Stories

With limited access to schools, markets and jobs, many young people leave Bangladesh’s Haor wetland region in search of more stable opportunities. Meet three young people IFAD is helping to upskill so they can generate an income while staying in the region.

Rural youth around the world face a dilemma: their roots are in their rural homes, but it’s often hard to build a future there. Meet some of the young people IFAD is helping to devise solutions to the challenges they see around them and build more resilient futures.

Indigenous peoples can teach us a lot about mitigating the impacts of climate change. Over generations, these communities have protected the biodiversity of their homes. They also use language in a powerful way to describe how they interact with the natural environment. Discover five unique words and concepts.

The pandemic pushed up to 80 million people in Asia into extreme poverty. Governments across the region had to respond quickly as incomes fell and food security was threatened. IFAD worked with them to ensure vulnerable rural people got the support they needed.

When a massive tsunami devastated low-lying coastal areas in Tonga, local people had to rebuild their lives from scratch. For many, home gardens provided much needed fresh produce, as well as renewed hope for the future.

The world entered 2021 on a precipice. We all knew the path we had been on was unsustainable and inequitable, and that nothing less than transformative change would be needed for recovery. As we face the challenges 2022 brings, we’re looking back to the lessons we learned in 2021 to guide our next steps forward.

When Megnath Ale Magar returned to his village in Nepal after a decade working abroad, he found a degraded land. In just three years, he transformed his barren farmland into a lush ecosystem using a permaculture approach.

Five Country Directors from IFAD’s highest priority countries in its Crisis Response Initiative tell us how the war in Ukraine is impacting rural people on the ground.

Climate change, commercial agribusiness, and societal norms threaten small-scale farmers’ way of life in a small village in Sudan. A women’s savings and credit group is changing this.