Have you thought about Togo lately? Probably not. And the people from UNICEF who work there would like to remedy that.
We recently had the UNICEF country director of Togo, Una McCauley, visit our office to let us know what is happening in this tiny West African nation. We thought you, too, might like to find out more about this country that is so rarely in the news.
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| Children in Togo wait in line for medical treatment |
Because of a military dictatorship that was enforced in the late ‘80s, this once prosperous nation has been undergoing a 20-year-long humanitarian crisis. Children, as is often the case, are especially affected. In the northern part of Togo, a stunning 94 percent of children live in poverty. Malnourishment, unsafe water, child trafficking, and lack of schooling are just some of the issues these children face.
But with a new government in place, things are finally looking up. UNICEF, along with other organizations, is able to build schools, vaccinate the country’s children, and get children the help they need. But the biggest challenge right now is to help children who are suffering from severe malnutrition.
In some parts of Togo almost a third of all children are malnourished. 95,000 children need help right now in order to survive. We're distributing therapeutic milk and food, and are training care providers to treat malnourished children. But we do need your help: It is only through our donors' support that we can do our work. If you'd like to help, go to our donations by program page. Here you can choose how you would like your donation to be used: to help nourish children, to build schools in Africa, or to support any of our other programs. The children of the world, and Togo, thank you.