All News and Features

Once considered a rare delicacy, artichokes are increasingly common on dinner plates throughout North America. Global Impact member charity CARE is helping to ensure that there is a plentiful supply to meet the demand while also helping rural farmers in Peru increase their income.

In the slums of Calcutta, India, many parents are illiterate and overworked, simply struggling to survive. Too often they view education as an impediment, rather than an improvement, to their children’s lives. As a result, their children struggle to make passing grades and often drop out of school altogether.

Kabh and Lopu sell dried fish and vegetables—potatoes, onions and garlic—at their own market stalls in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital. The potatoes are imported and cost $2 apiece. In a place where people typically make $1 a day, it’s a hefty price, but even so, there is a market for their wares. They have built their businesses thanks to microloans from an American Refugee Committee (ARC)-sponsored institution.

In several rural and urban areas of Zimbabwe, Global Impact member charity Africare has pioneered “male empowerment” to provide home-based care where, increasingly, families decimated by HIV/AIDS and other diseases are unable to tend their sick. The male volunteer caregivers, often members of churches and community groups, have become a godsend to hundreds of sick people and their loved ones.

Since 1999, the Washington-based Arab American Institute Foundation has honored groups and individuals that are working to foster cross-cultural understanding with an award named for poet and philosopher Khalil Gibran. The Lebanese American, perhaps best known for his 1923 collection of spiritual poems titled The Prophet, is also remembered for his love of humanity, his passion for equality and his skill at merging Eastern and Western philosophies. This year's winners of the Gibran awards, as in years past, embody the poet's ideals, and inspire hope for a more just, peaceful world.

The crisis is growing worse in the Darfur region of Sudan, as fighting continues despite a peace agreement signed in May 2006. On January 10, 2007, the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels agreed to a 60-day ceasefire and peace summit, but both sides have broken previous ceasefires and there have been reports that this one has been broken also.