Environment

I want to tell a heroic story about a man who saved two people during a flood. It happened July 10, 2011 in Bokhtar city of Khatlon, Tajikistan. That Sunday afternoon, Dilovar planned to invite all of his family. Early in the morning Dilovar and Shakhnoza (Dilovar’s mother) went to a nearby village. They didn’t have a car, so the Dilovar and Shahnoza had to walk by foot.

Starting in January 2011, iEARN, PBS Newshour Extra and UNICEF partnered to support students to report on the Millennium Development Goals. Students from Turkey, Pakistan, India and U.S. successfully completed the WYN reporter certification course and reported on the state of the MDGs in their communities. Mentors from PBS NewsHour Extra and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism Graduate acted as their advisors. Here is the first report from our MDG Reporting Labs:

Some one has rightly said: “A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step.”

It all began in 2009 when our school gave us an opportunity to participate in a competition on innovative ideas to save planet earth. This was organized by BRIGHT GREEN YOUTH, Denmark. Our ideas were highly appreciated. In fact, Sanchit Goyal’s ideas was top rated for weeks together.

Students from Boston Latin, Quincy Upper, Snowden and O'Bryant schools in Boston are reporting stories for the U.S.-Mongolia Emerging Youth Leaders Program. This program engages youth in both countries in a community journalism program exploring democracy and free expression in civil society. It is supported by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Check out their stories!

NAIROBI, Kenya -- The home of the world’s largest concentration of flamingos, Lake Nakuru National Park in central Kenya, is drying up for the second time in two decades.

The shallow lake in the Rift Valley, one of the world’s most visited parks and also a home for 55 mammal species, shrank considerably in the early 1990s due to drought but shortly returned to normal levels. It could now disappear altogether in another eight years if the destruction of the nearby Mau forest were not contained, experts warned.

FERGHANA, Uzbekistan -- The Aral Sea borders two countries, Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south. The government of Uzbekistan has taken steps to preserve the shrinking sea, including water management policies and conservation technologies. It is also participating in the International Fund for Saving Aral Sea, whose other members are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan. 

And teenagers in the Ferghana region of Uzbekistan are pushing for better ways to irrigate crops and to conserve the use of water in their houses.

BRASILIA, Brazil -- The 49th anniversary of Brazil’s capital city, on April 21, filled the Ministries Esplanade with cultural attractions, outdoor activities, and more than 1 million celebrants. And the daylong celebration, which lasted well into the night, turned the expansive garden surrounded by government buildings into a massive rubbish heap.

Muscat, OMAN - Named Gonu, the cyclone was the first in the Gulf region for decades and many Omanis had never seen such destruction before. Two days earlier, Oman TV warned against the possibility of the cyclone Gonu, then somewhere near the island of Masirah, hitting Muscat in the next few days. One day before the students’ chemistry exam, the cyclone had become the talk of the town.

"I was obviously nervous about the exam but I was also scared because I did not want my dad to drive in such weather," later recalled Taniya Yasmin, 15, one of the 11th graders. The rainstorm became stronger and by noon all roads leading out from the Ghubra region, where the school is located, were blocked.