Shuka Kalantari

Shuka Kalantari is a San Francisco Bay Area journalist whose reports have taken her to Turkey, Cambodia, Canada and across the US. She was born near the Caspian Sea in Iran and raised in Northern California. Shuka primarily reports on refugee and immigrant communities in California and internationally. When she's not doing interviews, she likes to be outdoors or go dancing. Also, one day she will write a magical realism children's book.

Shuka Kalantari is a San Francisco Bay Area journalist whose reports have taken her to Turkey, Cambodia, Canada and across the US. She was born near the Caspian Sea in Iran and raised in Northern California. Shuka primarily reports on refugee and immigrant communities in California and internationally. When she's not doing interviews, she likes to be outdoors or go dancing. Also, one day she will write a magical realism children's book.


Kabul Dreams

Afghanistan’s first rock band wants to build a cultural bridge in the US

Music

The singer of Afghanistan’s first rock band, now living in Oakland, California, talks about how music can bring communities together.

Maritza Blandón, a coffee grower in the mountains of Nicaragua, got her first pap smear at the age of 47. She tested posted for HPV and get treatment. Blandón is a single mother. If she died of cervical cancer, no one would be here to take care of her eig

Nicaragua has a cervical cancer problem. A coffee farm is trying to help.

Health
Teen pregnancy in Nicaragua is mostly caused by machismo culture and a lack of sex ed.

Nicaragua’s teen pregnancy rate soars

Health
Franci Machado brings her four-year-old daughter to work every day because she can't afford childcare. She says if she died because she couldn't get chemotherapy to treat her cancer no one would take care of her two children.

Women in Nicaragua fight for the right to get abortions that could save their lives

Health
Nieto

How artists in San Francisco are keeping the questionable police killing of a young Latino alive

Arts
latino youth vote 1

They can’t vote, but it’s not stopping these Latino youth from registering others

Global Politics

Get out the vote. We’re hearing a lot those efforts this year. In Maryland, some people pushing to bring people to the ballot boxes can’t even vote themselves.

maryland high 4

Separate but equal? A school within a school for immigrant students brings help — and controversy.

Education

There are about two dozen specialized high schools in the US that create separate spaces for immigrant students. But some critics say these schools are a form of segregation.

Diana Gameros

There’s so much more to immigrants than finding the ‘American Dream,’ says singer Diana Gameros

Music

Her soulful songs — and her activism — are about the people she sees around her. And her own life as an undocumented immigrant.

Sonita

Outside of class, this Afghan teen rapper travels the world to end child marriage

Culture

Sonita Alizadeh escaped a teen marriage in Afghanistan by writing a rap song about it. She now goes high school in Utah, and travels the world campaigning against child marriage.

Sonita Alizadeh sings inside of the recording studio at her high school in Utah.

Once a child laborer in Iran, now a high school student in Utah

Culture

Afghan teen rapper Sonita Alizadeh used to be a child laborer when she lived in Iran as a refugee. Now she’s a junior at Wasatch Academy in Utah, and reflects on the difference between work and homework.