by Alexandra Marie Daniels
-USA-

Through the lens of average teenage eyes, The Forgiveness of Blood captures the contradictions that have hindered Albania’s post-communist development. Specific in context yet universal in theme, Joshua Marston (director of the highly acclaimed 2004 film Maria Full of Grace) has created a high quality artistic production - that educates and powerfully brings us closer to the possibility that, just maybe, as cultures we are not as different as we often like to think.

by Rita Banerji
-India-

I am on a Google alert for “dowry,” a practice that is recognized as one of the underlying causes of India’s female genocide/gendercide. Recently there was an avalanche of ‘dowry’ alerts as Indian and foreign media eagerly reported on the new Facebook game, “Angry Brides,” launched by the private Indian marriage bureau Shaadi.com. Players are invited to throw things like virtual shoes and tomatoes at grooms demanding dowry. Every time a dowry-demanding groom is hit, the dowry amount is lowered.

What I find appalling is how media reports depict “Angry Brides” as a commendable way to raise “social awareness.” The Vice President of Shaadi.com is quoted as calling “Angry Brides” an “innovative” plan to get more customers and engage with them about “the nuisance of dowry.” While the corporate giant Shaadi.com, with its base of 20 million customers, is recognized among the world’s top 50 most innovative companies, the term “nuisance” grossly understates the actual impact of the practice of dowry.

by Aloosh Devrim
-Syria-

Sunk deep in thoughts, Rania sits alone in her dark room oblivious to the thumping of feet on the roof where neighbor’s children are playing. The screams of Yousaf, her three-month-old, and the ringing telephone simultaneously interrupt her thoughts. She carries the baby on one arm and takes the call with the other hand.

This is a phone call she has been waiting for all day long. As she boards this emotional roller-coaster, her husband Muthana gently takes Yousaf in his arms.

by Katie Palmer
-Canada-

In recent years, there has been a slight yet noticeable shift among many Western young adult travelers. Once adventurously backpacking across Northern Europe and other parts of the world, they now combine cheap travel to the Global South with short-term volunteer endeavors. Whether one is performing low-skill unpaid work at an elephant sanctuary in northern Thailand for a couple of days, or providing high skill pro-bono legal aid at a law clinic in Nairobi, Kenya, today’s Generation Y is scheduling time to make a difference while on vacation abroad.

by Aralena Malone-Leroy
-France-

In late December 2011, while most Europeans were doing last-minute holiday shopping and preparing for gargantuan meals and family festivities, hundreds of thousands of women spent achingly sleepless nights, worried that their breast implants might be giving them cancer. The French Ministry of Health had just released a statement recommending that women with breast implants manufactured by the French company Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) have them removed, even in the absence of signs of rupture or other complications. All medical fees for the “preventive” process would be covered by national health resources.