Yakima, WashingtonYakama woman creates a 'call to action' video on crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women
A small forest near Toppenish was created to heal and nourish the land and those who planted it. The healing forest also inspired Christina Kaltsukis in sharing important messages.
She features the healing forest in her video, "Voices and Visions Against the Violence," centered on the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and people. In educating viewers about the centuries-long epidemic, her video emphasizes the spiritual and environmental connections Indigenous communities uphold with their lands….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qQ1YwNCFts
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TheConversationAfghanistan shows what investing in women’s education –or divesting – can do to an economy
...When the Taliban fell from power in ... 2001, women were once again allowed [in] school after being banned since 1996 … Educational, opportunities expanded at all levels... infant mortality rate decline by half, and the gross national income per capital nearly tripled (in real terms in purchasing power, from US$810 in 2001 to $2,590 in 2020.
[Much of the]. progress in this period can be attributed to women. While overall average return on investment in education remains low in Afghanistan, it is high for women. [E.g.] for every additional year of schooling [a woman’s] earnings increased 13%. [Compare] the global average of 9% for return on investment in education.
Twenty years after the first ban on women’s education ended, the Taliban resumed power in 2021 and ... again banned girls and women from ... school after sixth grade. [Now the] economic cost could potentially reach over a billion dollars – and this doesn’t include the wider social costs associated with lower levels of education for women. For context, Afghanistan’s entire gross domestic product was just $17 billion in 2023….
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Fannie Lou Hamer honored posthumously among nineteen recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
A civil rights activist who fought for equal representation for Black citizens and women from her home state of Mississippi and whose work laid the groundwork for the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Hamer died in 1977. A relative accepted the medal on her behalf.
Other honored women this year were Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dr. Jane Goodall, and Anna Wintour.
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