Stories of kindness, generosity, and people making a difference in their communities.
With funding from the Republic of Korea, UNICEF has built 19 boreholes, solar-powered pumps, reservoirs and pipe networks in climate-vulnerable communities including Ghor province, reaching over 39,000 children and their families.
A partnership between UNICEF, Airtel Africa and Nigeria's government has connected nearly 2,000 schools and made learning platforms free of data charges, reaching about 1 million students and more than 20,000 teachers.
In Cambodia's Ratanakiri province, Indigenous students are learning to install and maintain solar systems through UNICEF's Youth Solar (YOSO) program. About 2,600 students in Ratanakiri and Preah Vihear are expected to take part in 2026.
In Mwinilunga, Zambia, girls who became pregnant are back at school under the country's re-entry policy, with support from a UNICEF and EU program. One wants to join the police, another to study physiotherapy.
Malyn Lyceum No. 2 in Ukraine's Zhytomyr region, damaged by a blast wave during Russian attacks in 2022, reopened after a renovation of almost €2 million with a new roof, insulation, heating and safety systems for up to 600 pupils.
After a cholera outbreak with 720 suspected cases and 46 deaths, UNICEF and Oxfam set up river-water treatment systems in villages along the Oubangui in the Central African Republic, aiming to give 15,000 people safe water.
In Tawila, North Darfur, a solar-powered water yard built by UNICEF now gives about 10,000 displaced people at least 15 liters of safe water a day each, from 36 taps. Mothers like Hayat no longer queue for water trucks before sunrise.
Suhaib, 13, returned to school in Ramadi through Iraq's Back-to-Learning campaign, and his sisters Malak, 14, and Tiba, 18, followed. The campaign helped 92,843 children back into learning in 2025, UNICEF said.
Five-year-old Aisha lost a limb when an explosion hit her family's compound in North Omdurman, killing her father and two siblings. Fitted with an artificial limb at the Karrari Centre for Prosthetics, she has taken her first steps, UNICEF said.
Young Kichwa, A'i Cofán, Shuar and Sapara artists in Ecuador's Amazon are rapping in their own languages about oil and mining threats, and one track has passed 400,000 views on TikTok in a month.
The share of young women in Nepal who married before 18 fell from 37% in 2014 to 28% in 2024-25, and marriage before 15 halved, but girls from the poorest homes are being left behind.
Pushed out of school by pregnancy at 13, Amina is now a 17-year-old secondary student in Uganda’s West Nile region thanks to cash support and mentoring from an EU-funded program, and she plans to become a nurse.
Dusty Langby, 12, walked 540 km in 16 days from Warren, NSW, to Parliament House to raise money for Little Wings, which flies sick children to specialist care. The government matched his total and added A$1 million.
The Byzantine pilgrimage complex of Saint Simeon the Stylite near Aleppo reopened to visitors on 28 September after restoration and safety work, Syria's state news agency reported. Its column has been put back in place.
The Bangladesh Navy pulled 65 people from a drifting, flooding wooden boat 81 nautical miles off St Martin's Island and detained 11 suspected traffickers who were allegedly taking them to Malaysia.
Bronze armor plundered from a Cretan sanctuary in the 1960s and a 4,700-year-old Cycladic figurine are among 15 antiquities seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and handed back to Greece on 21 September.
The Buffalo Bills Foundation and Wegmans collected 70,626 pounds of food during Huddle for Hunger week, beating last year's record, and will give $205,859 to 20 hunger-relief charities in Western New York.
An all-volunteer search and rescue team spent 15 hours reaching climber Rob Martin, stranded on a six-inch ledge 10,000 feet up California's Laurel Mountain, and brought him down safely overnight.
Sixty FedEx employees partnered with Rise Against Hunger Philippines to pack 10,000 fortified meal kits, enough to support 166 schoolchildren for four months, as the country faces its first rise in child stunting in a decade.
Six children and seven women held captive after a deadly gang attack on Kenscoff, Haiti, have been released. UNICEF called it "a rare moment of hope" while renewing calls to free everyone still being held.
More than 100 restaurants across 13 countries joined a global Pay What You Can Day, serving their regular menus while allowing diners to decide what they could afford to pay.
A major international study involving more than 55,000 families found that children receiving free monthly books through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library were more likely to be read to regularly and have more books at home.
Nine schoolchildren who were stranded for two days by devastating flash floods in Nepal have safely found their families again with support from emergency responders.
About our humanity coverage
Humanity collects stories about people and rights: girls staying in school instead of marrying young, communities using art and culture to defend their land, families reunited, and individuals whose lives changed because someone stepped in. These are often stories told through one person, set against the wider numbers.
We use only the names and personal details the source itself has published, keep people's own words when we quote them and give the context that shows whether a story is an exception or part of a trend. When a story comes from an aid organization's own account of its work, we say so.