kashmir, heightening tensions and confining everyone to their homes as a blanket curfew was put into effect in Srinagar....
by Jessica Mosby - USA - Paying upwards of $10 USD to see a movie about economics, particularly in these increasingly desperate financial times, hardly seems like a prudent decision – much less a pleasurable way to spend a Sunday...
by Suad Hamada - Bahrain - They live in the richest states in the world but cannot afford to buy essential commodities because their countries were busy promoting oil related investments, rather than securing profitable food and agriculture industry. •...
by Eva Sohlman - Sweden - In Haiti people eat cakes baked with mud for lack of flour. In Bangladesh, Indonesia and across Africa, riots are spreading among the hungry. And in the world’s richest country, the United States, the...
by Katharine Daniels & Sarah McGowan - USA - Sunday’s news that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn from the Zimbabwean runoff race spurred international media coverage and outrage on a crisis that has been raging for years. According to...
by Jozefina Cutura - USA - With Hillary Clinton’s recent campaign for the presidency in the United States at its end and women leaders taking charge in countries from Chile to Liberia, women’s advances in politics are making headlines. But...
by Lelety Mabasa - Zimbabwe - Always faithful in shocking the world, Zimbabwe has scored yet another first, and as usual, for all the wrong reasons. • Basket case: A fruit seller in Harare hunts for change. •It seems that...
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 Constance Manika - Zimbabwe - "The moment the people stop supporting you, that's the moment you should quit politics." These were the seemingly reasonable and even wise words President Robert Mugabe used in the Highfield suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe’s...
by Jessica Mosby - USA - - March 8th - Today we celebrate International Women's Day with our sisters and mothers, aunts and grandmothers, cousins and daughters, and most of all, with our writers, who have become family. On this...
by Rose-Anne Clermont - Germany - They leave holding only their children's small hands in their own. A crumpled photo of a relative might find its place among their few possessions. Most often it is nothing more than a prospect—of...
by Constance Manika - Zimbabwe - On March 11th, 2007, 64 year old Sekai Holland woke up unusually early. She was restless and anxious because of the scheduled protests that her party was going to go ahead with against the...
by Natasha Dokovska - Macedonia - “I have seven children, I don't work, neither does my wife. For many years I thought about selling my kidney so I could give my children a better life, but just recently I found...
by Lelety Mabasa - Zimbabwe - There was chaos and pandemonium at Harare’s city center on January 23rd, as thousands of ordinary people came face-to-face with the wrath of the police’s riot squad, who were summoned by Zimbabwe’s aging President,...
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 Constance Manika - Zimbabwe - In my last article I wrote that the situation here is so dire that many Zimbabweans, including myself, can now only pray for divine intervention to rid us of this dictator, Robert Mugabe. Based...
by Eva Sohlman - Sweden - Harold Bloom, Yale literature professor and cultural critic, is one of America’s most prominent and provocative intellectuals. Unabashedly, he has always spoken up for what he calls “the fight for truth and beauty” making...
by Nomi Prins - USA - The movie, Atonement, is a heart-breaking love-story, a historical WWII saga. Without giving away the ending, which must be seen to be adequately felt, it tells the tale of two lovers’ lives irrevocably changed...
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 Constance Manika - Zimbabwe - I am always left cursing and depressed and angry after covering assignments where I meet with People Living With HIV and AIDS. (We call them PLWAs here.) • Weighing only 90 pounds when she...
by Katharine Daniels Executive Editor, The WIP USA On Monday afternoon Managing Editor Patricia Vásquez and I changed gears and filmed seven questions The WIP wants answered by the next President of The United States. Reporting to you from behind...
by Vera von Kreutzbruck Germany • Hamburg boasts pint-sized anti-Nazi graffiti. Photograph by Photocapy. •The prominent German talk show host, Eva Herman, has been in the eye of the storm ever since she praised Hitler’s promotion of motherhood in a...
by Constance Manika - Zimbabwe - Most of us here in Zimbabwe thought he was joking when we first heard President Robert Mugabe tell the public that his government was going to "pounce on greedy businesspeople" because they were increasing...
by Lelety Mabasa Zimbabwe Vongai stumbles into the house and fumbles as she pulls her room key from her bra. After she struggles with the lock for several minutes, the door finally creaks open. She slips into the room, trying...
by Constance Manika - Zimbabwe - As I write this piece, a soldier is in critical condition at the army hospital after residents from the notorious suburb, Mufakose attacked him and three of his colleagues for "harassing innocent civilians". It’s...
by Vera von Kreutzbruck Germany/Argentina • Sept 12 - Austria: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner meets with Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer. •Unless there is a dramatic and highly improbable last-minute shift in the voter polls, the 28th of October will prove...