Lister Chingangu outside the Capitol Dome. Courtesy of World Vision.To raise awareness about the tragic impact of HIV/Aids and Tuberculosis (TB), a Zambian caregiver who partners with American organization World Vision has just visited the United States and spoken to members of Congress.

Lister Chingangu asked them to take action swiftly and renew the Global AIDS, TB and Malaria Bill, a bipartisan legislation worth USD 50 billion that was first passed in 2003 to fund programs to fight these diseases in poor countries. World Vision has worked with Congress since then to ensure that this funding is protected, but authorization for this bill expires on September 30, 2008.

NEED magazine had the opportunity to speak to Mrs. Chingangu about God Our Help Ministries, the home-based care program that she runs in Lusaka, her hometown in Zambia. Read the rest of this entry »

Displaced Kenyans gather to receive aid from volunteers.On December 27, 2007, the disputed re-election of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki spurred an outbreak of ethnic and political violence around Nairobi and Western Kenya. Subsequently hundreds of thousands of Kenyans fled their homes, and now live in or around crowded displaced persons camps.

Rafe Steinhauer volunteered in Kenya for more than two months with the Global Volunteers Network (GVN). He taught math, English, and soccer at schools in Nairobi and Maasailand and helped aid missions into displaced persons camps after the post-election violence. In Nairobi, Steinhauer taught at a rehabilitation school for teenage boys who had committed nonviolent crimes. I asked Steinhauer some questions to find out what his experience was like. Read the rest of this entry »

Pepe Wonosikou, founder of the Numan School Project, enjoys some time with a young student in Numan, Nigeria.The Numan School Project is an organization working to furnish schools in Numan, Nigeria with the tools necessary to provide a quality education to students. Founded in 2007 by 32-year-old Numan native Pepe Wonosikou, the organization aims to accommodate over 200 students with everything they need for a proper learning environment. These needs include plumbing, windows, doors, desks, chairs, books, blackboards, and uniforms (to name a few).

NEED caught up with Pepe Wonosikou for a conversation about Numan, Nigeria and the hopes she has for her project.

Q: How long did you live in Nigeria, and why did you leave it?

A: I moved to the United States in 1991. My father moved here to pursue his graduate studies at Luther Seminary. Read the rest of this entry »

NEED interviewed Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus for the upcoming Issue 5. As a professor of economics, Yunus concerned himself with the problem of poverty. He realized that to better their lives, the impoverished needed to earn sufficient income, but lacked access to loans that could enable them to start businesses. Yunus began a highly successful project of making small loans to poor entrepreneurs. This project, which became the Grameen Bank in 1983, has expanded opportunities for 7.4 million borrowers, and inspired the microcredit movement that is helping to alleviate poverty worldwide. An excerpt of the interview follows. This weekend, you can read NEED’s interview with another Peace Prize Laureate, President Jimmy Carter.

Stephanie Kinnunen interviews Muhammad Yunus. Photo | Thomas Lee Read the rest of this entry »

Photo | John AbernathyJohn Abernathy, one of NEED magazine’s contributing photographers, consistently offers readers compelling visual narratives. He has voluntarily completed three assignments for NEED, featuring two Minnesota-based stories in Issue 2, along with a shoot in Guatemala for Issue 4. Abernathy’s success as a photographer has allowed him to make a living off something he enjoys, but he is certainly not the only one benefiting from his work. Recently, the man behind the lens allowed me to turn it back on him, offering some professional insights and personal experiences.

Q: Do you see the world differently as a photographer and how do you feel about approaching your subjects?

A: It interests me to think that all photographers are basically faced with two questions: where should they stand and when to take the photograph. Yet there is so much variety between photographers. This makes me think excellent photography is about getting outside yourself and shooting from an uncommon perspective, both physically and mentally. Photography is a selective process. By taking a photo you are choosing what is important and what isn’t. I try to think about whether the subject will think they are portrayed honestly in the final article. Read the rest of this entry »

Dina Fesler is founder and president of Children’s Culture Connection.

A crowd waits to be served by the water truck.PORT AU PRINCE As I wrap up a five day visit to L’Athletique d’Haiti, the Children’s Culture Connection-supported NGO that serves Haitian children in need, I realize that I need to get this experience written down as soon as possible…partly in fear that I may convince myself that it was all just a dream. Although I always look forward to my CCC trips abroad to visit the kids served through our program, I was nervous coming here because I really only knew three things about Haiti:

1. It is a politically unstable country in the Caribbean.
2. It is the poorest country in the western hemisphere.
3. 80% of its people live below the poverty line. Read the rest of this entry »

NEED magazine caught up with Yifat Susskind, the communications director for MADRE, for a conversation on gender, human rights and development. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, MADRE is an organization that works internationally demanding human rights for women and families.

Q. From your perspective, how adequately are gender issues/gender rights being addressed in development policies or international politics? Are they being overlooked?

A. I think there has been enough demand by women’s rights activists, both men and women, who understand the importance of women’s rights to achieving broader visions of social justice that at this point, there’s a lot of recognition of that. And it’s mostly, unfortunately, in the form of lip service. But, I think that when you have a very long-term struggle like promoting genuine development and women’s rights internationally, that you need to read the signs and understand what stage of that struggle you’re at. To give you an example, it’s not immaterial that leaders do feel the pressure to at least give lip service to those issues. Because there was a time, not very long ago, when women’s perspectives and the word gender was nowhere to be seen in any of those policy circles. Read the rest of this entry »

Since NEED featured Modest Needs last year, the organization has taken off. To find out about its recent progress, I spoke with founder Keith Taylor. Read the interview below to learn about Modest Needs’ new developments. Read the rest of this entry »

Providing rescue from Nepal’s sex trade, the Peace Rehabilitation Center in Kathmandu is an oasis of hope for many young women needing refuge. Leading this faith-based organization is Shanta Sapkota, a Nepali woman who has dedicated herself to caring for victims of sex trafficking. Many of the young women and girls that the center cares for were lured into domestic prostitution or international trafficking by false promises of marriage or employment. Most suffer from abuse, illness, abandonment, harsh brothel conditions and/or the effects of STDs and HIV/AIDS. It is under these circumstances that the center seeks to create a better life for these young women. Through care programs and advocacy, the center seeks to prevent sex trafficking and to rehabilitate its victims.

Peace Rehabilitation Center volunteer Carmen Gronewold with director Shanta Sapkota and staff member Min Sapkota.

Carmen Gronewold, a volunteer for the Peace Rehabilitation Center, shared her experience with us: Read the rest of this entry »

A ferris wheel brought in for the May Day celebration Glowing trucks, mutated animals, black rain, and the ghost town “Pripyat.” Such haunting images are etched into the memories of Ukrainians who survived the 1986 nuclear explosion at the Chornobyl Atomic Energy Station. Residents were exposed to an unprecedented amount of radioactive contamination that posed serious consequences. Affecting individual health, the environment, the economy and political relationships, daily life for these people has been assaulted on multiple fronts. While some of the immediate dangers have transitioned into painful memories, many residents continue to live on contaminated land. Due to a lack of reliable information, many young families are defenseless against the invisible dangers of radioactive contamination. It seems the well-being of Ukraine’s future generations largely depends upon the initiatives of nongovernmental organizations and voluntary research. Read the rest of this entry »