Last month’s optimistic reports of declining poverty rates in Colombia are a world away from reality.
Tag: poverty
PUNE — Every morning Rebecca Kedari pulls a cart through an upmarket neighborhood in this city of 3.3 million to collect household waste. Ten years ago Rebecca would not even been able to enter this area of Pune, in western India. “Before I had to go outside the city to look for dry waste and bring it back. The work conditions were bad and collecting the waste took me at least 6 hours,” she says. She now wears a local government identity card, has a health insurance plan, and is part of the KKPKP — a waste pickers’ union set […]
Looking for family members who have emigrated to Europe, or in search of better opportunities, Congolese girls instead find themselves prey at the hands of human traffickers.
Why are Poles such a gloomy and miserable lot, always assuming the worst and refusing to love thy neighbor? It turns out, cheerlessness here has deep roots.
The island was a German colony until 1914, which was once a source of pride and income for many. A century later, this part of its history is deepening Samoa’s economic and social woe.
Children as young as four are the main breadwinners for some families in the Syrian capital.
KATHMANDU — Uttam Sanjel, founder of Samata School, stands before the morning assembly. Samata means “equal for all.” Today he wants to talk about a story from one of his students, whose mother celebrated the birth of a son over a daughter. “After five girls, my mom finally had a boy. She named him “Holy life water.” But our life has become more difficult. Why is it happening? It’s all because of lack of education. You have to tell your family and neighbors that sons and daughters are equal.” They then sing a song called, “Mother is Great, Love Her, […]
There was shock after the latest report from U.S. Border Patrol found an explosion of young people being sent northward from Central America. Why it isn’t just about the parents.
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How Much For That Nothing In The Window?
Even if Romania’s growth rate was among the highest in eastern Europe when we traveled there in 1966, many shop windows were nevertheless empty. And things weren’t going to get better, as the country was just beginning to become familiar with a certain Nicolae Ceausescu. Interestingly, it’s in this city of Timisoara that the Ceausescu […]
The number of Syrian refugees in Turkey has reached 900,000. They are our new poor. How we treat them is the great test of a new democracy.
As the world’s largest democracy goes to the polls for national elections, a closer look at India’s struggle to improve its schools through privatization. Even for the poor.
Employees who toil long hours for low wages at the Chinese factories that assemble the iPhone are part of the dark side of the country’s rush to urbanization.
-Opinion- BEIJING — After trying it out for less than two months, China’s southeast city of Guangzhou has announced it will suspend the “safe baby hatch” program, which provided a secure place to leave abandoned babies to increase their chance for survival. Since Guangzhou’s Children’s Social Welfare Home launched the arrangement earlier this year, 262 […]
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The Myth Of India’s Middle Class
NEW DELHI — As India’s national elections approach, the country’s middle class is the center of attention. Analysts cite it as the decisive demographic in the vote slated next month. It is true that the electoral weight of the middle class hasn’t stopped growing: according to the Asian Development Bank, the Indian middle class rose […]
AJMER — In India, 70% of the population lives in rural areas, mostly in poverty. But as a voluntary program has proven, impoverished people can become experts in solar power. Thanks to Barefoot College, an NGO based here in Ajmer, in the western part of India’s Rajasthan state, some 600 women have been fully educated about solar power, a small step towards eradicating poverty. Sunaina Das, 20, is reviewing all the components needed to make a solar lamp. Though she doesn’t know how to read or write, she’s learning to become a solar engineer. “I’ve come here for training,” she […]
For the Greek philosopher Diogenes, self-control and self-sufficiency were the essential values. He lived a life with no possessions, except for a cloak, a purse and a barrel made out of clay in which he would sleep. Intrigued, the emperor Alexander The Great went to visit him. “I’m the most powerful man in the world. […]
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Naples, The Beauty And The Horror
Luigi De Magistris, a left-leaning former prosecutor, was the latest would-be savior for the troubled Italian city. But look around, things in Naples are worse than ever.
Because of outdated tradition and economics, 14% of Yemeni girls are married off before their 15th birthday. But since the Arab spring, a movement is growing to stop this.
The recession of 2008 created a new population of poor in the U.S., concentrated in the outskirts of once thriving urban areas. In Atlanta, poverty has risen by 122%.
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Prayers Are Not The Cure For Malaria
In southeastern Congo, where a malaria outbreak is killing young children, some believe the disease has mystical origins and turn to higher powers rather than doctors.
RAWALPINDI — When 40-year-old government employee Danial Ahmed has problems with his teeth, he goes to a quack on the streets of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. “The price of dental treatment is expensive,” he says. “I cannot afford it. These quacks offer cheap treatment. For just a few hundred rupees, we can get relief from toothache and other oral infections.” These cheap alternatives to real doctors can easily be found on virtually any roadside in Pakistan. They sit along the streets or in a small kiosks, where patients are treated on the spot. According to the government, there are more than 600,000 […]
Some 100 million people have emerged from poverty since the 1980s. Is that enough?
BAUCAU — Eleven years after achieving independence from Indonesia, Timor-Leste is still one of the youngest countries in the world. And while economic growth rates are good, thanks in part to recent revenue from oil and gas, most people here still live in poverty. But now, the government is hoping to diversify the fledgling country’s economy by focusing on the tourism industry, banking on the the country’s natural beauty as a perfect draw for holiday and adventure seekers. Ricardo Ximenes Marques wakes up to paradise every morning at one of the beaches in Baucau, where the 26-year-old works as a […]
Squalid conditions in the overcrowded slums of the island country force people to look for new shelters.
ACAPULCO — Before coming to Acapulco, I had heard many disturbing things about the city. For example, that six Spanish girls were brutally raped on the top floor of a beautiful beachfront villa last February as their boyfriends, handcuffed, were made to watch. That Acapulco had suddenly become the most violent city in Mexico — […]
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“Medical Tourism,” African-Style
Every since a private insurance system was launched in Rwanda, its citizens regularly cross the Burundi border to get better, cheaper care.
BEIJING – Mengyun seems satisfied with her new bedroom, even if it’s less than seven square meters and originally served as a kitchen. “This is the biggest room I’ve ever had in the four years I’ve lived in Beijing,” she says. “And it costs me only 950 RMB ($155) per month.” Peng, the head tenant […]
Whole families are forced to leave Rwanda’s struggling north. Boys look for work at an early age; the girls, instead, all too often are pushed to get married across the border in Uganda.
Our intrepid reporter signs up for a new course taught by homeless people in the Polish city of Lodz for those who want to learn how to lives on the streets.
Some members of the hierarchy of the Polish Catholic Church seem to have troubled practicing what the new pontiff preaches.
RIO DE JANEIRO – Cleide Oliveira, a 45-year-old beauty salon owner specialized in straightening curly hair, says she’ll soon be forced to find a new job. Since November 2011, when a Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora or Police Pacifying Unit (UPP) was created in Rocinha — Brazil’s biggest favela near Rio de Janeiro — she has […]
Pennies may not change anyone’s life, but at least it helps President Dilma fulfill a campaign promise.
-Editorial- SANTIAGO – In the morning on Jan. 4 in Araucania, a region in southern Chile where the Mapuche people live, a group of masked men attacked and set fire to the house of a local landowner and farmer who had spent years litigating with indigenous groups. The landowner, Werner Luchsinger and his wife were […]
PEOPLE’S DAILY (China) Worldcrunch GANSU – What’s the best way to handle the unpleasant view of decrepit roadside housing and poverty? Hide it! is the answer from officials of China’s northwestern province of Gansu. According to China’s People’s Daily, the local authority in Zhang County in Gansu has begun to build walls to hide the […]
MOSCOW – Russia is going through a home-grown adoption boom. In the changing landscape of adoption, 6,700 children were adopted or placed with foster parents inside of Russia last year. It is a marked change since the mid-2000s, when most adoptive parents were foreigners. Now the majority of Russian adoptees are adopted by Russian parents. […]