The AJWS community has a lot to say about what's happening in the world. Read our insights about the struggle for justice and human rights around the globe.
When a massive power company proposed a coal-fired power plant to accompany a damaging new port in Lamu, a UNESCO Heritage Site in Kenya, an activist movement to stop it turned into a nation-wide campaign. The coastal plant threatened the local community’s health and livelihoods, from polluted fishing areas to toxic air pollution and displaced …
Given the state of our country and the world today, there’s a lot riding on the next generation of human beings. Parents and educators need all the tools we can get to encourage kids to care about enormous challenges like racism, gender inequality and climate change—so they’ll someday build a better world than the one …
Thoughtshop Foundation — a longtime AJWS grantee based in Kolkata — uses a unique approach to expand what’s possible for girls and women within India’s deeply patriarchal, restrictive society. They call it “design thinking,” and for a growing collective of young people across the state of West Bengal, it has proven life-changing. Thoughtshop developed beautifully …
Hopeful doesn’t begin to describe the mood in Senegal right now, on the heels of our presidential election last week. We are witnessing our democracy reborn — a major step in AJWS’s mission to amplify democracy around the world. For the past few years, the increasingly authoritarian regime led by our former president Macky Sall …
At 51-years-old, Villy Rivera speaks with cautious optimism about his ongoing fight for the rights of transgender men in El Salvador. Until only recently, he says, this community was nearly invisible — to the government, to society, and even to other LGBTQI+ people. But in the decade since Villy founded Generación HT El Salvador (the …
Teresa Mercedes Emilia, 19, says she was blessed to grow up surrounded by strong women — especially her proud grandmother. She was born in the rural community of Los Mercedes, which was founded by Afro-descendent people (known as “cimarrones”) who liberated themselves from enslavement and created their own autonomous communities. Teresa remembers picking coffee beans, …