Ivan has spent much of his life working the soil, cultivating wheat, sunflower, and soy. Since its founding in 1992, his farm has grown to more than 118 hectares of land. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed everything. His village is just two kilometers away from the border with Russia, and his fields sit perilously close…
With the support of the USAID-funded Feed the Future Bangladesh Horticulture, Fruits, and Non-food Crops Activity, close to 3,000 women have found meaningful work in a country where 20 years ago only 28% of women aged 15 and over participated in the labor force. By 2021, that number had risen to approximately 37 percent, a…
Lily is a nine-year-old girl from northwest Syria who has Down’s syndrome. Like many other children with disabilities in northwest Syria, Lily missed out on her early school years due to a lack of accessible classrooms and trained teachers. This experience was exacerbated by conflict and instability which made even the most basic services hard…
When floods hit the central Nigerian city of Makurdi during the recent rainy season, Margaret Beetsel knew her work as a community health worker would be more difficult, but not impossible. So, she climbed into a canoe and made her rounds, delivering medicine to eligible children to help prevent severe, and often deadly, malaria. Beetsel,…
Over the last two decades, young Moldovans have faced a bleak economic future, with limited job prospects and low wages. Global and regional crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and unprecedented inflation have not helped matters. A strong workforce is desperately needed to help rebuild the economy. For many young Moldovans,…
Through the USAID Advancing Universal Health Coverage (AUHC) activity, Chemonics is making health services, including vision care, more accessible in Bangladesh.
Soil-testing technology developed on Mars is improving farming practices on Earth while helping to address climate change. In the flat, dry soy fields of Bahia in northeastern Brazil, an artificial intelligence startup called Agrorobótica is collecting soil samples, then using NASA-inspiredrobotics to analyze their composition. Agrorobótica is funded through an innovation grant managed by Chemonics International. The…
Ms. Sonia Rajabova spent much of her life without reliable access to clean drinking water. Her household’s primary source of water was the irrigation canal near her home, and they used buckets and bottles to bring it home. But not anymore. “Now I have a water stand inside my house,” she says. “All these years we…
Water will soon flow again in Majdel Aanjar. And for that, local residents can thank an innovative new program that harnesses the power of the sun. The small farming community in northeastern Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley — equidistant from Beirut and Damascus, the respective capitals of Lebanon and Syria — has suffered from a severe water…
Although agriculture has been a cornerstone of the Ugandan economy for generations, many farmers in the East African republic earned barely enough in 2013 to provide schooling for their children. Having grown up in smallholder farming families themselves, agri-tech entrepreneurs William Luyinda, Esther Karwera, and Zilla Mary Arach knew these struggles all too well. “Unfortunately,…
In 2021, village elders in the small Tajik community of Isfisor noticed a woman who frequently traveled the unpaved road through their neighborhood to visit the local school. Curious about the nature of the woman’s visits, they asked the school’s director, Nazira Khabibova. “I explained that our school works with the USAID Read with Me project,” says Khabibova,…