Hardship and hope
Updated: 2011-10-23 07:51
(China Daily)
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Blossoming out of dust, South Sudan: After the independence of South Sudan, as many as 330,000 South Sudanese born and raised in Khartoum, capital of Sudan, gave up their lives there and migrated to camps on unused lands in South Sudan. "Like flowers blossoming out of dust, each individual, even the poor ones, contains all the aspects of life and enjoys all the rights of love and joy," says photographer Wu Xiaoling. Wu Xiaoling |
Photo contest winners highlight the struggle of 1.44 million who live in poverty.
If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then thousands of pictures had many more stories to tell last week as the "Zoom-In on Poverty" global photo contest came to a close.
"The photos we see here today tell their own stories stories of hardship, but also of triumph," said Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, which co-sponsored the contest with China's Xinhua News Agency. "They remind us how far the world still has to go to eradicate poverty, and of the need to put people at the center of our thinking and actions to ensure that economic growth is inclusive."
Li Congjun, president of Xinhua, said alleviation of poverty "is at the core of all of the Millenium Development Goals and is an obligation that we all share as human beings." The event was designed to showcase the effects that worldwide inequalities are having on the 1.44 billion people now living in poverty around the world.
The photo contest attracted more than 32,000 entries from 109 countries and regions, including professional entries from 262 news organizations and thousands of amateurs.
During the event, which came as the world observed the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, winners from each of the seven contest categories got a chance to explain the stories behind their pictures. By far the most popular category, the Netizen's Choice Award, went to Wu Xiaoling, whose depiction of the hope of those living in the newly formed South Sudan were delicately captured in his entry titled Blossoming Out of the Dust.
Xinhua - China Daily
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Clockwise from top Drought in Kenya. A giraffe dead from the drought in the Wajir area in northeastern Kenya. Hope Project, Anhui, China. Su Mingjuan studies hard despite poor living conditions in her village. The Hope Project, launched by the China Youth Development Foundation and the Communist Youth League Central Committee, helps children from impoverished families finish primary school, upgrades rural schools and improves the quality of teaching. Maternity, Port-au-Prince, Haiti: A nurse holds a new baby born on the floor of a maternity ward. Haiti has the highest maternal death rate in the Western Hemisphere, according to the United Nations, thanks to superstition-laden rural birth methods, hospitals crippled by financial problems and widespread poverty. Hope, Sichuan, China. An old woman holds her grandson's face. Hunger in Ethiopia: A health practitioner probes a malnourished child's distended stomach. |
(China Daily 10/23/2011 page6)