Our Stories

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Water project making life easier for Ekipe villagers

Until last year, residents of Ekipe village on North Efate Island in Vanuatu had no access to running water. Villagers like Marie, a mother of five, were forced to dig holes in the sand and wait for them to fill with fresh water. Doing so was time-consuming and rarely provided enough water for cooki more

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Burkina Faso boosts access to safe drinking water

An ambitious government effort to spread water resources more widely among Burkina Faso’s 15 million people has increased the proportion of the population that has access to water from nearly one fifth to two thirds in the last two decades.  Despite being a landlocked country and suffering the more

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Communities help manage Turkey's national parks

Turkey is home to three globally recognized biodiversity hotspots and has a system of protected natural areas in place, but half its forests are considered degraded as a result of encroachment, overgrazing and illegal logging. Forests are among the most significant of Turkey’s ecosystems in terms of more

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In Bolivia, microloans lift thousands of women from poverty

Linet Claros Yevara, a resident of Mizque, a municipality in Bolivia with an 85 percent rate of extreme poverty rate, has seen her situation improve a lot lately. “My family eats better," she says. "Every day I give them fruit.” These improvements are thanks to the Semilla, or Seed, prog more

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Woman lifts her family out of poverty in the West Bank

Starting a business with limited resources in East Jerusalem, West Bank, is a challenge — especially for women. For Inayat Nageeb, a housewife and a mother of three sons and two daughters, life has not been easy. Her husband works as a guard at a mosque, with a monthly income of approximately US $8 more

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Afghanistan: New environmental councils spur development in provincial communities

Standing at the edge of Joe-e-Projey canal in the northern town of Char-i-Kar, Mohammad Tahir, a car mechanic, rues the fate of children who drink water from the local canal. “This canal has snuffed out many, many young lives. It is a bed of dirt and disease,” he says sadly, with moist eyes. The 70- more

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Women bring solutions to waste management in Burundi

In the northwest province of Cibitoke in Burundi, Peruth Ndayiramye wakes up every morning to fetch food and water for her family, and to take her goat out to graze. “After that I wash myself, I entrust my children the house work to be done, and I’m going to work,” Peruth says. One member of a tea more

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Sierra Leone: Tackling youth unemployment

The story of Umaru Kargbo, in Sierra Leone’s northern city of Makeni, 113 miles from the capital city of Freetown, is one of resilience and of sheer determination to lift oneself out of poverty. It is also the story of how a country, once riddled by suffering and stagnation caused by years of civil more

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In Bangladesh, mobile clinics help fight malaria in remote hills

Joykumar Chakma, 28, has never been treated by a doctor. “My father was the village mendicant. If we got seriously ill, the family sacrificed a pig or a hen and he believed the illness would pass. This was the custom in my community,” said Joykumar. “So many children used to die of malaria in those more

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Iran gains ground in battle against malaria

Torah, a construction worker in search of a new job and better prospects, was travelling west into Iran from Afghanistan. His second day on the move, he was hit with fever and chills, then excruciating pain – the first signs of malaria. He asked locals for help and was referred to Sadegh, a voluntee more

2.61 years
remaining
until 2015

1990 2015
Featured Publication
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The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012

Three important targets on poverty, slums and water have been met three years ahead of 2015, says this year’s Report. Meeting the remaining targets, while challenging, is possible ─ but only if Governments do not waiver from their commitments.


More MDG-related publications