Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 4 2007 (IPS) – Sports competitions for the disabled help parents and educators overcome the pitfalls of overprotection. Ten-year-old Andrea began swimming as a toddler, and trains twice a month in the ocean. Her mother says she has never been given special treatment, even though she has been blind from birth.
To attend the Benjamin Constant Institute for the blind in Rio de Janeiro, Andrea has to get up at 4:00 AM every morning, because she lives two hours away by bus, in the outlying neighbourhood of Campo Grande.
Besides her academic subjects, she studies dance and practices sports at school. Her favourite is swimming, which she does twice a week.
My daughter tells me Mama, people have prejudices, they think we #39re s…
Kara Santos
MANILA, Apr 14 2011 (IPS) – At the tender age of 10, Rodel Morozco was working in a goldmine and crawling inside tunnels, until one day he fell 200 feet underground because his father had blasted the tunnel with dynamite.
A child works by a mine in the Philippines. Credit:
I had to run and get out but it was too dark, said Morozco, who worked the mines in Camarines Norte province in Bicol, one of the Philippines poorest regions. I felt so miserable, and then I realised that I did not like what I was doing. I just wanted to go back to school.
…
MANAGUA, Aug 31 2012 (IPS) – Luisa Gutiérrez, 65, dances a frenzied mambo on an unusual dance floor: a street in the Nicaraguan capital. Dozens of cars line up behind her, honking their horns impatiently, while she, surrounded by elderly people with canes, walkers and protest signs, dances to demand a government pension.
The street dance performed by Gutiérrez, a former employee of a privately-owned footwear company that has since closed, is one of the diverse forms of protest staged by 20,000 retired workers who have come together in the non-governmental Older Adult Unit (UNAM).
The demonstrations will be stepped up in September, on the fifth anniversary of the start of the continuous protests.
UNAM is demanding the reinstatement of an old law requiring that t…
José Graziano da Silva is Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
ROME, May 5 2016 (IPS) – After its remarkable success in reducing hunger, Europe must now rise to the challenge of making sure food assures more than survival and furnishes healthy lives. As head of a global hunger-fighting organization, nothing gives me more satisfaction than to see a vast region of the world achieving food security for its people.
José Graziano da Silva. Credit: FAO
With 53 member countries and one member organization, Europe and Central Asia is FAO’s largest region, stretching across 13 tim…
Professor Robyn Norton, co-founder and Principal Director of the George Institute for Global Health. Credit: George Institute/IPS
SYDNEY, Apr 11 2017 (IPS) – Science and medicine were not subjects of dinnertime conversations in the Norton household in Christchurch, New Zealand, but Professor Robyn Norton grew up observing her parents’ commitment to equity and social justice in improving people’s lives. It left an indelible impression on her young mind.
Her high school years coincided with the women’s movement reaching its peak. She got dr…
The Government of Kenya and the UN Kenya team with their hosts on the roof of the LinkedIn HQ in San Francisco on 21 Jan 2019. Credit: UN
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 29 2020 (IPS) – One year ago, the UN began implementing reforms meant to make it more effective in delivering on sustainable development. Now, with the start of 2020, the global body has declared this as the decade of action to turn the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into a living reality for all humanity. But what does this look like, on the ground?
In countries like Kenya, there is widespread belief that the traditional approaches to economic growth are not enough to achieve the SDGs.…
Credit: Unsplash / Gabriel Benois
NEW YORK, Jun 4 2020 (IPS) – Maliha Masud (25), was promised an affluent life and opportunities for higher education. A bright student studying Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, she wanted to complete her studies and become someone her parents would be proud of. She was promised an opportunity to get her Master’s degree from a good university in the United States but, two years later, was left battered and wounded at the doorstep of a shelter.
Maliha was 20 years old when she married an immigrant living in the United States, who was completing his Master’s at a renowned university. A marriage arranged by …