In Nueva Esperanza, Honduras, community members pooled their resources and organized a local water committee that with CARE's technical guidance built a gravity-fed water system that now provides clean water directly to people's homes.
When I want to explain why empowering girls and women is critical to fighting poverty, I often tell a person's story. It's easier to relate to a personal story than to global data telling us that the majority of the billion people who live on less than $2 per day are women and girls. We are often told to never treat a person like a statistic.
The more you look into health and health inequalities, you realize that a lot of it is not due to a particular disease - it's really linked to underlying societal issues such as poverty, inequity, lack of access to safe drinking water and housing. And these are all the things we focus on at CARE.
In order to counteract income inequality, it's essential to tackle poverty in an integrated way that has long-term impact. We need to give people the capacity to be resilient, to take on challenges and to learn the skills they need to work toward more prosperous futures.
Ethiopia's government is doing a commendable job of working closely with donors and humanitarian organizations to educate parents about child marriage, and to support organizations like the Hamlin Fistula Hospital.
My father had the main barber- and beauty-supply business in the African-American community in Buffalo.
