“Hopeless as a penny with a hole in it.” These were the words of some Kamdini residents to describe Robert Moro as they knew him a few years ago.
You would be hard-pressed to recognize him anymore based on that description, and these days his neighbors are the ones seeking him out for help.
I live in Rruga-Ura, a suburb of Albania’s capital, where most residents are Roma with a Muslim background.
This is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tirana, and it was difficult growing up here. People got into fights practically every day, and alcohol was almost everywhere
A few years ago, the Federal Department of Education found that 94 percent of teachers pay for classroom materials or students’ supplies out of their own pocket.
On average, these teachers spent around $480 with some footing a bill as large as $1,000 for school necessities.
Sokun, her husband and their three young children lived a village near the border of Cambodia and Thailand. The family had little income but were still making ends meet; Sokun sold vegetables in the local market, and her husband worked as a logger.
Bangladesh’s minimium wage workers toil in grindingly difficult jobs for an average monthly salary that is the equivalent of $63.
Amolla was one of these workers, supporting his family of six. If any of the children got sick, they had to visit a kabiraj, an unregistered medical practitioner.
In the Lira region of Uganda, people were consistently afflicted with health issues that could sometimes turn deadly. Violent stomach illnesses and skin infections were often considered an unfortunate but unavoidable part of life.
