The Global Fund For Children

Rahel wanted her daughter Aster, who has autism, to go to school just like the other children in Addis Ababa. But schools turned her away. And family members would not take care of Aster—it was too hard to understand and control her.

“Many times I have told the story about the boys with guns in their hands, stopping our car and wanting to talk to me,” says Sakena Yacoobi, director of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL). “Although I was afraid, I got out of the car.”

Yacoobi was used to fear—since 1995 she had been bringing educational opportunities to women and girls in Afghanistan, and for years she operated directly in conflict with the Taliban government.

What if every person who worked for justice in the world inspired ten others to do the same?

Bogdan Bashtovy has far exceeded this ratio as director of the Kiev Children and Youth Support Center, which supports residents and graduates of area orphanages. Bashtovy first witnessed the need for a support center when he began volunteering at Orphanage 12 in Kyiv. Much like other orphanages across the former Soviet Union, residents of Orphanage 12 “graduate” as teenagers, and often find themselves unprepared to live on their own.

In the height of monsoon season in northern Bangladesh, a young girl runs to the riverbank near her village. Her regular school building is closed due to floodwaters, but a different kind of classroom awaits her—one that floats.

“A boat school is the combination of a school bus and schoolhouse,” says Mohammed Rezwan, executive director of Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha and the social entrepreneur behind its mobile boat schools.

They live in slums, on train platforms, and on the streets. They work on fishing docks and in marketplaces and as domestic servants. They are migrants, moving with their families between villages and the city. These are Mumbai’s uncounted and undocumented children, and they are everywhere—except in school.

Door Step School is trying to change that.