ISSUE
1 | ||| | More than half of the world’s 6 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Poverty heightens infant mortality, disease, illiteracy, and unemployment and shortens life itself. Poverty can be reduced by policies that promote good governance, microenterprise, small-scale agriculture, income equality, and access to credit, education, and training. | ||| | 
Bobiya mint Bachir, 38, is the president of Ithiad--a large women's cooperative in Arafat, Mauritania, that aims to address two problems in their community: poverty and illiteracy. Bobiya, who is learning to sew, describes the danger of illiteracy: "We couldn't communicate between ourselves. We couldn't check the progress of our children in school." |