Meet Edna.
In Somaliland, where local camels often have more freedom than women, Edna Adan knew that her country needed a hospital dedicated to serving women. There were so many challenges, like the time a nomadic woman gave birth in the desert and developed a fistula, tearing her bladder. Her husband couldn’t stand her smell and wetness, so he stabbed her in the throat. To build a hospital for such women, Edna secured an abandoned site, which had been used as a dump; she cobbled together money and construction began. When the hospital was mostly built, but still lacked a roof, the money ran out. Two Americans got wind of her project and started a campaign to raise funds for Edna...
Meet Angeline.
Angeline Mugwendere’s parents were poor farmers in Zimbabwe, and when she went to school barefoot in a torn dress, classmates always mocked her. She could never pay school fees or afford school supplies, but even with the teasing and humiliations, Angeline pleaded to stay in school. At the end of primary school, she took the nationwide sixth-grade exams and had the best score in not only her school, but also her district — one of the highest in the nation. But she couldn’t afford secondary school. That’s when Ann Cotton, who lived in Cambridge, England, formed Campaign for Female Education, and met Angeline...
Meet Srey.
Srey Rath was a 15-year-old self-confident Cambodian girl when she was trafficked to a brothel, drugged and beaten, and forced to work 7 days a week, 15 hours a day sleeping with male customers. Condoms were banned, she was never paid, and she was fed just barely enough food to keep her alive. Sex trafficking is frequently forced prostitution, often of teenage girls like Srey Rath. But local organizations, with the help of foreigners, have figured out ways to intervene. Srey Rath embarked on a remarkably dramatic journey in the hopes of getting to freedom and foreign assistance...
Meet Goretti.
Goretti Nyabenda was a mother of six children whose grouchy husband, Bernard, wouldn’t even let her out of the house on her own to go to the market. They were too poor to buy mosquito nets for all the kids to guard against malaria, but Bernard went three times a week to a bar to drink homemade banana beer. Goretti was not even allowed to deal with money, and she had never touched a one-hundred-franc note, worth less than ten American cents. Then an American aid organization started a micro-lending program in the village, and one day, Goretti prepared the family dinner and then sneaked out of the house to attend an informational meeting...
Meet Prudence.
Mothers may die giving birth from various complications, from eclampsia to sepsis. But behind the medical explanations, there are more critical sociological and biological ones, as Prudence Lemokouno and her family found out in Cameroon. A mother of three children at 24 years old, Prudence went into labor with her fourth, when an untrained birth attendant sat on Prudence’s stomach and jumped up and down and ruptured her uterus. The impoverished family paid a motorcyclist to take Prudence to the hospital, only to find out that they needed $100 for a caesarean that would save both lives...
Dina.
The world capital of rape is eastern Congo. Militias have discovered that the most cost-effective way to terrorize civilian populations is to conduct rapes of stunning brutality. Dina was 17 years old, one of six children living with her parents in the town of Kindu. One day, Dina cut short her work in the bean field and headed back to town well before sunset. As she was walking home, five Hutu militia members surrounded her with guns and knives, and forced her to the ground. One was carrying a stick. They all raped her, then held her down as someone drove the stick inside her. Her family came looking for her and found her half-dead in the grass. A foreign-funded hospital that could cure her was hundreds of miles away...
