A woman against child marriage in Turkey and other inspiring stories to face 2023

The recent outbreak of covid-19 infections in China is a tsunami that drags down hopes of ending the pandemic, almost three years after it began.

Thus ended what was to be considered the year of recovery.

Although 2022 had already been cut short in February, by Russia's offensive in Ukraine, a new war in Europe that triggered the largest and fastest exodus of refugees since World War II, and destabilized global food and energy markets, leaving millions of people without enough food.

Hunger increased.

And, faced with an international community unable to address the many and diverse crises (let us not forget climate change), human development fell back to 2016 levels,

placing humanity almost at the starting point of the approval of the UN 2030 Agenda for a better, more sustainable and peaceful world by that date.

However, there were also events for hope, small and big stories of people who made progress.

They brightened up a gloomy 2022.

Future Planet gives them a face with a selection from the most positive newspaper library:

The effort to make the world a better place

The Turkish Dilek Demir, forced to marry at the age of 14, has become a symbol of the fight against child marriages in her country.

she promised.

Today, Demir, at 49, is a

from Müradiye, a neighborhood in the Diyarbakir district.

The

They are elected representatives, without political affiliation, whose function is to serve as a link between the neighborhoods and the Administration.

And the first thing he did was put up a mailbox for complaints and tips.

And from him "80 lives have come out", as she expressed with a certain poetry the number of people she helped.

Half were girls who were going to be married off as minors;

another 25, of children who suffered violence and sexual abuse in their families;

the rest, of young people whom she has managed to keep away from drug addiction.

Another example is that of

, from N'Djamena (Chad), a lover of dance.

He loved to dance and his passion led him to drop out of school and face the rejection of his family.

After living homeless for two years and after much effort, he became a successful dancer and choreographer, creating his own group.

But he went one step further: he founded an association to motivate children living on the streets and reintegrate them into society.

"Dancing, they feel free," he says.

From Barcelona comes the story of

She's a hit on her TikTok and Instagram accounts, with almost 400,000 and more than 100,000 followers respectively.

Born in Equatorial Guinea 31 years ago and settled in the Poblenou neighborhood of Barcelona since she was 12, she shares information about Africa and her cultures on her networks and tries to refute stereotypes and prejudices.

She also claims the right of black women to get out of the Western beauty canon.

Also

, but from Nigeria.

“People think we live in wooden houses and mud huts, but I have never lived in one.

They think that we have nothing but dry land, that there is no water and that is why we are hard”.

Another initiative that has contributed to improving the world is the one that the NGO Bicycles without Borders has launched in Senegal, where it has helped 7,000 African students without school transportation to travel to educational centers and obtain better grades thanks to

.

There are many more examples:

• The defender of thousand-year-old trees in Peru.

  From Madre de Dios, forestry engineer Tatiana Espinosa leads the protection of the last shihuahuacos, which are coveted for their hardwood.

  With her task, she tries to prevent this thousand-year-old tree from the Amazon from becoming extinct in the form of parquet, furniture and charcoal.

• Andrea Mwalula's little school, a smile in the abyss of childhood cancer in Africa.

  This Zambian-Slovene founded a school in a hospital in Lusaka (Zambia).

  Today it is a sanctuary and refuge for dozens of minors who fight against this disease with hardly any means or resources in an environment of extreme poverty.

• The woman who wants to take the temperature of the sea.

  Senegalese Lala Kounta, the first doctor in oceanography in her country, is seeking funding to install an observation system that will allow her to measure, predict and prevent the impact of climate change on the African coast.

Young people stand up against the climate crisis

World Environment Day is celebrated on June 5.

And that day we presented 10 young people from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania who are writing the present and the future of actions to defend the planet.

They have less famous faces than Greta Thunberg, but the same conviction that they can change the world.

We call

and all were under the age of 25 at the time, like Melati Wijsen, who was born and raised in Bali.

There she began with her walks, when she was a child, along the beaches and rice fields.

Despite the fact that she had the sky in front of her, her eyes saw nothing but abandoned plastic bags.

And she decided to start her fight against that disaster.

Thus, at the age of 12 she created, together with her younger sister, Bye Bye Plastic Bags.

The project, which started as an adventure between schoolmates, is today the leading youth NGO in Indonesia and has managed to get the local government of Bali to ban plastic bags, straws and Styrofoam.

has included this young woman among the most influential teenagers in the world and

among the 30 under 30 most important on the planet.

Social networks are the weapon of the young

that we focused on during COP27, a group of Brazilian women who chose to defend the environment among their thousands of followers instead of trying to sell them products.

"We are the last generation that can save the planet," Zaya (21 years old), the first indigenous model to step on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival in September, posted on her Instagram account, during the screening of the film

, distributed by National Geographic.

Also noteworthy is the story of

who fights for marine animals and the well-being of the planet.

How?

She has invented the Jelly Cleaner, a floating contraption that collects plastic particles from the surface of her beloved Mediterranean Sea.

She makes sure it works.

She has also started a campaign for the Spanish government to gradually close the dolphinariums and dreams of creating the first sanctuary for these cetaceans on the Costa Brava.

Those who don't give up

These are the stories of the people who did not give up in the face of adversity.

It is what in terms of humanitarian organizations is called resilience, the human capacity to endure and rise again.

This is what the Nepali

, born in Kathmandu 31 years ago, did.

He fled from the heroin that devoured other young people in his neighborhood, he lost everything in the United Kingdom, ended up in Spain and began to sing in the Madrid subway.

His voice fell in love with a couple who gave him a job in the theater, which allowed him to get his residence permit.

Today he is a singer, actor and cook.

Another resilient is Enyonam Mary Sleysor, from Togo.

A wrong injection, according to what they tell him, paralyzed his legs.

She was three years old.

Therapeutic and care options for people with disabilities are scarce in her country, but she did not give up.

She moved on her own again supported by crutches, she studied Sociology and today works in an NGO.

, and she did it with practically everything against her, but surrounded by the love of her family.

In Burkina Faso, a country from which hardly any news of the jihadist violence it suffers, we met Awa Baguia.

She is 37 years old and she is the first blind woman in the country who has managed to finish Sociology studies.

Today she is a civil servant after successfully passing the oppositions and thanks to the fact that a law determines that there must be a reserved quota of 10% jobs for disabled people.

“Until I was 18 years old, she was a psychic and then I had glaucoma.

First my vision was blurry, then I lost all vision in one eye.

Like the Togolese Mary Sleysor, the love of her family helped her to continue.

When she completely lost her sight, her mother took her to a center for the blind where she was able to learn to read braille: “I spent three years in this center and finished high school.

In this list of those who reinvent themselves,

stand out , members of the GIE Solidaire de Confection et Artisanat cooperative from the Sam Sam III neighborhood in Pikine, Senegal.

These women have opened a new line of business in their activities with the recovery of the traditional technique of dyeing and manufacturing fabrics to make dresses, scarves, table linens or fashion accessories.

This is how they support themselves and their families.

Behind this group is

, who has spent most of her 82 years empowering the women of Cameroon and Senegal.

"I'm going to go with the poorest so they don't get crushed," she assured this newspaper to explain her vocation.

These are other stories that leave a positive mark:

• A photo changed the life of Mohamed Yousif, the poet in the Sudanese protests.

  Japanese photographer Yasuyoshi Chiba captured a 15-year-old boy at protests against the Sudanese regime in 2019. The World Press Photo award-winning snapshot drew international attention to the protests and the young man's potential, which ended up receiving funding to study in the Netherlands.

  Back in his country, he plans to be the president of the world's youngest nation.

Mohamed Yousif, in a photograph by Japanese Yasuyoshi Chiba, who won the 2020 World Press Photo.YASUYOSHI CHIBA (AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE)

• From juvenile delinquent in Nairobi to receiving an award from the Queen of England.

  Douglas Mwangi, a young man from a suburb of the Kenyan capital who dedicated himself to "perpetrating criminal activities" to survive, decided to change his life and founded the first digital community center in his neighborhood, designed to facilitate young people's access to education and paid work.

  His work led him to receive the Young Leaders Award in 2018, which was presented to him by the British Queen Elizabeth II.

• Mahgul's desire to study, despite everything.

  Grace Armstrong, a UNICEF emergency education specialist, met Mahgul, a bright 11-year-old girl with many projects, at a community class in a rural village in the Faryab province of northern Afghanistan.

  Eager to share her experience, Mahgul told him how she visited her classroom almost every day while it was closed for covid-19 during the first months of 2021. Asked about the difficulties she had encountered in receiving training, she replied: “The only reason I could preventing me from studying would mean that my father could not afford to pay for my studies.

  I want to be an engineer or a doctor.”

• An architect who was born in a village without electricity wins the highest award in his industry

  .

  Diébédo Francis Kéré is the first African to receive the 2022 Pritzker Prize for architecture, the highest international prize in the field.

  Born in Gando, a remote village in Burkina Faso, he explains his traditional origins, his love of nature and his persistent will to change the lives of his compatriots.

one of animals

In July, a milestone against the extinction of threatened species occurred in

.

We tell it in photographs.

The horn of a rhinoceros peeks through a fence, during work to relocate 19 specimens from the South African province of Limpopo to the Zinave National Park in Mozambique.

More than four decades after their extinction, rhinos are once again roaming the wilds of Mozambique, which is bringing the endangered species from South Africa in an effort to breathe new life into its parks and boost local tourism.

SIPHIWE SIBEKO (Reuters)

Rangers watch the movement of black and white rhinos.

A group made up of several of these professionals captured, sedate and transferred black and white rhinos over more than 1,600 kilometers, to the Zinave National Park, which has more than 400,000 hectares and more than 2,300 reintroduced animals.SIPHIWE SIBEKO (Reuters)

A worker holds a rope with which he is holding the rhinos that are going to be transferred. SIPHIWE SIBEKO (REUTERS)

Veterinarian Shaun Roper prepares tranquilizers to inject the rhinos so they can be moved safely.

SIPHIWE SIBEKO (Reuters)

Eric Spencer prepares his gun to shoot a tranquilizer at one of the 19 rhinos that are going to travel from South Africa to Mozambique.

The conservation group Peace Parks Foundation (PPF), which is carrying out the operation, intends to relocate more than 40 rhinos in the next two years in this country.

SIPHIWE SIBEKO (Reuters)

Kester Vickery, co-founder of the NGO Conservation Solutions, helps move a sedated rhino.

"Rhinos are important to the ecosystem, which is one of the reasons we're moving them all this distance and doing all this effort to get them there," says Vickery, who is also a conservationist and is overseeing rhino translocation.SIPHIWE SIBEKO (Reuters)

Aerial view of the site of Limpopo, in north-eastern South Africa, where trucks are being loaded with 19 black and white rhinos.

They have a road of more than 1,600 kilometers left. STAFF (REUTERS)

Several workers and rangers move a sedated rhino to the container where it will be kept while it is transferred to Mozambique.

Its director of this project, Anthony Alexander, assures that the group has already brought certain predators and many elephants to the park, and that now it is the turn of the rhinos.

"It is very exciting to now complete the presence of historical species in the park." SIPHIWE SIBEKO (Reuters)

Workers help the sedated rhino walk into the container.

This initiative is part of a campaign to save endangered species by relocating them to safe havens where they have the chance to increase their population.SIPHIWE SIBEKO (Reuters)

The trucks are loaded with the containers that transport the 19 black and white rhinos.

"We are spreading our eggs around and putting them in different baskets," Vickery compares, adding that he expected to see a thriving white rhino population in Zinave in 10 years. STAFF (Reuters)

Sunset in Limpopo, where rangers oversee the movement of rhinos.

The Mozambican Minister of the Environment, Ivete Maibaze, has stated in a statement that this historic translocation will also be beneficial to the country's emerging ecotourism industry.

SIPHIWE SIBEKO (REUTERS)

One of the last sedated rhinos is placed in a container.

Mozambique's wild animal numbers have been severely affected by a 15-year civil war that ended in 1992, and by poaching.

This initiative is intended to alleviate the damage. SIPHIWE SIBEKO (Reuters)

Advances that improve health

In the field of global health there are also reasons for hope.

In July, an

.

And shortly after, in September, the

: 14.250 million dollars (13.340 million euros).

Also in 2022, a

E.

Thus, 25,000 people, including pregnant women, received the first two doses between March and April in the Bentiu displacement camp, the largest in the country.

There was also

.

Before it was a death sentence.

"Now, you can tell the patient that they have hope," says the Spanish doctor Jorge Alvar, who leads the global programs against leishmaniasis of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi for its acronym in Spanish). in English).

A new WHO-approved treatment, based on the results of early clinical trials in Ethiopia and India, reduces treatment time from 38 to 14 days and increases efficacy from an average of 50% to around 90%.

In July, an international agreement was reached that will make HIV preventive medication accessible to 90 developing countries.

And shortly after, in September, the Global Fund for HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis achieved the highest collection in its history: 14.250 million dollars.

In 2022,

.

There, political will, funding, research and a robust community network have enabled the African country to reduce its malaria cases by 76% in four years.

We got on it to see how, where doctors don't easily reach, deep in the Amazon,

brings healing, relief, vaccines and prevention.

women are gaining ground

With the purple glasses always on, at Future Planet we have witnessed how the women of the world, and those of the Global South in particular, have advanced in various areas: political, social, personal.

We dedicate a

, with power and command to transform their countries.

And we tell the story of

despite the odds, have risen to the top of the education system.

Also in Kenya, we stumbled across

.

While the world was following the presidential elections in that East African country with interest, in August 2022, something extraordinary happened: at the local and regional levels, more women were elected than ever before, a historic achievement and another step towards gender equality. .

On the American continent,

participated in the construction of the Morazán satellite, a 10x10x10 centimeter cube that will serve to protect the lives of millions of people in Central America against the Frequent flooding in places with less access.

The launch is scheduled, if everything goes as planned, for the first half of 2023.

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