Recently CHOICE Nepal hosted the Honorable Mrs. Bidhya Devi Bhandari, President of Nepal for the Inauguration ceremony of the Agriculture Laboratory Building at the Janakalyan Secondary School in Palung, Makwanpur, Nepal. 

The lab will benefit 1,245 students of Janakalyan Secondary School and all the farmers from the community. Students will learn new techniques, and the farmers can test the quality of soil and as well as disease in plants. Agriculture is the main source of income in Palung. Twenty thousand families in Palung are engaged in vegetable farming due to the proximity of Kathmandu which gives them a broader customer base.

The key to ending extreme poverty is collaboration. That’s why CHOICE Peru joined forces with representatives of the Piura Regional Government and the La Arena District Municipality to create an economic self-sufficiency program to benefit the families of four villages in the district of La Arena.

Resham Khadka lives in rural Nepal with his wife and three children. Like many young people in this area, when he turned 18 he went to the Gulf countries as a migrant laborer working in different countries and sending money home for his family. The money helped them survive, but there was not enough to save. He was discouraged because, in spite of his hard work in the Gulf, there was no change in his family’s economic situation. It helped them cope with poverty, but didn’t help them come out of poverty. Also, it was very hard for his wife to raise small children and live alone.  

Teresa has gone to Guatemala several times on humanitarian expeditions with Smiles for Life. Before her latest trip, she saw a TV segment that showed people working in a developing country and they had brought reusable feminine hygiene products. That sparked an instant awareness. She realized that, though she travels frequently, she has never thought about menstruation while traveling before.

Five hours from the city of La Paz is the Municipality of Moco Moco. The majority of the communities in this are dedicated to the breeding of llamas and alpacas for the purpose of keeping alive a craft that is generations old. Luisa Quispe and her grandson Pedro live in the community of Huarachani and dedicate their time to their craft. Luisa says that Pedro has been working as an artisan since he was six years old.

Consider a life-changing moment you experienced. Who was there? What was it like? How was the course you were traveling altered? On my most recent expedition to the small community of Pampa de los Silva, Peru, I met a cohort of women whose lives were changed by a small group of ducks. 

Every girl in the world deserves an education, safety, and dignity. That includes access to quality sustainable feminine hygiene products and awareness about health as it relates to the female body. For the millions of women living in extreme poverty, sanitary supplies and education about reproduction are not part of their world. It also means they don't leave the house and miss up to 2 months of school a year. The poverty cycle can be broken when girls stay in school. This is why we have partnered with Days for Girls to provide reusable sanitary supplies and health education. What does this mean for girls? Read what 3 Kenyan women have to say. 

To celebrate our 40^th Anniversary, my wife Cindy and I wanted to do something meaningful and fun, so we chose a volunteer vacation. We traveled to Africa with a purpose in mind – to help build a school in Mungano, a small village outside Mombasa, Kenya. It turned out to be a trip of a lifetime.

Kritika Poudel is one such a person. As a wife and mother, she was no stranger to giving all she could, however, it was not always enough. At age 17, Kritika’s parents arranged her marriage to a boy from a neighboring village in Nepal. 

One day isn’t enough. National Chocolate Day is only one day a year. Luckily every day you can enjoy premium chocolate from farmers in partnership with CHOICE. And when you purchase this chocolate, a portion of the profit provides these farmers access an agricultural specialist.