EDUCATION-URUGUAY: Literacy Starts at Home

"At first I was embarrassed and had a hard time getting involved, but then I started relaxing. I like it a lot, because it helps me share different things with my kids," says María José Jara, a young mother from a poor neighbourhood in this Uruguayan city, referring to an innovative and successful family literacy project.

HAITI: A Year After School Collapse, Parents Seek Justice

On the morning of Nov. 7, 2008 shortly after 10 a.m. as the second period was beginning, College La Promesse Evangelique, a three-storey cinderblock school in the Nerette neighbourhood of Petionville, fell in on itself.

FRANCE: Top Designers Make Dolls to Fund Darfur Vaccinations

Designer rag dolls, the concept couldn't sound more frivolous. But dolls made by top fashion designers such as Armani and Prada are helping to fund a vaccination programme in war-torn Darfur.

LATIN AMERICA: Journalistic Prize for Making Poverty News

The second "Latin America and the Millennium Development Goals" Journalism Prize, sponsored by the UNDP and IPS, was awarded Thursday in the Chilean capital in a ceremony addressed by the head of the U.N. agency, Helen Clark.

LESOTHO: AIDS Orphans get Helping Hand

Fifteen-year-old Ntsebeng Tlokotsi* sighs with relief as she is given 140 dollars. Along with it she receives a bag of maize meal and cooking oil. It is a government handout, and she qualifies for this only because both her parents are dead.

ARGENTINA: Child Benefits Expanded to Unemployed and Informal Workers

A new monthly family allowance of nearly 50 dollars per child that will be paid out as of December to parents who are unemployed or work in the informal economy in Argentina was heralded by experts as an extraordinary step forward in terms of social policy.

RIGHTS: Palestinian Women Suffer as Israel Violates CEDAW

Palestinian women continue to suffer abuse and denial of basic human rights at the hands of Israeli settlers and soldiers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

RIGHTS-MALAWI: Blame Game While Children Suffer

Every morning 12-year-old Thomson Genti and his seven-year-old brother, Chifundo, emerge dirty and wretched from the squalor of their hideout behind the crowded shops in the commercial town of Limbe. It is the start of a day of begging, beatings from the older street boys and insults from passers-by.

HEALTH: Vaccines, Antibiotics Could Slash Pneumonia Deaths

Seven-month-old Marta lived in the central highlands of Guatemala when she came down with a high fever and rapid, shallow breathing.

CHILE: Teen Pregnancy, a Problem That Won’t Go Away

Chile currently stands out for its spectacular progress in a number of health indicators, including maternal and child mortality and chronic malnutrition. But these successes obscure an acute social problem that refuses to yield: the steady rise in the number of teenage mothers.

MIDEAST: Israel Divided Over ‘Illegal’ Children

"Migrant workers bring with them a profusion of diseases - hepatitis, measles, tuberculosis, AIDS and drug addiction: Our critics can be as sanctimonious as they like, but unless we stop the wave of migrant workers, the whole character of the State of Israel, its Jewish character, will be under threat."

EL SALVADOR: Clandestine Graves Are Back

Spatula in hand, forensic scientist Israel Ticas carefully excavates a decomposed human foot protruding from a shallow grave in rough terrain in the mountains of Las Crucitas, close to Ciudad Arce in the west-central Salvadoran province of La Libertad.

RIGHTS-CHILE: Stop Violence Against Indigenous Children – UNICEF

Reports of police violence against Mapuche children in the southern Chilean region of Araucanía prompted the country's UNICEF representative, Gary Stahl, to express the agency's deep concern at a meeting with three government ministers.

KENYA

: Practical Measures Needed on Teen Sexual Education

Kenyan teenagers are having sex. And they appear to have no clue how to go about it.

RIGHTS: Arms Treaty Could Be Powerful Tool to Protect Children

The impact of global weapons trafficking on children and their recruitment as fighters should be on the agenda of talks for an international Arms Trade Treaty, say United Nations experts and non-governmental organisations.

HEALTH: One in Five Infants Still Lacks Essential Vaccines

A record 106 million infants were vaccinated in 2008 - the highest rate of immunisation ever - according to a report released Wednesday in Washington, but NGOs are calling for an increase in funding to fill the gap affecting the world's poorest nations and communities.

RIGHTS-CHINA: Children Among “Missing” Xinjiang Detainees

"It was late in the evening, and we were just getting ready for bed. Three men in black police uniforms and another four in military camouflage came to our house. They said my sons have been involved in attacks against Chinese... they twisted their arms and led them away," said Kamalutdin K.

MIGRATION-EL SALVADOR: Broken Homes, Broken Families

Zoila, 54, is raising her two grandchildren, who were left behind when her daughter headed to the United States in search of a better income. There are many women like her acting as surrogate mothers to their grandchildren in El Salvador, one of the Latin American countries with the largest proportion of its population living and working abroad.

GUATEMALA: Only 10 Agents to Fight Human Trafficking Nationwide

In spite of a new law against human trafficking in effect since March, little has been done in Guatemala to fight the trafficking of children, and child sex tourism has begun to flourish, experts warn.

PHILIPPINES: Women in Troubled South Bear Heavy Burden of Conflict

For Father Eduardo Vasquez, setting up 'Bahay Kalinga’ (House of Care) in the province of Maguindanao is one way of deepening his mission.

YEMEN: Children Flee Fighting

As the conflict between government forces and Houthi fighters grinds on in the mountains of Saada in northern Yemen, thousands of Yemeni civilians, many of them children, are being forced from their homes by the fighting.