Anya Kamenetz

Pakistani teacher Riffat Arif, known as Sister Zeph, is the 2023 winner of the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize. She holds a trophy presented at a dinner in her honor in Paris. She says she faced bad treatment from her teachers at school and dreamed of "a teacher who gives equal respect and love to children with no difference. I could not find that teacher, so I will be that teacher."

$1 million teacher prize goes to Sister Zeph. Her philosophy: 'Love is the language'

Anya Kamenetz

The Pakistani educator has won the largest annual prize for teachers from the Varkey Foundation. She says her teaching reflects her belief that "Love is the language that everybody can understand."

Tawonga Zakeyu of Malawi graduated from Earth University in Costa Rica in December 2021 and now teaches women farmers how to cope with the challenges posed by a changing climate. Hint: Drip irrigation using recycled plastic bottles is a big help during a drought.

NPR Headlines

Why keeping girls in school is a good strategy to cope with climate change

Anya Kamenetz

Education for girls brings numerous benefits when it comes to addressing the climate crisis. Oh, and it works for boys, too!

The new book 'The Stolen Year' details how the pandemic disrupted children's lives

Steve Inskeep, Anya Kamenetz

Extended school closings during the pandemic were a calamity for education. NPR's Anya Kamenetz writes about how COVID changed children's lives in her new book: The Stolen Year.

Iryna Andrusha (left) and Kateryna Andrusha, sister and mother, respectively, of Ukrainian school teacher Viktoria Andrusha, who was taken by Russian forces from the village of Novyi Bykiv in late March.

NPR Headlines

Russia is disappearing Ukrainian civilians. Their families want answers

Anya Kamenetz

Ukrainians who were held in Russia detail their detention, hoping to help find a teacher still missing. She is one of more than 200 civilians that U.N. human rights workers say Russia has disappeared.

NPR Headlines

A missing Ukrainian woman's family wants to know if she was forcibly taken to Russia

Anya Kamenetz

NPR spoke to five Ukrainian civilians who were detained, deported and subject to what human rights advocates call enforced disappearance.

A classroom-turned-dorm in a makeshift shelter for children in a school in Vynnyky, on the outskirts of the city of Lviv in western Ukraine.

NPR Headlines

War displaced two-thirds of Ukraine's children. Keeping them safe isn't easy

Anya Kamenetz

NPR goes inside a school-turned-shelter in Ukraine, where children evacuated during the war face an uncertain future.

NPR Headlines

Cómo hablar con los niños cuando las noticias dan miedo. Una guía bilingüe

Anya Kamenetz, Cory Turner, María Peña

Cuando ocurren tiroteos u otras tragedias, ¿cómo podemos hablar con los niños sobre lo que ha pasado? Tenemos consejos de expertos sobre cómo apoyar emocionalmente a los pequeñitos.