Imagine a life where you live on less than two dollars a day.  You have been saving for months to afford a trip to the health clinic. With your payment in hand, you walk three hours to get to the nearest clinic, carrying your young children with you. When you finally arrive, you want to be able to receive information and testing for HIV and also pick up contraception to prevent pregnancy, but you’re told […]

Today, the UN and the world are recognizing a group of people who deserve our thanks: volunteers! Every year, more than 7500 volunteers join the United Nations on the ground for projects promoting development, peace, and sustainability. These volunteers, most from developing countries, work in more than 130 countries. Today, on International Volunteer Day (IVD) 2012, the world is thanking both UN and worldwide volunteers for their selfless dedication to causes they believe in and

“So, now we can just walk into the office?” That’s what Rogath Lewis Mollel of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) said to me as we made our way into the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill. I responded with a surprised “yes.” Rogath was amazed with the amount of access he and the average U.S. citizen have to our elected officials in Washington, DC. As an American it’s easy to take for

‘Tis the season for giving! Girl Up is collaborating with Dell and Crowdrise on an exciting giving campaign that highlights the goals of the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network: women’s & girls’ empowerment. Today Dell is launching the Dell x Crowdrise Match Campaign  to benefit Girl Up and two other organizations (I am that Girl and the Tory Burch Foundation). Dell is working with Crowdrise , the online fundraising platform, to match the first $25,000 of

The new year is around the corner and while we don’t know everything in store for 2013, one thing is for certain: Technology and social media will continue to play a major role in how people around the world innovate and connect for good around global issues. It was a big year for the conversation around social good, with new thinkers asking some big questions on their blogs, empowering us to learn from and interact

When you picture a United Nations conference, you probably don’t imagine 600 young people dancing in the aisles. But from the beginning, it was clear that the ICPD Global Youth Forum was not your typical conference. The forum – led by young people, for young people – brought together youth leaders, and representatives from civil society, the private-sector and government, from around the world to learn, deliberate, and make recommendations around five key issue areas:

Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) is excited to announce today the national launch of “Aponjon”, a mobile health service that delivers stage-based, vital health information to new and expectant mothers via their mobile phones in Bangladesh.  Meaning “the trusted one,” Aponjon is led by the MAMA Bangladesh team in Dhaka and reaches  23 districts,  trained more than 750 community health workers, and projected to reach two million moms by 2015. The national launch event

We all believed that a girl with a book is a force to be reckoned with. Now, the world does too. Malala Yousafzai made it to TIME Magazine’s shortlist for Person of the Year, ultimately coming in today as the runner-up.  Though she started her journey behind the anonymity of a journal, the world now knows the name Malala and holds her as the inspiration for the movement for women’s empowerment, especially through girls’ education.