Marie-Roseline Bélizaire, a doctor and epidemiologist with the World Health Organization (WHO), is using her passion for community medicine to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the Central African Republic (CAR).
Working from a field office in Yemen, Sonia Almassad ensures that UN relief aid reaches those who need it, in the war-torn country. She was previously posted in her home country, Syria, where she negotiated with armed groups on both sides of the conflict, sometimes at great personal risk.
From banking, to food delivery, and taxi bookings, Uganda is rapidly becoming accustomed to many of the online tools that are commonplace in developed economies, and which don’t rely on face-to-face interactions. The UN is supporting this shift, as a way to help developing economies recover from the global economic crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hassan Akkad, an award-winning Syrian film-maker, fled the war in his country four years ago and now lives as a refugee in the United Kingdom. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, he decided to help those affected by the pandemic, by becoming a cleaner at a London hospital.
After leaving Gaza as a refugee, Shadi Mohammedali decided to dedicate himself to helping others in a similar situation. Today, he is working for an NGO in a Greek camp for asylum seekers, explaining how they can protect themselves from COVID-19.
In the remote Lamu region, on the northeast coast of Kenya, quality healthcare is hard to come by. Every month, medical staff from Safari Doctors, an NGO founded by Umra Omar, set sail on a boat filled with medicines, to provide free basic medicines to hundreds of marginalized inhabitants in several coastal villages.
Growing up in Indonesia in the shadow of an active volcano, Agus Haryono has witnessed the deadly risks of living in a disaster-prone region. This prompted him to join the country’s Search and Rescue Agency, in the hope of saving lives, when disaster strikes.
Nuclear weapons are still one of the most serious threats to mankind, and the dangers are growing. Young people can play an important role in ensuring that they are eliminated once and for all, says the UN’s top disarmament official, ahead of International Youth Day on 12 August.
Sabra Kauka is a cultural practitioner and teaches Hawaiian Studies at the Island School on the island of Kauai, in Hawaii, while acting as a coordinator for the Department of Education. As the daughter of an army officer, she spent much of her youth living overseas, but “felt the call to come home” to Hawaii as an adult after reading a newspaper article which highlighted the poor standard of living for indigenous Hawaiians in Hawaii.
In Uruguay, thousands of families earn a precarious livelihood making bricks, using traditional methods that are often inefficient and harmful to the environment. A UN project, in collaboration with the Uruguayan government, aims to make the industry less polluting, whilst preserving jobs for the many artisans who depend on it.
