One Woman’s Mission to Restore Dignity to the Girls Kidnapped by Joseph Kony

Alica Achan, Pader Girls Academy

Those who made it back were shunned from their community—so Alice Achan built them a place to call home. Alice Achan may run one of the most successful girls’ schools in Uganda today, but that’s because she knows firsthand what a monumental challenge it is for a young girl in her country to get an education. Achan, 41, grew up in a small Acholi-tribe village during the widespread murders, rapes, and kidnappings wrought by the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army, a guerrilla group led by Joseph Kony, in the 1980s and 1990s. As a result of the massacres and violence, Achan, one of 27 children born to a polygamist father, had to leave almost a dozen different schools during her childhood and teenage years. If she had stayed in school, Achan risked being abducted by LRA rebels and forced to work in rebel camps as both free laborer and sex slave—the fate of so many girls. Yet Achan persevered by moving all over northern Uganda in pursuit of her high school degree. In 1996, she graduated at the age of 23. The struggle to develop her academic skills and earn her degree prepared Achan for her life’s mission: to create a […]

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An NYU Student Tackles Energy Poverty in India—Before Her 21st Birthday

Brighter Today lights up village in India

Mansi Prakash’s bright idea has helped light up more than 5,000 homes in one rural village. Most college students don’t know what they want to major in, let alone what their mission in life might be. But New York University student Mansi Prakash’s goals couldn’t be clearer: to bring clean energy to developing nations, support education, and fight poverty. Not bad for a 20-year-old economics major who first witnessed the energy dilemma on a 2010 visit to her grandparents’ village in India and later founded the nonprofit Brighter Today. Most families have light bulbs—they just weren’t turning them on and using them,” Prakash recalls of her trip. “I was intrigued by this, and as I interacted with them more, I learned that this living condition stemmed from low incomes and electricity costs. For someone who couldn’t afford food three times a day, paying the high electricity bills was not an option.” An idea clicked for Prakash: Do away with the energy-efficient 60-watt incandescent bulbs that only work for two months and replace them with 11-watt compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) bulbs, which—while initially costing more at $2 per bulb instead of 20 cents—would last significantly longer, averaging three to four years. In the […]

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Questions To Help Create Progress In Your Life

Woman inspired

I’ve been reflecting on some of the key elements necessary for moving your life forward. Here is my start on a list. Take a look and see where you land. Then make a decision to put concentrated effort into making changes in your identified area. Do you notice what you notice? Where do you put your attention? Do you guide your thoughts or do they seem to guide you?

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Julia Roberson Is Out to Save Our Oysters But She’s No Marine Biologist

Julia Roberson in the field. © Source: Paul Fetters/Ocean Conservancy

It’s a cloudy, gray day along the coast of Virginia, and several people wearing waders are knee-deep in the tide. They peer down at the oyster bed below, while one crew member pokes around with a long That’s actually a GoPro in the water, and the woman running the show isn’t a marine biologist, but a communications guru with the blue-tinted horn-rimmed glasses to match. It so happens that Julia Roberson, with her bleached-blonde, Bieber-swept hair and Southern twang, is conservationists’ secret weapon against ocean acidification. Roberson, 35, is perhaps an unlikely savior of the seas. Yes, she now directs the acidification program at the Ocean Conservancy, a leading environmental nonprofit in D.C., but her CV is pure PR, leaping from an early career in glossy magazines to a key player in an emerging national debate about the health of our seas. Observers say she’s succeeding where so many scientists and activists have failed: taking what is often seen from the public’s perspective as an environmental problem and reframing it as a people problem. In Roberson’s rendering, ocean acidification isn’t about climate change, or ocean health, or even about those bivalves in the seabed. Instead, it’s about farmers, jobs and […]

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Costa Rican Cable Co. Broadcasting Female Empowerment In Prime Time

Claro TV - Costa Rican Housewife

A cable company in Costa Rica has decided to use it’s most valuable public advertising space (which is what we meant by “prime time”) not to promote itself, but to promote local, women-run businesses in the name of female empowerment. Claro® is the company, and ‘Signs Of Progress’ is the name of this awesome campaign seeking to give Costa Rican women a place in society that elevates their economic status.

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New Feminist Beer Campaign ‘Cerveja Feminista’ Challenges Sexism In Advertising

Cerveja Feminista

When you think of beer advertising, you think of a group of men crowded around a bar watching sports, chugging a few cold ones down, right? Why is it that the majority of beer advertising is only directed at men, when there is quite a healthy female population of beer drinkers world wide.

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The Media’s Portrayal Of Women, and How We Are Changing It

Empowerment Project Screening

In celebration of the all-female focus in front of and behind the camera, the filmmakers turned the cameras on themselves, capturing their transformational journey, and asking the questions, “What would it look and feel like to live in a women’s world? And what would it be like to live in a world where we hear every day from incredible, inspiring women about what women can do?”

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Maci Peterson, On Second Thought, “The Texting Savior” Is First Place Winner

On Second Thought is the flagship Digital Reputation Protection Platform (DRPP) and ecosystem that protects the reputations of individuals via mobile application technology. It does so by allowing users to take back text messages, chat messages, emails and social media posts before they get to the recipient. On Second Thought won 1st Place in the UpGlobal and Kauffman Foundation’s #StartupOasis pitch competition at South by Southwest in 2014, and it was recently named “The Texting Savior” by AT&T. It is currently available in the Google Play Store and Amazon AppStore.

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87-Year-Old Woman Knits 1,000th Sweater For Kids in Need

Anna Taylor Knits 1000tth Sweater for Needy Kids

Anna Taylor, a knitter with a heart of gold, has spent the better part of the last nine years knitting sweaters for the needy. Since February of 2006, The Cullen, Virginia native has worked tirelessly, knitting warm sweaters in her spare time for needy children across the world. The toil of Taylor’s work has reached a new milestone, as she boxes up her 1000th sweater for those in need!

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Acrobats, Aerial Silks, and Stilts! Oh My!

Wise Fool Women's Circus Performance

Wise Fool New Mexico’s Women’s Intensive Circus Camp is transforming women into fearless flyers! Since 2002, Wise Fool New Mexico has held an amazing, annual 6-week circus camp for women of all ages to come together to challenge themselves and inspire each other to often unheard of new heights of physical and emotional expression through the arts. The women create their own acts with the help of teachers and coaches to illustrate these concepts from their own voice.

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