Peru: Kiva's Web-based Microfinance Growing Up
BY Joe Rubin

In 2006, when we first broadcast our story about Kiva's first micro-lending experiment in Uganda, the San Francisco-based nonprofit was already a modest success. The concept was simple: web surfers with a little bit of extra cash could use their credit card to provide microcredit to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

At the time, Kiva had just surpassed $500,000 in loans. This week, Kiva celebrated its fourth birthday, and its growth since our story aired has been nothing short of meteoric. Kiva is closing in on $100 million loaned and expanded its reach to small businesses across the planet.

We thought we'd check in with the company on its anniversary and find out how it's working with locals in a beautiful and remote high Andean outpost in Peru.

Continue reading

Honduras: Standoff at the Embassy
BY Joe Rubin

Honduras' left-leaning president, Manuel Zelaya, who was deposed in a coup back on June 28, has returned to the country. He reportedly traveled over back roads from El Salvador, hidden in the trunk of a car, and has been given refuge at the Brazilian Embassy.

Continue reading

China: Wall Scholar
BY Joe Rubin

There is apparently no formula to becoming an expert on the Great Wall of China. David Spindler was a graduate student in Beijing back in the early 1990s, when, as a hobby, he began trekking the wall through its thousands of miles of nooks and crannies, and studying ancient documents to reveal its secrets.

In 2002, he left a lucrative career as a corporate consultant to become a full-time "wall scholar."

Recently, he teamed up with photographer Jonathan Ball and set out on a mission -- to take huge panoramic photos along the wall on the anniversaries and in the exact locations of historic Mongol and Manchu battles.

We spoke to him over web cam from Beijing on the eve of two exhibits of Spindler and Ball's work opening in San Francisco and New York.

Afghanistan: A Stolen Election?
BY Joe Rubin

Over the last year we've been checking in with Jason Motlagh, a photojournalist who has been all over Afghanistan, including on military missions assigned to try and make the country safe enough to hold elections.

As Motlagh described back in February, it's a "hard fight," with fierce Taliban resistance, mounting civilian casualties and endemic corruption.

Continue reading

Swaziland: The King and the Web
BY Joe Rubin

Swaziland is a country of haves and have-nots. King Mswati III (the country's absolute monarch) has 13 wives, 20 armored Mercedes and his net worth is estimated at more than $200 million.

Meanwhile, his subjects are among the poorest in the world (more than 60 percent of Swazis earns less than $1.25 per day) and plagued by a huge public health crisis. The tiny southern African nation has the world's highest per capita rate of HIV/AIDS.

Swaziland is also not particularly tolerant of dissent. Anti-sedition laws and self-censorship make criticism of the king rare. So, we wondered, what happens when the Twitter revolution comes to town?

Continue reading

Jailed In Iran, A Reporter's Story
BY Joe Rubin

This is not your expected tale of a three-week stint in an Iranian prison. Photojournalist Iason Athanasiadis-Fowden, who was in Iran covering the recent disputed elections and massive protests that followed, was trying to leave the country ahead of his visa expiring when he was arrested and charged with espionage. He spoke to us over Skype from his parents' home in Greece shortly after being released from prison.

As you will see, there are moments in his retelling that are both humorous and terrifying. The fact that Athanasiadis-Fowden has spent several years reporting from Iran, speaks the language, and understands the culture certainly helped his cause.

His work frequently appears in The Washington Times and is supported by our partners at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Continue reading

Guinea Bissau: A Narco State in Africa
BY Joe Rubin

When Marco Vernaschi, an Italian photojournalist, decided to head to the West African nation of Guinea Bissau, he knew that cocaine traffickers had already destabilized the tiny former Portuguese colony. But when he arrived on the scene shortly after the country's president and army chief were brutally assassinated last March, Vernaschi saw a place spiraling into a gangster's paradise. He has documented the chilling impact of the drug trade in places like Bolivia, and spent months in Guinea Bissau getting to know drug gangs from the inside.

He shares with iWitness how he captured such intimate portraits of assassins, addicts and prostitutes caught up in a trade that is relatively new to the country but leaving a devastating mark.

Vernaschi's work in Guinea Bissau is supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Read more in his riveting blog, where he investigates West Africa's growing drug trade and connections to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah in the region.

Afghanistan: After an Airstrike
BY Joe Rubin

Jason Motlagh has been reporting from Afghanistan for several months, first embedding with U.S. troops and more recently looking at the other side of the conflict -- the growing numbers of civilian casualties. Over webcam from Kabul, Motlagh tells iWitness what happened when a recent U.S. airstrike hit a village in Farah province, killing scores of civilians. Sharing dramatic footage and images in the wake of the bombings and interviewing victims and U.S. military, Motlagh reports conflicting accounts of what took place. The story he pieces together offers some measure of why the U.S. and NATO are reassessing how they fight the war in Afghanistan.

Motlagh's ongoing coverage from Afghanistan is funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and is part of a joint reporting venture between the center and FRONTLINE/World. Read his recent article in Time, "How Afghanistan's Little Tragedies Are Adding Up."

Pakistan: Education's Fault Lines
BY Joe Rubin

Journalists Sarah Stuteville and Alex Stonehill spent six weeks crisscrossing Pakistan to report on the country's growing education crisis. Both are funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and spoke recently with iWitness from Karachi about their experience.

Continue reading

Burma: One Year After the Deadly Storm
BY Joe Rubin

On the eve of May 2, 2008, Cyclone Nargis ripped through the Burmese delta killing 100,000 and leaving millions more homeless. A year on, our correspondent in the region, who has made a number of clandestine reporting trips into Burma, takes the measure of recovery in the devastated area and finds tent cities and surprising pockets of renewal. He also travels to the mysterious city of Naypyidaw, the new multibillion-dollar capital still under construction and home to the reclusive generals. Security is so tight and the government so secretive about its new center of power that filming in Naypyidaw can land you in prison for three years. Safely out, he shares his impressions and footage with iWitness.