Bumbire Island – Part I, Arriving

Bumbire Island sits on the northern tip of a sliver of an archipelago in southwest Lake Victoria, Tanzania, East Africa. The islands are gorgeous—and strangely reminiscent of Newfoundland or similar maritime landscapes. But the hardscrabble fishing camps scattered across Bumbire and neighboring rocky islets are a different story.

read more, and listen to this story ->

Central American Gangs

Young gang violence is endemic in the Central American nations of Guatemala and El Salvador, and its tentacles have spread north. Some would say the process has worked in reverse fashion — as GPM correspondent Victoria Fenner reports.

read more, and listen to this story ->

Teachers For Mapaki

We humans need to feed our minds, as well as our bodies. Here’s a story from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia-based journalist Norma Jean MacPhee, about how education is being used to promote peace in a village in Sierra Leone, in West Africa. The people of Mapaki are hungry for knowledge—and eager to bridge the chasm created by a decade of civil war.

read more, and listen to this story ->

Fringe Education

Rural-urban migration is a twentieth century phenomenon. Faced by numerous obstacles, poor farmers have always set off to the nearest big city in search of income. Opportunities are often a dream. Families break up, violence, alcoholism, and drug abuse are rampant … racism and discrimination too. In the end, migrants often forsake their most valuable card – their own traditions. GPM correspondent Jen Moore sends us this story, from the margins of a large Bolivian city.

read more, and listen to this story ->

Farming in Palestine

Farmers and their cash crops … earning a living on the margins of global agriculture. Palestinian farmers face an entirely unique challenge. Israel’s so-called “Security Barrier” has actually walled them off from their olive and vegetable groves. The Annexation Wall – as Palestinians call it – prevents them from farming completely.

read more, and listen to this story ->

The Legacy of Agent Orange

Thirty years have come and gone since the end of the American War – as the Vietnamese call it – and its toxic aftermath lingers on. Between 1961 and the early 1970s, the U.S. drenched Vietnam with almost a hundred million liters of Agent Orange and other herbicides. It wasn’t just rainforests and mangroves that suffered … and the poison continues its dirty work.

read more, and listen to this story ->

Romeo & Juliet in Palestine

To comprehend the obstacles that need to be overcome if peace and justice are to be achieved in the Middle East, one must spend time in the West Bank and Gaza, listening to Palestinians describe their hardships. The Israeli occupation is particularly egregious for youth, who — like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet — feel seriously misunderstood.

read more, and listen to this story ->

Bottom Line

Melaku Worede

An Interview with 1989 Right Livelihood Award winner Melaku Worede.

read more ->