These three stories show the devastating reality of people living in Niger.

Five years ago, as the war in Syria intensified, Ahlam Mohammad Issber fled to Lebanon with her children. “I was ready at a moment’s notice to put my three children in the middle of the floor and lay myself over them,” she recalls. “My middle child is very kind-hearted. He told me, ‘Mama, I’m not going to let you die. I want to die before you.’ That really affected me. I felt as if I had to do something for him; to take him out of those hard times we were living in.”

With help from the IRC and an aviation school in Jordan, two sisters from Syria and their Jordanian friend -- a future pilot, a future flight attendant and a future astronaut -- made their dream of flight a reality.

The global economy is now predicted to have a “soft landing”, but countries like Sudan are facing a cost-of-living catastrophe.