Our Stories

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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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Bangladesh: Women emerge from poverty

On her 18th birthday Mussamat Baby Parveen wed the man her parents had chosen for her. By her 19th birthday she was pregnant and had run away from her husband’s home. His drug addiction had spiraled out of control, he was beating her, and she worried he would eventually kill both mother and child, s more

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Bangladesh: Empowering women to fight poverty

By Mahtab Haider and Nader Rahman, second-place winners of UNDP's second annual storytelling contest In the past decade alone, Bangladesh has slashed its poverty by half, rapidly decreased family size by two-thirds, ensured that roughly 90 percent of its girl children are enrolled in schools and red more

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Turkmenistan: Helping people with disabilities move forward

Yuriy Kulik might have remained unemployed, relegated to the fringes of society in Turkmenistan. After losing his sight as a teenager, he could not find a job that would accommodate his disability. But in 2005, Kulik took part in an intensive course that taught him how to adapt without his sight. It 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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Romania: Incubating businesses, supporting entrepreneurship

In 2006, Csaba Kiss was thinking of launching a box manufacturing company in a new business incubator in Sfantu Gheorghe, Romania. Business incubators, which host start-ups and early-stage firms, provide office space, start-up grants and consultancy services. The government was promoting them as a v more

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Employment programme gives hope to new graduates in Jordan

Like many other young students of his age in Jordan, Yousef El Mughrabi, 23, was full of dreams and plans for his future. Living in Ma’an, a southern Jordanian governorate where one in four people live in poverty and one in five is unemployed, Yousef’s dream was a simple one: securing a respectable more

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In Rwanda, small loans spur business expansion

Before the sky even begins changing colors, Francois Nzamvugankize is awake and has begun his work of baking and selling bread.  Up until four months ago, Francois, 25, struggled to provide for his wife and two young children — but now they are on the road to financial security and success more

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Training Beninese youth in agribusiness

Cybelle Agossou, the youngest of a family of six children, decided to enroll in a practical training course to become self-employed and help her parents. Today, at age 20, she manages a small soap-making business and employs four people. Cybelle took an 18-month training course at the Songhai Center more

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