By Chris Niles

NEW YORK, USA, 9 January 2012 – A quality education is the cornerstone of every child’s rights, yet across the developing world millions of children’s futures are stunted because they don’t have the opportunity to learn.

UNICEF is addressing this deprivation with an innovative approach that aims to remove barriers to success in primary school by giving pre-schoolers the knowledge to successfully enter first grade.

Called ‘Getting Ready for School: a Child-to-Child Approach’, the programme is a low-cost way to provide supplemental education to pre-schoolers, especially the most marginalized.

NEW YORK, USA, 23 December 2011—Low-lying Bangladesh is one of the countries most affected by climate change, and the people who live in the Chars – small islands created by floods or erosion in the vast Ganges delta—are the most vulnerable of all.

By Chris Niles

NEW YORK, USA, 12 December 2011—Mohammad Azizul Islam, 28, is a trader in Chinipara, in the remote Rangpur region of Bangladesh. As a landless man, he has very few opportunities to make a living.

He wants his pre-school aged daughter, Akhimoni, to be educated and have a profession. Among his chief concerns is how he will pay for it.

At the moment, however, she is receiving an education. Once a week, she and another friend meet for classes that involve learning rhymes, counting and the alphabet.

By Daisy Serem

TURKANA DISTRICT, Kenya, 11 November 2011- Lowa Lokopu, lost her husband four years ago after he fell ill. Forced to take up the responsibility of running a family alone, she struggles to provide for her five children.

Lowa’s eldest daughter, Sheila, a student at Napuu Primary School, was only 13 years old when her father died. Her educational pursuits became increasingly challenging as the family did not have enough money for food and school supplies. Sheila would walk almost five kilometers to school and back home every day as she could not afford boarding at the school. It was during this time that she conceived her first child at the age of 15.

By Eva Gilliam

MOGADISHU, Somalia, 9 November 2011 – For hundreds of thousands of displaced Somali children, daily life is a mixture of fear and insecurity. Communities break apart, as one by one families leave their villages to flee ongoing conflict. If they survive the journey to Mogadishu, life is not much easier, as they are faced with the daily challenge of finding food and shelter.

By Bismarck Swangin

RENK, South Sudan, 2 November 2011 – Three months after South Sudan separated from Sudan, becoming an independent nation, many South Sudanese are struggling to return home.

Since June, almost 20,000 returnees have streamed into Renk, a rural town near the Sudan-South Sudan border. Most say they could only afford transportation to Renk and don’t have the means to continue on to their final destinations. In addition, roads are non-existent in this part of South Sudan, where most of the land is submerged in flood waters during the rainy season. Traveling farther south by Nile River barge can take weeks.