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It takes a whole village to educate a child

I visited Ghor province in Afghanistan in June 2015 as part of my work for STAGES project, one of the UK-funded Girls’ Education Challenge programmes. I went there to see the work being carried out by one of the partners, which …

Healthy ageing is more than the absence of disease

Anne lives in Kenya’s Central Province. She is 65 years old and looks after 8 grandchildren and mother-in-law and works as a HIV peer educator. Picture: Phil Moore/Age International.

An astonishing transformation is taking place that has until now been absent from mainstream development thinking: global ageing. Its absence is even more surprising as the evidence makes clear that demographic changes are affecting developing countries the most. Currently about …

Being a DESA

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As part of the first cohort of the DFID Entry Scheme for Advisers (DESA), Isabelle Abbott Pugh, James Hamilton-Harding and Clare McCrum gamely signed up to spend one year working in the UK and two years in an as-yet-to-be-determined overseas …

Diary of an ICS volunteer: host families, hard work and hot chai

International Citizen Service volunteer Vix in her sari

Romana was a young girl when her family told her she was getting married. This is not unusual in Bangladesh; according to UNICEF, nearly two-thirds of girls are married before the age of 18 and more than a quarter of …

Providing opportunities to young people with disabilities in the workplace

I really enjoyed meeting Peter and Tom, who are with us as part of Leonard Cheshire’s Change 100 internship programme. I was inspired by their obvious passion and commitment to DFID’s work. It was great to talk to young people …

One year on from the Girl Summit: are we any closer to ending child marriage?

Annet, 17-years-old, Western Uganda: "I have been out of school for over a year now. I was here at home doing nothing so one of the evenings I met a man who promised to provide for me. A few weeks later I was pregnant and I went to live with him.” Picture: Rebecca Vassie/Girls Not Brides. All rights reserved.

Working on a taboo subject can be isolating and demoralising and, as evidenced by the experience of some Girls Not Brides members focused on ending child marriage within their communities, even life-threatening. Until a few years ago, child marriage was such …

The education glass is half full

Julia Gillard meets children at the GS Rwamiko School in Rwanda

2015 is a year of decision for global education — specifically, access to quality education by children in the world’s poorest and most conflict-ravaged countries.  Fifteen years ago, at the United Nations, the world came together to establish the Millennium Development …