This article originally appeared on the UN Youth Flash July 2017 issue.

Changing lives through “Digital Skills”

With 39.9m Bangladeshis in dire need of safe drinking water but lacking the means to pay for its supply, there is a critical need for radical thinking.

The country has the worst problem of arsenic contamination of groundwater in the world, causing widespread poisoning and putting 85m at risk. Water supplies are further affected by river pollution, poor sanitation and rising levels of saline.

Kenyans go to the polls for the country’s General Election on 8 August with mixed feelings of trepidation and hope.

The fear comes from concerns over the potential for fresh outbreaks of political and tribal violence, similar to that which occurred following elections a decade ago, when more than 1,000 people were killed and 6,000 displaced from their homes.

In a miracle of modern technology, 3D printing is being deployed to replace missing hands lost by refugees who escaped the conflict in Syria.

Many of those amputees suffered their injuries in a split second, as victims of airborne bombing, shelling or the multiple other explosives deployed in the four year civil war. Others lost their upper limbs from infection after cuts suffered during the perilous journey out of the conflict zone went untreated for lack of medical supplies.

This article originally appeared on the African Independent.

Children in the Lake Chad region are bearing the brunt of the violence by Nigerian terror group Boko Haram which, in addition to killing, maiming and abducting minors, is notorious for forcibly recruiting them into its ranks.