Climate Resilience

The challenge: Air, land, and water are shared global resources, and a healthy environment is crucial for humans to thrive. But climate change, one of the defining issues of our time, has observable effects including rising sea levels and longer, more intense heat waves. Shifts in weather patterns and frequencies of natural disasters have increased, sometimes catastrophic, impacts – including in parts of the developing world, where communities are increasingly vulnerable to food insecurity and economic crisis.

As environmental degradation and climate change have had a growing impact on the populations that we serve, protecting the environment and mitigating climate change, as well as helping populations adapt to the effects of climate change, has taken on increased urgency and importance.

Our solution: Our programs promote environmental sustainability, mitigate the impacts of climate change, and encourage creative solutions to the challenges facing our planet. We encourage sustainable uses of natural resources to mitigate further contribution to climate change, and we work with communities to improve their ability to adapt to existing or expected changes in their environment.

It takes a village

We were all once children. We were all once young, full of hope and potential.

Dispatch from the field: Lighting the path for change

Eve Johnson was part of the 2016-2017 cohort of the International Youth Fellowship Program. She was placed with Pamir Energy, an energy company opened in 2002 which has since restored 11 small hydro power plants and upgraded 4300km of old transmission and distribution facilities in East Tajikistan.

We are there

For vulnerable communities in remote, high mountain valleys across Central Asia, lives are changing.

Dispatch from the field: “Don’t worry, be happy”

Laura Fortin – a native of Montreal – was an International Youth Fellow in 2015-16. She was placed in Uganda for eight months to support Aga Khan Foundation’s education programming in the region, and still lives there today.

How a Glass of Water Can Be Deadly

March 22 marks World Water Day. Most Canadians use water every day without thinking twice: to quench thirst, prepare meals, and bathe. But in the developing world – where clean, safe water can be scarce – these simple daily routines put lives at risk.

Overcoming energy poverty in Central Asia

Access to electricity is a key stepping stone in overcoming poverty in rural communities.

AKDN Sanitation Initiative

To mark World Water Day on March 22, we are exploring the connections between clean water and sanitation – and