Using funds from her own pocket, one retired schoolteacher has been providing free education for children in one Indian slum for the last 13 years.

For many refugee children, especially girls, paying for and staying in school is a challenge. This program in a Ugandan refugee camp is working to change that.

“Education is important because it builds a person’s mind, and the mind will build the future,” says Ethar, a 15-year-old Syrian girl with a winning smile. Explaining why going to school is important to her, the teenager, who fled Aleppo with her family four years ago, is unwavering in her conviction. Now living in Gaziantep, Turkey, she attends a school for Syrian refugee children.

The mountains of Itombwe are home to some of the rare gorillas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. An area about the size of Rwanda and Burundi put together, the Itombwe Plateau is one of the poorest parts of one of the poorest countries in the world. It is also home to 23,785 adolescent girls, according to Maman Shujaa, a women’s empowerment organization based in the South Kivu capital of Bukavu.

Emma Sulkowicz, a senior visual arts major at Columbia University, has been the frontwoman for the school’s mishandling of sexual assault on campus ever since she released her name to the press last spring.