Author: Leah Zazofsky

NEEDHAM, Massachusetts – Thousands of Filipinos felt the reverberations of Typhoon Haiyan as it ripped through their beautiful country in November 2013. Classified as a Category 5-equivalent super typhoon, Haiyan would leave 6,300 Filipinos dead and thousands of others missing. Catastrophes such as this are often the breaking point that calls the media to impoverished countries that would otherwise be deemed insignificant. It is often difficult for the media to portray those swept up in natural disasters as anything other than victims. Consequently, people in developed countries express their grief via social media, sending their condolences to faraway nations that would…

BOSTON — Screams cut through the air as the two bombs exploded. It was Marathon Monday in 2013 when the world witnessed Boston, one of the grittiest cities in the richest country in the world, get cut down at the knees by terrorism. Police responded quickly, ordering a lockdown that following Friday in order to search for the prime suspects. In the end, one was killed in a gunfight and the other was arrested. Bostonians breathed a collective sigh of relief. After the terrorist attack upon employees of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Parisian police forces adopted almost identical…

TEHRAN, Iran — Much has been said regarding the Iranian nuclear arms deal. Indeed, it may go down in history as one of President Obama’s landmark decisions during his tenure in the White House. A recent article in USA Today depicts a self-assured President Obama who states, “International inspectors will have unprecedented access to Iran’s nuclear program because Iran will face more inspections than any other country in the world. If Iran cheats, the world will know it.” Unfortunately for President Obama, there are thousands of people who do not feel nearly as confident in the deal as he, nor…

WASHINGTON — April 22 marked Earth Day this year, and with it came all the usual festivities. Teachers tasked their school-aged students to draw pictures and think about nature, while adults around the United States considered the weight of their ecological footprints. The music industry also took note. Gwen Stefani, along with a coterie of other recording artists including Usher, Fall Out Boy and Train took to the stage at Washington’s National Mall to raise awareness and inspire political action on behalf of climate change and poverty. The “Hollaback Girl” chanteuse opted not to tone down her vibrant persona for…

BOSTON – Everyone has seen the video: a child about five years old looks on at the viewer with a distended belly and eyes dilated with tears. A white man with white hair tells the camera, “For just 50 cents a day, you can feed little Susie.” But his call to action is not enough to cure the ill of global poverty. In fact, critics are renewing their criticism regarding the global poverty rate (GPR) as it currently stands. The official statistic lands around 1.2 billion people living on or less than $1.25 a day. However, naysayers estimate that the…

NEW YORK — Patrick Swayze received a standing ovation in September 2008 when he said, “I dream of a future with a long healthy life, a life not lived in the shadow of cancer but in the light.” His words reached over 170 countries. Although Swayze did not achieve his dream, his message proved to be tremendously lucrative, resulting in over $100 million in donated funds during the broadcast for Stand Up to Cancer. According to Cancer Research UK, someone in the UK is diagnosed with cancer every two minutes. Worldwide there were about 14.1 million new cancer cases in…

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — In 2006, Leonardo DiCaprio starred as Danny Archer, a white South African who helps an American journalist blow the lid off of the blood diamond industry. The movie, aptly named Blood Diamond, was the closest Hollywood was willing to come to an honest documentary depicting the lives of African citizens oppressed under the system of enslaved mining. Still, diamond and coffee bean harvesting continue to be one of the most willfully ignored human rights issues of the 21st century. This is in large part due to the fact that people in first-world countries benefit directly from…

JERUSALEM – Weeks ago, Benjamin Netanyahu won the election for his second term, to the tune of ardent political speculators on all sides. With this win under his belt, he is now on track to become the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel’s relatively brief history. According to exit polling, the long-time leader was not slated to win this round as definitively as he did. The win cost him his commitment to renegotiate a Palestinian state. Netanyahu accomplished his latest victory by taking a hard right stance in the last days of the election in order to intensify the contrast between…

WASHINGTON – Much has been discussed in the last few decades in regards to Africa’s economic improvement. From the outside, they appear to have been slowed down by the residual effects of colonialization. Still, in some aspects, Africa has already made significant strides towards progress. In fact, African developments and improvements have exceeded those of developed countries. So how can Americans learn from Africans? Below are three ways: 1. Elect more women into office Ever since the 1994 genocide, Rwanda has been making amends for corrupt leadership. For the past few years now, the nation has been one of the few in…

KAMPALA, Uganda — Ebola: the trendiest epidemic of the 2010s. Philip Ross of the International Business Times stated that it took the lives of 4,877 people, mostly in West Africa. Yet the World Health Organization, or WHO, believes that the numbers are underreported and could, in fact, be as much as three times greater. But organizations are fighting back. Recently, USAID and a coterie of other government organizations came up with a Grand Challenge for Development designed to target Ebola. The Challenge has been largely successful. In a matter of weeks there were over 1,500 ideas submitted that focused on the redefinition…