Life doesn't stop for anybody

Children, Star of the future is a french and Senegalese non-profit organization, located in Saly Portudal in the district of Niakh-Nakhal.

Launched in 2017 by a French expatriate who has fallen under the charm of the country and its traditions, Today on the spot for more than 12 years following the sponsorship of a child left to himself. The aim of the association is therefore to create and maintain a mixed and secular collective reception center for children between the ages of 7 and 14 during the school year, in order to support them in their learning and to provide them with stability and the comfort of life necessary for their good development (daily meals, hygiene, care, protection, and homework) and above all love and transmission of the most important values so that they flourish at best towards the beginning of an adult life.

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https://web.facebook.com/pg/lenfant.etoile.davenir

https://www.leetchi.com/c/association-etoile-davenir

Homeless in America's Tent Cities by Shannon Stapleton 

At homeless encampments from Seattle, Washington state to Las Cruces, New Mexico, residents live away from the dangers of life on the streets, saying the stability helps them work towards their goals. Despite a shortage of affordable housing for the poor and budget constraints on social welfare programmes, many U.S. cities have clamped down on tent cities in the past few years. Here: Matt Mercer, a one-time resident of Camp Hope, poses among tents in Las Cruces, New Mexico October 6, 2015. 

In the name of Koran (Talibes in Senegal) by Sebastian Gil Miranda

This is a project that addresses one of the most important problematics of exploitation of child labor socially accepted, using religious education, in this case koranic, as justification.

In Senegal, the overwhelming majority of the population (94%) are practicing Muslims. An estimated 90% of Senegalese Muslims are members of Sufi brotherhoods, which place a high value in master-disciple relationships. In line with this tradition, male children as young five are often sent to daaras, Koranic boarding schools where students receive a religious education. Yet, not all daaras are created equal: while some focus on transmitting wholesome Islamic values and beliefs, a great part of those that exist today represent a form of institutionalized child abuse that is tacitly condoned by Senegalese society; which still places prestige in receiving a Koranic education far away from home.

As of 2010, an estimated 200,000 boys had become talibes, term used to refer to children who studies the Quran in Koranic educational institution called Daara. The children are typically entrusted to marabouts, or religious instructors, who in these sadly common scenarios house their charges in derelict buildings. These so-called educational centers accommodate normally from 30 to 100 boys, who are packed into rooms and made to sleep on the floor, often living in squalor. Malnourishment is common, and the standard toilet consists of an empty room with a couple of filthy buckets, which children use to both relieve themselves and bathe.

Despite these conditions, the young talibes are forced to earn their keep – or suffer the consequences. They take to the streets with tell-tale empty cans of tomato sauce, begging for money. These particular cans identify the youngsters as talibes. In Senegal, each group of street beggars resorts to its own receptacle. If the talibes do not return to the daara with the amount mandated by the marabout, they are deprived of meals – or worse, beaten and forced to sleep on the streets.

In Senegal this practice is not seen in the country as cruel or unjust, rather it is accepted as a way to transfer the values of the koran,it is implicitely understood that children must self-finance their education and cover their living expenses of their education.

The young talibes frequently come from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, and easily fall prey to unscrupulous marabouts, who use the money collected by children for personal gain. They become victims of a socially-accepted form of child labor, which paves the way to further violations such as mistreatment, beatings and some cases sexual abuse. Those young talibes who rebel against the harsh treatment and run away from their daaras, often end up becoming street children. UNICEF estimates that there are around 100,000 child beggars in Senegal – not including current talibes. But from this number, Understanding Children's Work estimates that 90% of them are indeed former talibes. Local non-governmental organization s such as “Boolo En Faveur Des Enfants” have taken great strides to help these vulnerable children by providing vocational incentives and alternative education, remove and rehabilitate children from the street. Kane Mame Bigue, a sociologist, who is part of the multidisciplinary team, that focuses its efforts and works together with this NGO, said “is a project that proposes to remove and rehabilitate children from the street in general, talibes especially, in perfect synergy with state organizations and organizations of civil society working in the field of child protection”. The NGO operates several halfway houses, such as La Maison Rose, where they shelter and feed the children rescued off the streets as they attempt to get in touch with their birth families. In extreme cases, orphans are placed with host families who help reintegrate the former talibes into society. Working alongside UNICEF and local civil society organizations, the NGO has successfully implemented social programs that monitor existing daaras and ensure these meet certain standards that may guarantee the well-being of their students. But these isolated efforts are insufficient to change this harsh reality It affects many thousands of children in the country.

Siberian Mammoth pirates by Amos Chapple 

In Russia’s Siberian wilderness, a new gold rush is on, as local ‘tuskers’ evade police and set up temporary illegal ivory mines, blasting away soil and permafrost to find the tusks, horns, and bones of long-extinct woolly mammoths and rhinos. Demand for ivory remains huge in China and other Asian nations, and the market for elephant tusks is tightening as preservation efforts increase. A large mammoth tusk—“ethical ivory”—can be worth tens of thousands of dollars to a lucky tusker.

T.I.A by stefano de Luigi

Africa is a continent. But Africa is also a well-defined place in my mind.

Africa is unique. Every time I have had the opportunity of going there I have come face to face with incredible tragedies but also with the unwavering hope of its people.

Ever since my first journey to South Africa in 1989, where I saw Walter Sisulu walk free in Soweto after years of imprisonment, I continue to be both deeply moved and deeply shocked by all the stories I have witnessed and heard. Every time I step onto African soil I know I will experience something deep, something that inevitably leads to a search for the meaning of life, something that, for me at least, surfaces from deep within when I am in Africa. The questions raised call for humbleness, since often they are without answers. We know that the truth often lies in the middle folds of things. This project aims to raise questions and provoke thoughts which could, perhaps, lead to some answers and which in turn could correspond to some truths. I have tried to conceive this project as a poem. Or perhaps it would better be described as a ballad. The ballad with verses which challenge and play with each other. In the space between two facing photographs there is a story. One of the thousand stories I witnessed in Africa, one of the thousand questions I asked myself, one of the thousand experiences I was fortunate to live.

The photographs represent the two extremes of the story that links them: the beginning and the end. I couldn’t find a better form of expressive language to convey how Africa is an all-encompassing experience for any human being wishing to embrace it to its full. A painful yet joyful ballad of my personal and ongoing relationship with this continent. This is why I have called it “This is Africa”.

I should probably have called it “This is my vision of Africa” but it didn’t sound the same. By no means does this mean it is the only view of Africa. I know it may seem inadequate and subjective. But so is everything in life, I guess.

Bulgaria, Roma Bride Market by Jodi HILTON

The Romani people, who constitute one of Bulgaria’s largest ethnic minorities, have a unique marriage tradition – a ‘bride market’. Held four times a year on various religious holidays, the market is a chance for poor families in the community to arrange financially beneficial marriages for their children.

The families that gather in the city of Stara Zagora for the festival are part of a gypsy community of 18,000 Roma known as Kalaidzhi. They are traditionally coppersmiths, and among the most poverty-stricken people in the nation. The bride market is a chance for these families to get together, catch up on gossip, and arrange matches for their adolescent children. The event is a colorful one, with grannies dressed in traditional Kalaydzhii long skirts, and children running about and eating candy floss. The prospective brides are usually dressed provocatively in mini skirts, with gobs of mascara, flashy jewellery and towering heels. They dance alongside their male suitors on car hoods, which is quite rare in a community that generally does not allow youths to mingle with the opposite sex. In fact, the Kalaidzhi, who are devout Christians, take girls out of school at age 15 to keep them away from temptation.

The market, however, is a lot like a highschool dance. Girls and boys stand separately in groups, occasionally shaking hands and checking each other out. The parents, acting as chaperones, prefer to stay out of their way in the background. As the kids get to know each other better, the party gets wilder, with couples dancing on top of cars in front of an audience. If a boy and a girl really begin to take a liking for each other, the adults then step in to negotiate. The cost of a bride can be anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 leva ($2,800 and $5,600). The prices have dropped in recent years, as jobs have dried up and families are tight on cash. But a ‘very beautiful’ woman with many suitors can supposedly still command a really good price.

“We are maintaining the morals of the children by marrying them off at a young age,” said Kosta Kostov, a spectator at the fair. “If she’s not a virgin, the bride’s family has to give the money back.”

The blond twins of Mengele by Gabriele Galimberty

Twins occur normally once in every 80 pregnancies. Here, however, one in five pregnancies typically results in twins – 20% of the population, most with blond hair and blue eyes. Welcome to the Brazilian town of Candido Godoi (Rio Grande do Sul, South Brazil) – the so-called “twin capital of the world.” A recent book entitled “Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America” by the Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa, a specialist in the Nazi post-war flight to South America, claims that this abnormally high frequency of twins may be due to the Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele.