Despite global praise for Burma’s democratic reforms, the country hasn’t resolved its decades-long legacy of ethnic persecution. Burma’s refugees fear what will happen to them next. To learn more, American Jewish World Service’s Elizabeth Daube interviewed refugees living along the Thailand-Burma border. Naw Htee Ku doesn’t want to talk about the past. She’s sitting on a concrete floor not …
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This guest post from the Grassroots Girls Initiative tells the story of Mohammad Bazar Backward Class Development Society (MBBCDS) and their efforts to end child marriage and empower marginalized women and girls. MBBCDS is an nonprofit organization that AJWS supports in West Bengal, India. The Situation for Girls West Bengal is one of the poorest states in …
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This guest post from the Grassroots Girls Initiative shares the voices of girls from Fortress of Hope Africa, an nonprofit organization that AJWS supports in Nairobi, Kenya. The Situation for Girls Growing up among rampant poverty, crime and few opportunities for employment, adolescents and young people make up a significant proportion of the populations in Nairobi’s …
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Originally published in The Huffington Post. Every Passover, we gather with family and friends around the Seder table to read the inspiring foundational story of our people’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. We tell and retell this story every year, and millennia later it informs who we are. There are many ways in which Judaism …
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“My father says not to go to school, that I should be at home. ‘You are marriageable,’ he tells me,” sighs Munija Khatun, 15, as she mashes onions with a pestle for their dinner of fish stew. “My father has two families and takes responsibility for the first family, but not my family. Father comes …
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Zeenat is 17 years old and has already been married and divorced three times. All of these marriages took place against her will, and all three husbands abused her. Unfortunately, Zeenat’s experience is common in her impoverished community in Hyderabad, India. As is the case for many families living in poverty, Zeenat’s parents viewed marriage …
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