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Not only is SHE working to help girls attend school during menses, but also the group is taking a market-based approach to boost local businesses in Rwanda. SHE plans to sell its more-affordable pads to local entrepreneurs, focusing on women sellers.

However, after talking to local girls, the SHE staff realized that the girls wanted health and hygiene education as well. In response, SHE has trained more than 50 community health and hygiene education workers, reaching some 5,000 Rwandans, according to Camacho.

SHE's work in Rwanda shows that a comprehensive approach is needed to expand women and girls' educational opportunities. "Women and girls are often left behind because of some of these silent issues," Camacho explains. "We need to approach women and girls' education in a holistic way."

But anyone who spends some amount of time in Yemen sees pretty clearly the daily impact that the lack of water has on people. Tanker trucks trundle down the streets of the cities carrying groundwater from deep wells drilled in the countryside; families use and reuse water for washing three or four times, and children wander the streets with buckets of water collected from the publics spigots of mosques. On a drive through the mountainous countryside at anytime of day, but especially in the morning, you see dozens of women and children walking down the main roads with donkeys and cans, on their way to find water, and you must imagine the hundreds of thousands of people across the country that spend hours each day on the same search.

As one foreign water expert put it to me, there won’t be an hour, or a day or even a year when Yemen runs out of water; it won’t be a headline-making disaster, but it will be disastrous.

According to US AID, there are approximately 600,000 displaced people living in 416 makeshift camps in Port-au-Prince. Sanitation conditions in the camps remain a grave concern. With heavy seasonal rains fast approaching, the population is extremely vulnerable to exposure and water-born disease.

Two leading directors of Doctors Without Borders have called the relief effort to date "broadly insufficient." In a March 5 interview, they say that, “The lack of shelter and the hygiene conditions represent a danger not only in terms of public health, but they are also an intolerable breach of the human dignity of all these people.”

Conditions are also critical outside the earthquake zone. Cap Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city located 120 km north of Port au Prince, has received an estimated influx of 50,000 refugees. Its mayor, Michel St. Croix, recently told the Miami Herald, “We need housing, sanitation, security -- we need everything.'' He said the city has received next to no assistance from the United Nations nor the International Red Cross.

In an interview with Associated Press on March 5, Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive repeated his government’s growing concern with the international aid effort. "Too many people are raising money without any controls, and don't explain what they're doing with it."

Farmer warned against the “trauma vultures” descending on Haiti. He asked why so many years of aid and charitable funds going to Haiti has left the country poorer than ever.

Canada was one of the few large countries in the world that did not send civilian emergency rescue teams to Haiti. Its official aid mission arrived one week after the earthquake in the form of two warships and 2,000 military personnel. They pitched into the relief effort and earned praise for their work. But most of the assistance brought by the military, including its field hospital in Léogâne and its emergency health center in Jacmel, have now been withdrawn.

“The Canadian military is not a relief agency. It helped out with short-term needs. Aid and reconstruction is a long-term process. Who is going to pick up where the military’s work left off?”

Prior to the earthquake, Cuba had some 350 health professionals volunteering in Haiti. That number, including graduates and students from the Latin American Medical School (ELAM) in Cuba, has expanded considerably. Since 2005, 550 Haitian doctors have graduated from ELAM. The school received its first Haitian students in 1999. Currently, there are 570 students from Haiti attending the school.

Timely and informative articles and videos are also posted to the website of the Canada Haiti Action Network (http://canadahaitiaction.ca/) and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (http://ijdh.org/).

The joining of the queue by the school children underscored the fact that many a child does not have access to clean water, safe sanitation and hygiene facilities. Thus, they made this legitimate call: "'Please Give Us Basic Sanitation & Clean Water NOW' because as you all know, the child cannot wait."

Today, it is estimated that 4,000 children across the globe die everyday because they have no access to safe sanitation and clean water. Besides, a total of 2.5 billion people across the world still have to wait in queues for their turn to exercise their right to use a safe and dignified toilet.

Kabul’s rapidly growing population has led to a severe shortage of classrooms and overcrowding in schools. In 2010, most schools in the city were teaching students in three shifts with up to 60 students per class.

“In the new classrooms, we are more comfortable than in the old ones,” says Akil, 14. “Now we have a chair for each student. Before, there was one chair for three students and it was very tiring. This new building is very good for us.”

Other improvements to create a safe, healthy and hygienic learning environment include boundary walls, recreation areas, water points and separate latrines for boys and girls. Providing a safe, attractive and sanitary environment is important for improving the enrolment and retention of girls, as studies and experience in numerous countries have shown.

The principles of child-centred learning have been taught to more than 3,000 teachers in workshops conducted by UNICEF. The workshops give teachers the skills needed to ensure that lessons focus on each child’s ability, stimulate his or her interest and participation in classroom activities, and deal with the child’s problems.

In addition, UNICEF runs workshops for student representatives and community committees to encourage their involvement in managing local schools. The results of school improvements are already starting to be seen.