Khurshida Bano and her family live in a slum that is being demolished by the government because of its proximity to a national park. Architect P.K. Das works with the Slum Rehabilitation Authority of Bombay to relocate the slum residents. Will they be able to navigate a bureaucratic system filled with corruption to successfully relocate people like Khurshida?
Throughout the world, access to safe drinking water is the most critical element of sustained good health. Clean Water focuses on the highly successful efforts of one humanitarian organization, East Meets West, to bring safe drinking water to rural communities in Vietnam -- led by staff member Richard Brogdon, a Vietnam war veteran who has special reason to help the local Vietnamese community.
Families in rural western Mongolia live on the edge, susceptible to famine as soon as the climate shifts or a dry spell hits. UNICEF's Family Empowerment Strategy program gives people the voice and the ability to demand the social services they need to improve their living conditions.
Simple, innovative structures in Koraro, Ethiopia divert floods that had previously devastated farmers. Now the water is channeled to irrigate farmland. These structures were built with support from the Ethiopian government's safety net program, which supplied villagers with grain in exchange for their labor.
Safe drinking water and household electricity were well out of reach for the rural communities of Candelaria and Malacatoya, Nicaragua, until the arrival of AsoFenix, a nonprofit organization that provides renewable energy projects to improve the lives of rural Nicaraguans.
Every day in the Philippines, poor families search through garbage dumps looking for something worthwhile to resell. This is a dangerous way of life that presents many health risks. The World Health Organization, WHO, is visiting families and providing them with health kits and necessary vaccines to ward off illnesses.
Climate change in Vietnam means more frequent droughts and unpredictable weather. Farmers from Bac Ai, who have worked the land their whole lives, must adjust on the fly to shifting weather conditions. Oxfam America and the local government are helping farmers adjust by building a new reservoir and providing training sessions on new farming techniques.
The Sulabh toilet is self-composting and requires no drainage, and already serves some 4 million people daily in India. What's more, this revolution in public sanitation—with help from the Sulabh movement's leader, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak—is empowering some of the country's poorest people.
New water wells are being built in rural El Salvador that are safe from contamination by floodwater. Maintained by local people, they are impacting everything from public health to the ability of children to attend school—an example of how something as basic as clean water can be the basis of change for a whole community.
Installing public water purification systems in India can create unforeseen benefits, such as reducing the amount of money poor families have to spend each month on expensive medications.
Lack of toilets is a serious problem in India. Human excrement pollutes fields and rivers, causing disease and even death. But the Sulabh Sanitation Movement is helping to change that, with cheap, eco-friendly solutions that already benefit more than 10 million people every day.
Modern agricultural techniques tend to focus on helping farmers with large fields (and more money to spend), but an innovative, inexpensive drip irrigation system, developed with investment from the Acumen Fund, is helping smallholder farmers in India dramatically increase their crop yields.
As the world's easternmost nation, Kiribati (pronounced "kiri-bas") gained attention in 2000 as the first land to welcome in the new millennium. Now, according to dire predictions, the tiny Pacific country could be about to claim another record: the first to become uninhabitable due to climate change, possibly as soon as 20 years from now.
Soaring food prices are making life hard for people everywhere. In Mexico, many families are taking the fight against the global food crisis into their own hands.
Water scarcity has become one of the world's greatest challenges. In less than 20 years, nearly two billion people could face shortages. But Azerbaijan, which sits between Europe and Western Asia, has come up with an ingenious solution to its water crisis by looking to its past for inspiration.
Massive investment, modern agricultural techniques, regulated irrigation ... the American-owned Dominion Farms development in Kenya sounds like a model example of collaboration between Africa and the West. But local farmers disagree, and are campaigning hard to have their dissenting voices heard.
