Even though child marriage might seem like a thing of the past for some of us, one in five girls globally are still married off under the age of 18. This means that for millions of these child brides, their childhood, education and future have been stolen forever. Uneducated women often end up having worse …
Fighting for a world without child marriage | Joan Kembabazi Read More »
When Nadine Goodman, a young social worker and public health graduate from Columbia University arrived in Mexico in 1981 to learn Spanish, she had in mind to stay a few months and return. But that never happened. Instead she settled down and co-founded the Center for Adolescents of San Miguel de Allende (CASA) – one …
Lessons from Mexico: Reproductive justice doesn’t end with contraception Read More »
If we truly want to liberate women, access to contraception is just the tip of the iceberg. We also need to feel comfortable talking about our bodies, our sexuality and sensuality, menstruation, post-partum depression, parental burnout and menopause. Because if we feel ashamed or embarrassed about these topics, we’re still being repressed. That’s just one …
This is one of my most favorite articles that I’ve ever written. I interviewed four amazing activists – Joan Kembabazi (Gufasha Girls Foundation, Uganda), Joan Castro (the Path Foundation Phillippines Inc, the Philipines), Carina Hirsch (Margaret Pyke Trust, UK) and Carissa Patrone Maikuri (climate and community development expert, USA) – and talked to them about …
Coming from a family of seven children, Chidera Benoit knows better than anyone how challenging it is to grow up in a big family in Nigeria and achieve a good living standard. Convinced that Nigerian women and men should be free to decide their family size, this young and motivated teacher and Executive Director of …
Meet the Nigerian Teacher Who Advocates for Family Planning Read More »
To have a large family, and at least one son, are such strong cultural and religious norms in Nigeria that when women don’t meet them they’re often considered failures. Not only is this unfair to women, it’s also becoming nearly impossible to provide for a big family in Nigeria, where poverty is rampant and the …
Meet the Nigerian Teacher Who Advocates for Smaller Families Read More »
Being a girl in any patriarchal society is tough. But living in a place where girls are married off as teenagers, are expected to have 7+ kids, and are regularly beaten and expected to keep mum about it? That’s damn hard. In the northwestern region of Pakistan, this is women’s daily bread. The worst thing? …
Imagine that you were a 14-year old girl, and instead of chatting with friends or monitoring Instagram, you’d be married off to an elderly man and expected to run a household. Imagine that you gave birth to your first child, a cute baby girl, and instead of receiving cheerful reactions, people would start crying and …
The Catalyst for Change in Pakistan: Women’s Empowerment Read More »
Read my article on Sierra, which features the work of environmental leaders Stuart Pimm, Richard Heinberg and Florence Blondel, and get inspired by their tips on staying optimistic in the midst of the climate and extinction crises.
800,000 native trees. This is how many seeds of hope conservationists from Brazilian nonprofit REGUA have planted on degraded lands in the Atlantic Forest over the last two decades – one of the biologically richest forests in the world. And that’s not all! The dedicated team managed to buy land that once used to be a …
800,000 Seeds of Hope Planted in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest Read More »