Look into their eyes and help us fill them with calm. Laudy and Jean have not been able to pay rent for nine months. The only option left to them is homelessness. We cannot—and will not—walk past them indifferently. We met Laudy and Jean three years ago, when the world followed inhumane rules. No hugging […]

Siham and Emad. Mother and son. United by love and suffering, divided by Lebanon. Siham loves her homeland; for Emad, it is the cause of all the misfortune in his life. “I am a fish in the sea that is Lebanon,” says Siham, describing how much the country’s collapse has affected her situation. I meet […]

This is a report from the front lines of the fight for health—written today with sweat and human strength. This lamp and operating table didn’t arrive by courier or in a large humanitarian shipment. They were handed over at the Rwandan border, from hand to hand, like the most precious baton in a relay. The […]

“These are my eyes now,” Charbel says, showing his hands. The hands of this man tell a story of hard work in the fields. A story framed by tough, rough skin etched with grooves resembling the topographical lines of the land he has tended for years. “Don’t move anything here, because I’ll never find it,” […]

Illiteracy is not a blank page. It’s a page where fate has already written the whole story for you. Today is International Literacy Day—a day to celebrate those who have been given the most important tool: the ability to read and write. A tool to rewrite your own story, or at least place your own […]

Today, Roger occupies slightly less space in this world than he did yesterday. He is almost no longer here with us. In the Beirut port explosion, he lost his family and his home. Crisis-stricken Lebanon cannot offer him any work. Cancer is slowly consuming his body. Roger lives in the shadow of tragedy, but he […]

An hour’s walk to school. Under a tattered uniform, notebooks that simply dissolve during the rainy season. Disappear. Education is not just learning to read and write. It’s the only lifeline you can grab when fate has been pulling you down since birth. It’s the promise that your story doesn’t have to be the same […]

“Mademoiselle, vous êtes capable de tout”—these words sound like a foreign melody in the ears of many girls from Senegal. No one had ever told them before that they were capable of everything. They are 17–23 years old. Some come from small villages near Joal, others from poor neighborhoods of Dakar. When they finished primary […]