An Afghan woman uses her skills to make artificial flowers for sell. Photo Credit: Rumi Consultancy/ World Bank. Earlier this year, I visited a meeting of a Village Savings and Loan Association in Doghabad village and was impressed with the confidence and leadership women showed. Addressing the association, Karimi, who is a member, said: “Do not wait for men ...
October 17 is the international day to end poverty. There has been much progress toward this important milestone: the World Bank Group’s latest numbers show that since 1990 nearly 1.1 billion people have escaped extreme poverty. Between 2012 and 2013 alone, around 100 million people moved out of extreme poverty. That’s around a quarter of a million people every ...
Photo credit: Visual News Associates / World Bank Over 80 percent of Pakistanis consistently report that their economic wellbeing has either deteriorated or remained the same. Only 20 percent, disproportionately concentrated in the very top of the distribution, feel that they are better off and similarly small numbers believe that economic conditions have improved for their locality. If we ...
Nikhil Chandra Roy, who received certification through the Skills and Training Enhancement Project (STEP),Skills recognition is changing the lives of informal workers in Bangladesh In 2014, Nikhil Chandra Roy was struggling to find and keep regular employment. He had extensive experience dating back to 1977, doing the work of an electrician. But because he had no formal training or ...
On World Mental Health Day, here’s a fact to reflect on: people with mental illness are among the socially excluded and marginalized groups in society. They are often misunderstood, ignored, or simply invisible. In India alone, an estimated 70 million people—or 5% of the population—suffer from mental illness. The southern state of Tamil Nadu, for instance, has one million ...
Photo credit: Rumi Consultancy / World Bank Today I joined leaders and representatives from 70 countries and 20 international organizations and agencies at the Brussels Conference on Afghanistan. Together with its development partners, the World Bank Group pledged its continued support to the Afghan people and outlined a course of action to help all Afghans realize their dream of ...
There is a lot for Bangladesh to celebrate in the latest World Bank research on global poverty and inequality. The new report, entitled “Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016: Taking on Inequality”, uses revised data to give a more accurate estimate of how many poor people live in Bangladesh. What the report shows is that 18.5 percent of the population ...
There is now a huge window of opportunity for South Asia to create more apparel jobs, as rising wages in China compel buyers to look to other sourcing destinations. Our new report – Stitches to Riches?: Apparel Employment, Trade, and Economic Development in South Asia – estimates that the region could create 1.5 million new apparel jobs, of which ...
Recently, the World Bank Education Team on Sri Lanka Higher Education organized its first Facebook Live to discuss how Sri Lanka’s universities can become world class institutions where students acquire relevant skills. More than 50,000 viewers have so far viewed the video and we have received a large volume of follow up questions and comments. It is evident that ...
Annette Dixon, World Bank Vice President for the South Asia Region and Idah Pswarayi-Riddihough, World Bank Country Director for Sri Lanka and the Maldives in conversation with an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) living in a temporary welfare camp. Photographer: Mokshana Wijeyeratne Sri Lanka amazes me in many ways, with its smiling faces among a rich tapestry of cultures, diversity, and natural ...
The Alliance and Accord have been working over the past three years with more than 1,500 factories to help them meet new fire and building safety standards The China sourcing conundrum In conversations with U.S. and European retailers and brands, ELEVATE – a company formed in 2013 to support corporate social responsibility – finds that apparel buyers rate diversifying away ...
“Despite the global slowdown, India has been one of the few countries to have shown remarkable growth in the last financial year. While this has been an achievement in itself, this growth rate can be taken to double-digits.” This was the key message of Dr. Frederico Gil Sander, Sr. Country Economist, World Bank Group, New Delhi. Dr. ...
Blog 12: Key lessons on road to sharing prosperity India is home to the largest number of poor people in the world, as well as the largest number of people who have recently escaped poverty. Over the last few weeks, this blog series has highlighted research from the World Bank and its partners on what has driven poverty ...
During a recent visit to Barsam village in the Saharsa district of Bihar, I talked with members of a women’s self-help group - one of over 480,000 such groups formed under Jeevika, a rural livelihoods program supported by the World Bank in Bihar. Among the group was nineteen year old Shobha. Like millions of girls across the country, Shobha ...
In India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, I met young ex-farmers who had moved out of farm jobs and were now working in factories and government offices. Their day to day circumstances weren’t all that different from millions of others around the world. But yet, the people I met were remarkable. There was the disabled young man who, with ...
