Kenyans have donated nearly $200,000 (£122,000) via mobile phone banking for aid to victims of the worst drought in the region in 60 years. The BBC’s Noel Mwakugu in the capital, Nairobi, says the money has been raised in the first 12 hours of an appeal launched by leading businesses. Continue reading Kenyans donate $200,000 by text for drought victims→
Catherine’s confidence arrests any draws to her atrocious past, she is a portrait of typical girl child resilience turned an icon in the society.
By Eric Sande
For Catherine Amondi Odongo , 21, light is finally at the end of the tunnel despite the tribulations she had to go through earlier in life. She exudes confidence that momentarily makes her forget her troubled past. At only 21, she displays a persona of one determined to make it in life, after her successful stint at Anita’s Home, the girl child centre run by Koinonia Community in Kenya. And as she waits to join university, not even the sky can be the limit. Continue reading Catherine Odongo: A Story of Patience and Resilience in the Face of Difficulty→
Photo: Zahra Moloo/IRIN The State Establishment for Care and Education has no running water, limited infrastructure and a dilapidated dormitory
KINSHASA, 29 June 2011 (IRIN) – Two years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) promulgated the Law on Child Protection, an estimated 3,000 children remain in prisons across the country.
Prior consultation: a right that ensures other indigenous rights.
Karin Anchelía Jesusi
The right to consultation for indigenous peoples in Peru has existed for the last 17 years, since the ratification of the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples; nevertheless, timber, petroleum, and mining concessions on indigenous lands are still granted without prior consultation in the communities, causing an increase in the number of social conflicts. Continue reading The right to determine their development→
Mgr Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli has protested at NATO bombing of civilian targets in his diocese. “They are hitting civilian targets such as food stores” he said. “A few days ago, NATO warplanes hit a food store just outside Tripoli, which contained oil, pasta, tomato sauce. A river of oil came out of the warehouse which was destroyed. I know they have also hit a social centre. By what right does one hit a food centre? ” Continue reading Libya: archbishop protests after NATO bombs hit food stores→
Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Earthcharter Commission
Einstein’s phrase is very true today: «a crisis cannot be resolved by the mentality that created it.» It is too late to just make reforms; they do not change the mentality. We need to start from another frame of mind, founded in principles and values that can sustain a new form of civilization. Otherwise, we will have to accept a path that leads us to the precipice. The dinosaurs have already gone down that path. Continue reading Facing the crisis: four principles and four virtues→
By Miriam Gathigah NAIROBI, Jul 25, 2011 (IPS) – For the first time ever, the finance minister has allocated almost four million dollars from the current national budget to provide free sanitary pads to schoolgirls. This comes after persistent pressure from women parliamentarians who took the issue of girls’ absenteeism from school, due to lack of sanitary pads, to parliament. It was a campaign that left their male counterparts speechless, for such matters are rarely spoken about in public, let alone in parliament, in Kenya’s conservative society.Continue reading Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting at Work→