Avoid The Knife
Vivian Magero wasn’t at all as I expected her to be. We were told that we were to meet a young woman who had narrowly escaped Female Genital Circumcision (FGM), a practice that is seen as barbaric and abusive. She had escaped being cut, not because of the intervention of Western aid workers [...]
Gates Foundation Blog – Why Kenyan Girls Miss School
Keeping girls in school is a vital part of any international aid program. It’s an issue important to highlight today, on the first ever United Nations International Day of the Girl. Over the past few decades, this has shown to have lasting effects, not only for the girls themselves, but also for their families, their communities [...]
Gates Foundation Blog – Peter and Teresia’s Story
Teresia bustles around her tiny straw-roofed house, arranging enough furniture for our delegation of new media journalists and bloggers to sit. She and her husband listen attentively as they are read the information and disclosure forms that enable KEMRI (Kenyan Medical Research Institute)/CDC to work with the data collected. As I mentioned in Friday’s post, the [...]
Gates Foundation Blog – Fighting HIV/AIDs in Kenya
When the severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic became clear to the Kenyan Government, they sought assistance from outside agencies. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was one of these agencies. The CDC is a U.S. government agency and has been investing in improving Kenyan health care for over 30 years. Malaria was its initial focus, [...]
London Summit for Family Planning – Photo of the Day
At the London Summit for Family Planning, I was present as David Cameron and Melinda Gates met youth delegates of the International Planned Parenthoood Foundation to talk about their work as counsellors in developing countries. My snapshop of the leaders was used on the Gates Foundation blog, Impatient Optimists.
Gates Foundation Blog Post – A Tale of Two Women
The ambitious aim of the London Summit on Family Planning happening this week in the UK is to provide family planning methods to an additional 120 million women worldwide by 2020. I have already blogged at length about this, so will simply give you all an impression of what this means for two of the women I [...]
Living (HIV) Positively
During my trip to Kenya to blog about reproductive rights, my work was featured on Impatient Optimists, the Gates Foundation blog.
Kenya Calling
In June I will be blogging from Kenya, at the invitation of the International Reporting Project: The program was created in 1998, making it a pioneer in the “non-profit journalism” movement that seeks to fill the gap left by much of the mainstream media’s reduction of international news. The IRP has provided opportunities to more than 300 [...]