Fieldnotes: Blogging on UNICEF's child survival work in the field

Sold to dreams540 -- thanks for making our first sale possible. The $6.98 could go to help one of the:

"3 million children in Darfur who have been forced to flee across the arid landscape or struggle for survival beyond the reach of humanitarian relief."

Our hope is to bring eBay buyers items they love, in turn bringing children items they need to survive.

Check in next week as more items will be for sale.

Four Key Club Ambassadors to UNICEF will head to Swaziland on Saturday to visit UNICEF's HIV/AIDS programs.

Key Club is the largest high school service organization in the world, and has been raising funds through Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF for years. Most recently, Key Clubbers raised over $1 million for HIV/AIDS programs in Africa, such as "Kick HIV/AIDS Out of Kenya," and now turn to the needs of the children of Swaziland, which has one of the highest infection rates in adults in the world (40% of the adult population is infected).

While in Swaziland, we will be visiting Neighborhood Care Point programs, where community members are trained to provide Swazliand's youngest children with basic health care, food, and a safe place to stay while their older siblings are in school.

We leave Saturday, and arrive in Johannesburg on Sunday, and Swaziland on Monday. All the Key Club representatives are very excited about the trip!

As new sanctions are imposed and G8 ministers prepare to discuss the situation in Darfur, UNICEF is continuing its lifesaving work for the millions of children caught in the crisis.

Clean water, nutrition, medicine -- these are all critical needs in the camps, and UNICEF is meeting them. Equally important for kids' survival are education and the opportunity to play.

Here in a UNICEF-supported children's center in the Al-Riyad Camp for the displaced, a teacher helps a young girl with her lessons. The dirt-floor classroom contains a large blackboard, as well as individual slates for children. The center also provides teaching and learning supplies, toys and games, psychosocial support, and a program of recreational activities for the kids.

© UNICEF/HQ06-2184/Georgina Cranston

The boys below are playing soccer at the Madinat-Al-Hujaj ("Pilgrims") Camp, where UNICEF is the lead agency for child protection. UNICEF's sport and recreation programs create safe environments and opportunities to play for these kids.

© UNICEF/HQ06-2173/Georgina Cranston

UNICEF staff are working to save kids just like Madiha and Maria below. If you'd like to help, please click here to make a donation.

© UNICEF/HQ06-2182/Georgina Cranston

UNICEF has been serving kids on the ground in Iraq since 1952. UNICEF provides clean water and supports health and nutritional activities through local and UN partners. UNICEF recently delivered school materials for primary school students, immunized children against measles, and treated children for malnutrition.

Conditions for Iraqi children affected by violence and displacement have reached a critical point, UNICEF said today.

“Humanitarian aid offers a lifeline to Iraq’s children and stepping up support now is the best way to protect and invest in Iraq’s future,”

Humanitarian relief workers from UNICEF, the UN, and other organizations are working in very difficult conditions. As today's report explains, we are meeting the challenge and making a difference for Iraq’s children.

UNICEF staff members in the field check-in, read and comment here on Fieldnotes. Please keep the members of our staff in Iraq in your thoughts – wish them well through the comments section of this post.

Today CNN reports about the lives of children in Iraq. The story portrays the many challenges that kids face on a daily basis.
Here's some highlights from the story:

• Nearly 15 percent of Iraq's total population has fled their homes
• Half of the nearly 4 million displaced Iraqis are children
• Only 30 percent of Iraq's children have access to safe water
  

Just a heads-up: on Wednesday, May 23 at 12:30 p.m. EST, following the UN Secretary General’s Noon Briefing in New York, Daniel Toole, UNICEF’s Director of Emergency Programs, will speak to the press about the tremendous effect the war is having on millions of Iraqi children.

The briefing will be broadcast on UN TV and streamed live on www.un.org/webcast.

UNICEF has been serving the children of Iraq since 1952, and is now seeking to ensure that the millions directly affected by the current conflict receive essential services including clean water and sanitation, immunization against potentially deadly diseases and the possibility of continuing their education.

You can read the full Media Alert here, and if you would like to support UNICEF's work in Iraq now, you can donate online here.

UNICEF USA is now selling items on eBay that will directly help the children of the world. You can find all of our items under the name: unicef-idc. Please help us: we need more stars or a star, to be exact!

Stolen Lives

"Rich in unlikely detail...Malika Oufkir's story is also exceedingly satisfying as a narrative, providing resolution and even romance after almost unbearable adversity."

New York Review of Books - Claire Messud (05/09/2002)

We Were the Mulvaneys

"Oates unspools this expansive story, and captures this memorable clan, with a huge amount of exacting yet unfussy energy. the busy spill of her sentences is a perfect match for the tumble of big-family life....[I]t will consume you."

It's easy to set up an eBay account and start selling for UNICEF. It took under an hour for me to set up my eBay account and link it to my Mission Fish account. There are step-by-step directions on how to sell.

We don’t have a basement or an attic at UNICEF but a quick e-mail around the office netted a box full of interesting stuff. I hope to add a few items each week--and hope to get a few stars soon.

A big thank you to our new sellers this week: barenakedsoap1, aanderson2007, 1baikim, software-247.

Tune in to Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight on ABC to see UNICEF Ambassador Clay Aiken and footage from his recent trip to Afghanistan!

After a little research the answer is most definitely yes. For the first three months of this year, eBay had net revenues of $1,770,000,000. I am unable to fathom the number of items that were hauled up the basement stairs or thrown down the attic ladder to generate $1.77 billion. Imagine if all of those sellers donated:

• A half a percent to UNICEF could provide enough vaccine to immunize 17,700,000 children against polio
• 1% to UNICEF could immunize 11,800,000 children against measles, mumps and rubella
• 5% to UNICEF could purchase enough vaccine to immunize 173,460,000 children against diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough

Amazing what could be accomplished in three months by selling items on eBay.

Also, the flute for sale by yungflutes that was featured here last week sold for nearly $200. Check out more of their auctions that support UNICEF.

The situation of children and women in the Darfur region of Sudan remains tenuous. The civil conflict that began in 2003 has killed up to 450,000 people and driven 1.8 million people from their homes. UNICEF is currently providing humanitarian assistance to some 2 million vulnerable children, who represent over 60 percent of the region’s population. These photos begin to speak to the broad range of services necessary for kids to survive in camps.

Below, children and women are filling jerrycans with clean water from a UNICEF-provided Mark II-type handpump at Ardamata Camp for displaced people, on the outskirts of El-Geneina. UNICEF has helped ensure that 60 percent of the conflict-affected population in Darfur has access to clean water, and 50 percent to improved sanitation. But water-borne diseases such as diarrhea and cholera are still responsible for one-third of under-five deaths in the region.

© UNICEF/HQ06-2208/Georgina Cranston

This boy washes his hands with a pitcher of water and a bar of soap after using a tent latrine at Al-Riyad Camp, also on the outskirts of El-Geneina.

© UNICEF/HQ06-2193/Georgina Cranston

Late last year, a UNICEF-supported nutrition assessment found that malnutrition among children under five in the Darfur region remained close to the global-emergency threshold of 15 percent. Supplemental feeding programs in the camps begin to address the situation, and children improve quickly with good nutrition.

Below, twenty-month-old Gassim Shak Juma has his arm circumference measured by a health worker (right) as he sits in his mother’s lap, at a UNICEF nutrition center in the Ardamata Camp. Gassim is being treated in a supplemental feeding program and health workers are monitoring his growth and progress.

© UNICEF/HQ06-2200/Georgina Cranston

This is six-year-old Halima Abaks Sanasi, at the same nutrition center. She has gained weight since starting the feeding program, but must still gain more. The infant behind her is also malnourished.

© UNICEF/HQ06-2197/Georgina Cranston

I'll post some more photos to give you a sense of UNICEF's education and recreation programs for kids in the camps of Darfur soon. In the meantime, if you'd like to support UNICEF's work for the children of Darfur, please click here.

Media Relations Officer Richard Alleyne is traveling and sent the following notes from Panama. More to follow, with pix:

Day 1: El Dorado, PANAMA
I’ve arrived in Panama and at first blush my impression is: why does UNICEF need to be here? Panama City is a built up metropolis with high-rises, lit up billboards and new construction projects seemingly everywhere. This of course is not the whole story and like most urban environments around the world, stark poverty exists just in the shadows of skyscrapers and ultramodern shopping malls, and children are the most vulnerable in these situations… Panama is no exception.

After an afternoon briefing with UNICEF’s country office staff these disparities were confirmed and we were told that our trip to the western region of Panama the following day would afford us the opportunity to see UNICEF programming at work among Panama’s largest indigenous group, the Ngobe Bugle. We were also told that in these rural, difficult to reach communities the level of poverty and exclusion we observed would far exceed what exists as urban decay in Panama City.

Day 2: Chiriqui, PANAMA
To get to western Panama we flew out of a small airport just outside of Panama City called Albrook. After a 45-minute trip we landed in the city of David. From there we drove for another hour or so into the province of Chiriqui. We were on our way to the village of Boca Macho. The landscape was lush, the climate humid and hot. Though our delegation had 4WD vehicles, the roads leading into Boca Macho were hazardous and extremely difficult to negotiate. Boca Macho is in the comarca (a term similar to US Native American reservations) of the Ngobe Bugle. UNICEF has been supporting the efforts of the community of Boca Macho as its community leaders endeavor to improve access to education and sustain better practices around nutrition, especially for children. In indigenous communities like that of Boca Macho, growth stunting due to nutritional deficiencies range between an alarming 65-85 percent. Panama’s national average is at 20 percent.

Four years ago the parents of Boca Macho decided to build a school in their village. Prior to this the children of the community would have to walk more than an hour to another village in order to attend school. We were told that the impetus to build came after a young girl from the village drown while on her way to school trying to cross a flooded river.

A ranch school was constructed and after one year only 18 children were in attendance, and there was one teacher. There was no middle school. As a result of a survey, field visits and a project proposal facilitated by UNICEF, the community of Boca Macho obtained the construction of a new concrete school building. The school registration increased to 51 children. A middle school was opened and two teachers are currently working.

Kristen Mangelinkx from UNICEF's Boston blogged on her trip to Madagascar. She's back in Boston now, and we've got some of her pix to share with you.

This baby is waiting to receive vitamin A and de-worming tablets at the health center in her village.

This mother and child are at one of the UNICEF health centers in the Sava region.

Members of the group taking advantage of the latrines at a school supported by UNICEF:

More to follow...

Our colleague Abigail is on a field visit in Nicaragua. She's sending in posts as she's able. Here's her first.

Hello, my name is Abigail Quesinberry and I work in the communications department of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF in New York. For the next two weeks I’ll be traveling in Nicaragua with a camera crew. We will be collecting stories and photographs from the field about all the great work UNICEF is doing there.

I arrived in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, at night. At the airport, outside of town, I met up with Kira Kay, a producer we hired to work with us on the trip. We took a taxi to our hotel and then went straight to bed because it was late, and we have a lot of work ahead of us.

Nicaragua is beautiful. It’s hot, but not humid, and everywhere I look there are incredible looking plants and flowers. We took a taxi to the UNICEF office to meet our translator and the rest of our UNICEF colleagues. Later today, we will head to a village called Teustepe, located a few hours northwest of Managua, in the region of Boaco, where UNICEF recently installed a well and a water pump to give the families in the village access to clean water. The meeting is about to start, so I’m signing off for now. I hope to report on our first visit later tonight.

Kristen Mangelinkx from UNICEF's Boston office is blogging on her trip to Madagascar. This is her fifth post.

We flew back to Antananarivo in the pouring rain yesterday afternoon after a quick tour of the vanilla factory there. Vanilla is a major export for Madagascar and we saw how the vanilla is purchased from the growers, sorted, and prepared for shipment to the U.S., Europe and Japan. We also saw the women and men who work in the factory--a steady job that only earns them about $1 per eight-hour day of work.

This morning we traveled about an hour north of Antananarivo to visit a primary school where UNICEF has implemented the WASH program, which stands for water, sanitation, and hygiene. The school was equipped with latrines, sinks with running water from a well, and plenty of education materials in the classroom about best practices for hygiene. UNICEF is working with the Ministry of Health to implement this in more schools as only about 25% of schools in Madagascar have latrines and running water. During the visit, our group had the chance to use the latrines.

We leave Madagascar tomorrow evening after our debriefing. This week has gone by so quickly and we have experienced so much. I think we are all looking forward to returning to the comforts of home, but we have certainly formed an attachment to Madagascar and the mothers and children we have met here.

KM

Kristen Mangelinkx from UNICEF's Boston office is blogging on her trip to Madagascar. This is her fourth post.

We were up early again this morning and drove to Antalaha to visit more health centers. We have met so many mothers and their beautiful babies! We also visited a school today--a primary school just steps away from the Indian Ocean. The students, both girls and boys, were packed into the hot classrooms and sharing desks. As the students introduced themselves to us, each told us what they wanted to be when they grow up: doctors, teachers, business people, and one ambitious 4th grader who stood up and said "Prime Minister!" It was an emotional visit for me as I could recall all those days when I told my mom I didn't want to go to school. These kids seemed so excited to be there and they have so little.

We leave the Sava region tomorrow morning and return to Antananarivo. I hope to be able to share photos tomorrow.

KM

Yes, it is that easy: buy and sell on eBay and support the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Through our friends at Mission Fish you can set up an account to sell for UNICEF or browse some of the items for sale in our store.

If you have an eBay account already, all you have to do is link it to your newly created Mission Fish account by following the directions for an eBay community Seller. Pick a percentage of the total sale to donate to UNICEF and sell!

In our store you will see a wide array of items to buy, from many gracious sellers. Thankfully we seem to have built-up some loyalty. Selling your item through Mission Fish will place it in the Giving Works section of eBay. eBay notes on their site that Giving Works listings "tend to sell at higher final prices" and best of all your selling fees will be refunded.

eBay Power Seller chicagoetc always seems to have something for sale for UNICEF:

• Maybe you are looking for a camera?
  
• Or a Disney Peter Pan collector's item?
  
• In med school? Need a textbook?
  
• Thinking of picking up an instrument?

In the next few weeks I am going to try to scavenge the office for items to sell for UNICEF and see if we can’t highlight more sellers on eBay who are supporting UNICEF.

In May 2006, an earthquake hit the island of Java, killing some 5,700 people. More than 37,000 others were injured in the disaster, which severely damaged or destroyed infrastructure, transportation and communication systems, homes and schools. About 40 percent of the roughly 130,000 people displaced in the region were children. With the generous support of donors, UNICEF has been working to restore these children's lives.

© UNICEF/HQ06-1861/Josh Estey

Above, two girls play with hula hoops near a UNICEF tent at the children’s center in Wedi Village. They are among more than 1,500 young survivors receiving care and protection at UNICEF-established children’s centers in the earthquake-ravaged area. The centers provide trauma counselling and safe spaces for children to learn and play.

© UNICEF/HQ06-1837/Josh Estey

Here, UNICEF Project Officer Dr. Kinny Peetosutan explains the dangers of measles to families in Oepura Village and tells them how to protect their children from the virus. The area has experienced repeated outbreaks of the disease, which is a principal cause of blindness in children and can lead to pneumonia, encephalitis and other fatal illnesses. UNICEF is providing vaccines as well as vitamin A supplements for children under five, to boost their immune systems, as part of a national measles campaign to immunize at least 90 percent of the country’s children against the disease by the end of 2007. The two girls below are waiting to be vaccinated at the Kopeta "Puskesmas"’ (community health center) in the north-eastern port town of Maumere.

© UNICEF/HQ06-1798/Josh Estey