And what does climate change sound like? “They begin to cry because they know there will be nothing to eat,” said Karani.

She offers them black tea so their stomachs can capture something, “but it tastes bitter without sugar, and they refuse it.”

Then she tells them Bible stories and sings to them. “Finally, they fall asleep.”

In the past, Karani’s half-acre farm that surrounds her home some 50 miles north of Nairobi has kept her family fed, at least to subsistence levels. Murang’a is known for rich soil and a favorable climate—in normal times.

The post Fortified Whole Grain Porridge Fights Hunger Worsened by Climate Change appeared first on The Rockefeller Foundation.

“Concentrating was hard,” said Rosaline, 47, who grew up one of nine children. “I was always hungry.”

Rosaline thought a lot about cooking. In the school library, she copied down recipes by hand. She dreamt of owning a catering business.

Instead, she became a single mother of five who themselves often went without food. She worked odd jobs washing clothes or cleaning homes – never earning enough money.

“I was just so hungry at school that I would cry and get a headache,” said Rosaline’s youngest daughter, 11-year-old Robai.

“I knew they needed more food. I felt low,” her mother said.

The cycle seemed destined to repeat itself.

The post Kenya’s School Meals Disrupt Generational Poverty and Improve Community Outcomes appeared first on The Rockefeller Foundation.

A crowd ransacked the center, located in a densely populated neighborhood in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city. They threatened healthcare workers, injured police officers and blocked traffic with stones and tree branches.

After two days of clashes in February, the government shuttered the facility indefinitely, transferring all patients further from their homes.

The post Turbocharged by Climate Change, Malawi’s Cholera Outbreak Is Worsened by Covid-19 Misinformation appeared first on The Rockefeller Foundation.

On March 10, 2022, exactly two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, four-year-old Sasha Zdanovych was on a boat with his grandmother and nine others, trying desperately to escape their Russian-occupied village by crossing the mighty River Dnieper.

He wore the only lifejacket. Temperatures hovered below freezing.

The boat never made it to the opposite shore. Shelled by Russian troops, it overturned in the icy water. The grandmother’s body was found the next day.

Sasha, though, was missing.

Sasha’s 25-year-old mother Anna Yakhno contacted Lypovetska, who leads the Center for Missing and Exploited Children at Magnolia, a Ukrainian non-profit founded in 2001.

“We believed someone rescued Sasha and took him home,” Lypovetska said. Perhaps he had even been carried across the border to safety; possible sightings were reported in Italy and Romania. “We started a huge campaign here and in Europe.”

Then on April 6, crushing news: Sasha’s body was found. The memory still makes Lypovetska emotional.

“It is very hard that such unfair things can happen in this world,” she said in an interview from Kiev.

The post Searching for Sasha: Ukrainian Grantees on the Front Lines appeared first on The Rockefeller Foundation.

Participants in the 23^rd annual Global Child Nutrition Forum, the world’s largest conference focused on school meals, strategized for four days on perennial challenges such as lack of sufficient funding. They considered newer complications such as population displacements due to climate change. They took up acute issues like current food insecurity triggered in part by the year-long Ukraine war.

From Cameron to Cambodia, Fiji to Finland, government leaders and their partners dove into topics ranging from letting students help choose menus, to relying on food grown in their own gardens, to using school meals to support local economies.

The post Global School Meal Leaders Gear Up for a Tough Year appeared first on The Rockefeller Foundation.

They know her at the local crisis center. And in her doctor’s office, where she leaves her contact information. Even cashiers at the grocery store who overhear her talking in the checkout line know who she is. “Hi, Ms. Monica,” they greet her.

She’s a lady who will help you get state-issued ID card.

Just ask the mother of seven who fled her abusive partner, leaving her possessions behind. Or the homeless man, also without an ID, who thanked her for treating him like a human. Or the 51-year-old who used his new ID to vote in the state’s 2022 election for the very first time in his life.

It’s part of her work with VoteRiders, a nationwide nonprofit founded in 2012 to promote a resilient democracy by making sure no eligible voter is unable to have their ballot counted due to voter ID laws, which have rapidly been on the rise.

“I live, breathe and eat VoteRiders,” says the Reverend, who grew up in Columbus and has been a pastor with the African Methodist Episcopal Church since 2000, with stints in Virginia and Jamaica.

The post Building a Resilient Democracy, One Identity Card at a Time appeared first on The Rockefeller Foundation.

In Kansas, free home-delivered tests meant a migrant farmworker didn’t have to lose a day’s pay, pull his children from school and drive several hours to the nearest testing site when parents and children in turn presented Covid-like symptoms.

And in New Mexico, an overburdened state health department was able to see tests rushed to remote communities that would have been otherwise unserved. “We are acutely aware of how much work (managing testing) is and how wonderful it is to have a whole group of tests we don’t have to worry about,” said Dr. Miranda Durham, New Mexico’s Director for the Infectious Disease Bureau.

The post Stopping a Covid-19 Surge With Last-Mile Testing appeared first on The Rockefeller Foundation.

Forupashi, Persian for collapse.

He spotted the word in a series of essays from a well-known Iranian economist a couple years ago. Then he began hearing it from the mouths of other Iranian commentators. This was well before a 22-year-old Kurdish woman died in police custody in Tehran, triggering women-led nationwide protests often met by brutal violence from security forces.

The post Providing Analysis of a Closed, Secretive Country in Crisis appeared first on The Rockefeller Foundation.

Stunned, she began researching, and discovered studies that showed Black women are disproportionately exposed to toxic chemicals through beauty products, and this is often linked to reproductive disorders.

Already a proponent of healthy living, Jacques adopted a vegan diet. She also developed a kitchen-table hobby that supported her journey to root toxins out of her life while offering a distraction from worry: creating healthy all-natural skincare products for herself.

Spoiler alert: 12 years later, both mother and daughter are thriving. And so is Jacq’s, a plant-powered organic and sustainable skincare brand “for the forgotten hues” that her daughter Dominique already plans to take over one day.

Jacq’s, an e-commerce business based in Florida, was named a winner last month in a contest run by the non-profit initiative Black Ambition and supported by The Rockefeller Foundation and awarded $50,000 to help it grow.

Two recent national surveys show that Black-owned businesses, one of the hardest hit groups at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, had more difficulty receiving credit and more often needed that credit just to keep the lights on.

The post Supporting Inspired Entrepreneurs While Closing the Racial Wealth Gap appeared first on The Rockefeller Foundation.

His understanding deepened as he got older, but he never changed his mind. So, during his junior year, he dropped out of high school and joined the Marine Corps.

The post Helping Veterans With Produce Prescriptions appeared first on The Rockefeller Foundation.