Giving Compass' Take:

• Global Citizen highlights Charlot Magayi, who through her activism and organization is helping supply African's with affordable cookstoves that reduce toxic emissions and decrease the risk of fire and burns. 

• Is this issue as big in other countries as well? How can donors help fund organizations like Charlot's?

• Read about this activist who is helping women and girls receive education in Kenya. 

At the age of 16, Charlot Magayi had to drop out of school to take care of her newborn daughter. She was living in Mukuru, one of the biggest slums in Nairobi, Kenya, and found work selling charcoal briquettes on the side of the road.

The charcoal was just one of the options people used for indoor fires and unsafe stoves to heat up food for their families — people also burned firewood, animal dung, and even plastic.

Poverty forced Magayi’s family to burn these same materials each day, too.

Each year, more than 4 million people die from inhaling contaminants from poorly ventilated stoves and open fires. The World Health Organization ranks indoor air pollution as one of the top 10 worst health risks, largely because of the prevalence of unsafe stoves and open fires throughout low-income countries.

Read the full article about fighting against the effects of poverty by Joe McCarthy at Global Citizen.