Anne Goddard

With Mother's Day come and gone, it is an apt occasion for asking some hard questions. Of all of the objectives to help lift the world's poorest people out of poverty, why has progress toward improving the health of mothers been the most elusive? Given the risks involved in childbirth,...

Some months back we joined with the alliance of ChildFund sister agencies around the world in commissioning a global survey of the world's poorest children. We asked 10- to 12-year-olds in more than 30 developing countries a series of questions about their lives, giving voice to children whose...

Threats to the world's children come in many forms.

I am one of the 80 million people who have watched the Kony video, and I will confess to being absolutely riveted by it, although not for the reasons you might think. Yes, I was moved and incensed by the atrocities...

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a dire but largely dispassionate report on the economic impact that child maltreatment has on the United States. A team of researchers examined domestic child maltreatment cases for the year 2008 and calculated all of...

For world's poorest children, everyday life could qualify as natural disaster.

The New Year is as much about looking backward as ahead. After all, the past holds perhaps the most abiding lessons. And so as I reflected recently on 2011, chief among the challenges I contemplated were the pulverizing body...

Yet children set their sights high, global survey finds.

One of the comforting prerogatives of childhood is the permission to dream. When we are young, our aspirations soar as high as we let them, unbound by the restrictions and limitations that come with passage into the adult world. And so...

During a recent trip to Kenya, I met a young boy named Lomoru. He told me that he was about four years old the last time a good rain came to his village. Now, a decade later, the barren road to the remote part of northern Kenya he calls home...

Much has been made of the graying of America, the seismic demographic shift taking place in this country as tens of millions of Baby Boomers place unprecedented demands on our retirement and healthcare systems.

And yet there is another demographic explosion taking place that portends far more demanding consequences....

Our work with children around the world has a common partner: mothers.

With Mother's Day soon upon us, it's an apt time to recognize the role that mothers play within the developing world. Their burdens are profound and their sacrifices unending. So many mothers in every country bear the...

Perhaps not since the days of European imperialism has the world's focus been directed so keenly on Africa. Uprisings are sweeping across the continent's northern coast, already having toppled autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt. The leaders in Libya, Algeria and Morocco now find themselves uncomfortably in the crosshairs.

As the...

As the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan enters its 10th year, it is notable that most Afghan children have never known peace. Unlike confrontations fought on distant battlefields, the inherent peril of war has found intimacy within their homes and villages. When the threat of dying is real and ever-present,...