In a bright and spacious classroom, with plants overflowing in the courtyard outside, six students lean forward at their desks looking at the 10-digit addition they are asked to make. One student stands before the numbers on the chalkboard and a red and yellow-beaded abacus. But her attention is on the abacus she visualises in her mind.

Cancer patient Ahmed Abu Fuad needs chemotherapy to survive. Muhammad Subeh needs an eye-transplant while paramedic Alaa Sarhan desperately needs surgery to remove shrapnel from his body. But these Gazans are unable to leave the area to seek the required medical treatment elsewhere, and it is not because of the Israeli siege.

Meruga Padma, 33, and her husband Veeramallu, 40, can still remember when cotton farmers here in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh were in such dire straits that many were soon thrown into depression. Some of the farmers, in fact, were eventually driven to taking their own lives.

Six hundred delegates from more than 80 countries flocked to Montreal Aug. 20-23 for the CIVICUS World Assembly in search of innovative ways to approach global challenges like poverty and climate change.

During every year that ends in an even number, the month of August is a special occasion for young men in Kenya’s Western Province. During this month thousands of boys aged between 10 and 18 undergo male circumcision — something that is seen as an important rite of passage into manhood among their communities. But it is also a time were nearly half the young men circumcised will have to fight for their lives.

The announcement of a plan to expand the practice of self-employment in Cuba as an alternative for the 'excess' workers who are to be slashed from the public workforce presents several challenges to the socialist model that the government is seeking to modernise.

A bicentennial celebration for ordinary people, envisioned as the start of a process of social reflection, is being prepared by over 100 organisations and public personalities in Chile as a response to the official commemoration of the 200th anniversary of independence from Spain.

What was initially announced as a government ban on sales of junk food in schools has failed to keep fried and sugary foods out of the classrooms to which Mexico's 25 million primary and secondary students returned Monday after summer break.

Three scenarios were laid before the delegates here attending the CIVICUS World Assembly, a venue that attracts civil society, donors, government and business leaders from every region of the world.

The stories of Dr. Ciro de Quadros' work in eradicating smallpox read like the stuff of global health legend.