AJWS is joining the World Bank and more than 30 faith-based organizations to end extreme poverty by 2030. Our President Ruth Messinger joined the World Bank and leaders from more than 30 faith-based organizations today to launch a major global campaign, #faith2endpoverty. It is our faith-based obligation to improve the lives of every man, woman, …
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On March 4, 2015, AJWS president Ruth Messinger joined a panel of distinguished guests, including Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church and Katherine Marshall of World Faiths Development Dialogue, who each spoke about the relationship between religious proselytism and development at a forum hosted by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown …
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Originally published by Quorum, a project of The Daily Beast. On Human Rights Day in December 2014, activists from around the world gathered at The Daily Beast’s “#Quorum: Global LGBT Voices” to share their struggles and achievements in working for LGBT rights worldwide. Essy, a Kenyan activist who works for AJWS grantee Persons Marginalized and …
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Twenty-three-year-old Jeanette and her two children live in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—a country rife with ethnic conflict and known by U.N. officials as “the rape capital of the world.” Since 1993, the DRC has suffered waves of political and sexual violence, and women and children have paid the …
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Grace is the mother of seven children. She lives in Democratic Republic of Congo, a country rife with ethnic conflict that has been called “the rape capital of the world” by U.N. officials. In addition to the vulnerability of being a woman in a war-torn region, Grace and her family are Pygmy, an ethnic minority …
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New York, NY – Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), the leading Jewish international development and human rights organization, issued the following statement in advance of First Lady Michelle Obama’s visit to Cambodia: “I commend First Lady Michelle Obama for her historic trip to Cambodia this week to promote the Administration’s ’Let …
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Homophobic hatred sizzled in Haiti’s streets last summer. Religious leaders marched throughout the country to protest same-sex relationships and stir up anti-LGBT sentiment. As these extremists launched a vicious campaign, Haiti’s small, but growing number of advocates for LGBT rights—like the aptly named AJWS grantee Kouraj (Courage)—spoke out.
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This award-winning NGO helps activists stay safe, so they can keep speaking out against injustice. In recent years, activists who defend human rights in Guatemala have faced a rising wave of targeted violence that aims to crush their growing movements for social change. From 2008 to 2011, there were 1,286 reports of attacks against human …
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Many Haitian migrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent work in low-wage jobs on the country’s sugar and banana plantations, or as construction workers or laborers in the informal economy. They reside in bateyes—poor districts that were established to house sugar plantation laborers and their families. Because Haitians and their descendents are often denied citizenship rights …
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New York, NY – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of three women currently sitting on the United States Supreme Court, has co-authored a feminist reading for the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, April 3, 2015.
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