The winners of last year's Stars Foundation Impact Awards highlighted the resourceful and often innovative work being done by local organisations to transform the lives of disadvantaged children around the world.
Six local charities from two regions – Africa and the Middle East and Asia-Pacific – each received $100,000 (£62,000) of unrestricted funding in 2012, with the prizes awarded across three categories: children's health, education and protection.
Among the winners in the health category was the Action for Integrated Sustainable Development Association (Aisda), a local NGO supporting rural livelihoods and social development in Ethiopia's arid and remote Afar region. Health programmes run by Aisda's 23 staff are estimated to have benefited at least 24,000 Afaris.
Similarly impressive was the work of the Alola Foundation, a small NGO from Timor-Leste focusing on women's rights issues including maternal health, childcare and access to education. The organisation's work in supporting women through motherhood and helping hundreds to complete university courses earned it the Asia-Pacific health impact award.
In the education category, the honours went to equally progressive schemes in Nigeria and Pakistan.
Education as a Vaccine, a health NGO, was acknowledged by Stars Foundation trustees for its imaginative use of technology to help young Nigerians access sex education, a much-needed service in a deeply religious and conservative country where discussing sexual health remains something of a taboo.
Developments in Literacy, meanwhile, was recognised for its efforts to compensate for shortcomings in Pakistan's state education system by providing tuition for 17,000 disadvantaged children, mainly girls. The organisation's resourceful approach involves online training programmes for local teaching staff, 95% of whom are female.
The protection category winner for Africa and the Middle East was Naba'a: Developmental Action Without Borders, a non-profit working in seven Palestinian refugee camps and several remote villages across Lebanon to support children vulnerable to violence and neglect. Naba'a works to build the confidence and potential of about 8,000 children each year.
The protection award for Asia-Pacific went to the Laura Vicuña Foundation, a Manila-based NGO that works with street children vulnerable to assault, violence and abuse. About 75,000 of the Philippines' estimated 1.5 million street children are in Manila, where the foundation runs a residential home for girls. It also has an outreach programme that runs education, employment and scholarship schemes, as well as providing medical services to about 800 children a week.
