Daily Archives: 24 Oct ’10

Ethiopia has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world. 43% of girls in Ethiopia’s Amhara region are married before the age of 15. In response, the United Nations Foundation (UNF) has established educational programs throughout Ethiopia that put girls and women through school, and challenge traditional thinking on child marriage. By investing in education, the UNF hopes to inspire a change in local sentiment surrounding this sensitive cultural issue.

24,000 children under the age of five will die today, many from preventable diseases like pneumonia, malaria, measles, diarrhea and HIV/AIDS. Those deaths cause untold damage to families, and to communities worldwide. Inexpensive solutions for these problems exist, but they are not being deployed on the scale that is needed to stem the tide of child mortality.