Global Us: What connects us all

Juan Carlos Contreras Nobles is 16 years old and comes from the village of Sempegua in northern Colombia. He has a twin brother and three other brothers and sisters.

Golden monkeys are an endangered species. The animals’ habitat is also being encroached on by a growing human population who go into the Volcanoes National Park to gather wood. An Austrian company and myclimate aim to protect the forest – with energy-efficient stoves.

Grace Gambrill is 16. Her mother is from Thailand, and her father is half New Zealander, half Australian. She attends an international school in downtown Bangkok. Her favorite hobby is playing volleyball.

Five women from the Brazilian state of Pernambuco currently share a seat in the regional parliament. Only one of them physically occupies the seat, but they share all the work involved.

Helianti Hilman wants to provide indigenous farmers with a better livelihood. She sells products grown by a network of more than 50,000 smallholder farmers.

For centuries the Mixtec community in the state of Oaxaca has been farming agave plants. They now want to share their traditions with outsiders. The farmers have the support of Rutopía, a startup from Mexico City that promotes rural eco-tourism.

Large swathes of the Peruvian Andes have been almost completely deforested, and action has been taken to reverse that in recent years. The hope is that the annual tree-planting events will bring back the forests.

Ghana is the world's second largest cocoa exporter. But production has declined due to crop disease and extreme dry weather. An organization from the Netherlands is helping farmers to replace their old cocoa trees.

In the rainy season, the Rio Magdalena in Colombia creates a vast area of wetlands. But now its flood plains are threatened by climate change, agriculture and logging. A women’s initiative is fighting to save this vital natural resource.

Following the defeat of the terror organization Islamic State, the families of thousands of dead militants are stranded in refugee camps in Iraq. They’re shunned in the camps, and outcasts in the country.