Features

Bulldozers fed at one of Rio’s historical favelas decreed as an “an area of special social interest” while residents clung to their houses in protest and used creative forms of activism to resist the unwanted changes. The reason? Building a stadium for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Imagine instead of...

When science and logic are used to debunk misconceptions, stereotypes, and to promote tolerance and open-mindedness, you might end up changing someone’s perceptions. This was the goal of Baha Lajmi and Fahd Baaziz, two 16-year-old Tunisian high school students from Soussa, when they started a YouTube channel, Draw My...

I met Sana Jlassi and Chouaib Brik, the masterminds behind Art Solution, the pioneering Tunisian association for urban culture and art founded in 2011, in the creative base of the association in Tunis. This space for creative expression and innovation, the Tag Store, made for a great setting for...

“My marriage was arranged against my will. It took practically a few days to make it happen. A few weeks into the married life my husband started beating me…” This is the story of Nodira, a young Tajik woman who has suffered abuse from those who, supposedly, should be...

Ghiles El Kadi and I are sitting in a café in Finsbury Park, London, home to a sizeable Algerian community, on a day where he has no lectures for his Economics Master’s at Westminster University. “Sometimes I come here to talk about football over a merguez sandwich.” Ghiles is...

There are many companies and researchers who have been working on stoves and other inventions that will allow people to have easy access to alternative cooking methods. Over half of the world still relies on open-flame cooking, which endangers people who inhale harsh smoke and are subject to fire...

In the pram, a toddler snoozes in the afternoon sunshine. She is dressed in a flashy pink tutu, a tiny little leather jacket, and it is all styled off by a set of golden necklaces. The mom proudly says she bought it all on the high-end mall on the...

Aatik is a project which was co-founded in Tunisia by Canadian Emma Djilali and her colleague Sophie Bergman from Germany in fall 2015. The project works with a group of female weavers in the region of Siliana in North-west Tunisia. The goal is to help these women to build up...

On the edges of Europe, in a small town 20KM from the FYROM border lies a gas station. This station, which two months ago was simply a place to refuel and get a coffee, is now ‘home’ to over 2000 people fleeing conflict. EKO has become a village all...

Tear gas. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Helicopters. Army tanks. What should have set the scene for a war film was used against men, women and children gathered on the edge of Europe, desperate for a life without violence. When I arrived at Idomeni on Sunday, I could...

Loveness Chimphonda, 53, lives in the Traditional Authority of Symon, one of the areas worst affected by a severe drought that has put nearly three million people – half of whom are children – at risk of hunger in Malawi. Life has placed Loveness in front of several and...

'Voluntouring' is not just ineffective, but can in fact be very harmful for the very people it is meant to help....

The village La Gloria in Magdalena is in one of the rural areas of Colombia. It has faced poverty and conflict situations which have been the root cause of the inhabitants’ bad living conditions and their children’s deprivation of education. Fortunately, that has changed for the better over the...

Aya had frostbites on her feet as a result of sleeping in the freezing cold and walking for days without being able to rest. She was eight-year-old the day our lives briefly encountered and, together, with her family, she was fleeing the war in Syria. Aya was a refugee,...

“ We talk too much of black art when we should be talking about art, just art. Black composers must be free to write rondos and fugues, not only protest songs. I use Ellington and I want to use more of his music, but it’s music.” With these words...