Kakenya Ntaiya, Kenya:
“Now all the village women want their daughters to stay in school”
Kakenya Ntaiya’s story shows how education can change all the cards in the hand a young girl is dealt at birth. The oldest of eight children of a Maasai tribal family, she was engaged to be married when she was five years old. 

Awatif, Sudan:
“I want a midwife to be by me in case something happens.”
Awatif is frightened of giving birth after the sun goes down. The Serif camp has no night midwife available because of security concerns.

Zahara, Sudan: “They tried to rape me, but I fought hard.”
Curbing violence against women is among the many cost-effective investments governments can make that will improve women’s health and boost their creativity.

Marietta Kiden: Sudan
Marietta Kiden grew up in a desolate refugee camp in Uganda for people displaced by Sudan's civil war. The camp had no school and no clinic, but she managed to survive without either.

Anna Okot, Uganda: “When I came from my home, I had nothing.”
Three years ago, 47-year-old Anna Okot fled her home in northern Uganda with her six children. Like millions of others, she and her family had been forced from their homes by the fighting between government troops and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a battle that had been raging for nearly 20 years.