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

All week we will be discussing the issues on which we’re asking you to take action. Today, the topic is the Global Security and Priorities Resolution. The 9/11 Commission Report recommended that a comprehensive U.S. strategy to counter terrorism should include policies that encourage development, more open societies and opportunities that improve the lives of families and enhance prospects for the their children’s futures. UNICEF is supportive of the Global Security Priorities Resolution because it will enhance international security, reduce world poverty and address the root causes of terrorism.

I wonder... what do you see as the greatest links and threats between global security and global poverty? How do nuclear weapons play a role in the movement for Child Survival? What is the connection between poverty and nuclear weapons? Send in your comments and name some examples.

© U.S. Fund for UNICEF/Telford

All week we will be discussing the issues on which we're asking you to take action. Today, the topic is the U.S. government's contribution to UNICEF, which helps extend their efforts in saving children from preventable disease, providing basic education, fighting HIV/AIDS and protecting children from violence, exploitation and abuse. Some 9.7 million children still die each year from preventable diseases. Help support UNICEF's work by learning more and taking action on the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill.

Tell us what you think! How can we build support for UNICEF's work within the corporate, government and non-profit sectors in the U.S.?

© U.S. Fund for UNICEF/Charles Bailey

In a Da Nang respite center for children with disabilities, a boy works on developing his fine motor skills by stringing beads together to make a necklace.

Recently, we blogged about UNICEF's new pilot program to help children with disabilities in Vietnam. Today we want to tell you a little bit more about what UNICEF is doing in Vietnam, and we'll also answer that age-old question: What, exactly, is a UNICEF pilot program?

First things first. A UNICEF pilot program is not much different from any other pilot program: the launch of a brand-new program or initiative with the aim of keeping it going and expanding it beyond the initial "pilot" phase. The great thing about UNICEF's pilot programs is that they immediately start saving children's lives. In Vietnam, the government has pledged to replicate UNICEF's pilot program across the entire country.

In celebration of National Volunteer Week we’re not only celebrating our volunteers, we are showing the power that their actions can have!

Last year, UNICEF supporters contacted their congressional representatives more than 10,000 times on issues important to UNICEF. That’s why this week we are launching UNICEF's Unite for Child Survival: Advocacy Week. We hope you'll join us throughout the week to learn more about UNICEF's advocacy activities and take action to voice your support.

You can join in on the activities any time throughout the week. On day one, which is today, we suggest you register as a volunteer (if you haven’t done so already) and take our online training module called Advocating for UNICEF.

Once you take the training, let us know what you think of it; post a comment here with your thoughts.

The pledge of UNICEF and other parties to intensify the push to eliminate malaria today, World Malaria Day 2008, drew a wide sampling of news coverage.

Voice of America, Reuters and the BBC, among many other news organizations, reported on the steep challenges remaining and on calls to further contain the disease.

If you've followed the news at all in the last few weeks, you're probably aware of the developing worldwide food crisis. This has been THE story of late, and it's news we are watching very closely.

So what, exactly, is going on? Well, a whole lot, actually. First off, destructive weather events (which, some argue, are due to climate change) have caused whole seasons of crops to fail in certain parts of the world. In Bangladesh, for instance, Cyclone Sidr tore through the costal districts of the country last November and now, six months later, there's no rice harvest. In Somalia, the worst drought in decades is scorching plant life and killing livestock.

© UNICEF/ HQ98-0527/Giacomo Pirozzi

Legislative advocacy is a great way to support UNICEF; it only takes a few minutes to learn about the issues, click your mouse to send letters to your representatives and continue to raise awareness about issues that impact children.

Whether you are a registered volunteer or not, you can always advocate for UNICEF by visiting our advocacy center. But as a registered volunteer, you will gain access to online training modules, discussion questions and other resources that will allow you to promote UNICEF's work to your friends and family. You can also see all the other volunteer activities that we offer and choose from a menu of opportunities. You can do as many or as few as you like. Sign up here.

We hope to generate many letters to Congress next week, but we're also hoping that our volunteers will give us feedback on the resources and the week's worth of activities. We want to hear from you!

Jointly authored by a broad coalition that includes UNICEF, the World Health Organization and many other groups, the report found that although there have been some strides in providing vaccinations, insecticide-treated bed nets and other interventions, the majority of countries with high child and maternal mortality rates were failing to provide vital health services to most women and children.

Children and their families living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory of Gaza are facing particularly hard times this year. Because of ongoing conflict in the region, Israel began limiting its fuel supply to Gaza in early 2007. This means that families have limited power and running water in their homes and hospitals are run on emergency generators. School supplies, building materials and even food are also no longer regularly distributed. UNICEF and its partners have stepped up to try and fill this gap by distributing safe drinking water, medical supplies, and education and recreation kits.

In the pictures below, meet some of the children of Gaza.

© UNICEF/ HQ08-0198

Above, a father and three of his children sit in the window of their destroyed home in the southern city of Rafah. They would like to return permanently and rebuild their former home, but under the current restrictions, no building materials are allowed into the territory.

	© Sean Sutton/MAG/magclearsmines.org

As you may know, for a while now we’ve had an alert on our advocacy webpage to contact Congress in support of the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act—introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern and Sen. Dianne Feinstein. To date, 24 House members and 18 Senate members have cosponsored this legislation. That’s a good start, but not nearly enough to show the kind of support this legislation needs to bring it to a vote.

Next month, May 19-30, 2008, is the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions. At the Dublin Conference, representatives from more than half the world’s governments will meet to negotiate the most significant disarmament treaty in more than a decade: a treaty to bring about a ban on cluster bombs, ensure rapid clearance of contaminated land and provide vital assistance to those affected by cluster bombs.

To lead up to this important event, global advocates have designated April 19 as a Global Day of Action to Ban Cluster Bombs, to highlight 40 years of civilian deaths and injuries caused by these weapons. Citizens around the world will use this day to call on governments to take action.

The best way to show the U.S. Government and the world that American citizens care about preventing civilian casualties from cluster bombs is by asking their Members of Congress to support the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act. On April 19, in honour of the Global Day of Action to Ban Cluster Munitions, go to unicefusa.org/advocate and ask your Members of Congress to cosponsor this legislation!

	© UNICEF/ HQ06-1461/Giacomo Pirozzi

Today I'd like to address one last comment to my original post on child survival. Kathryn Hornbein wrote, "In your comments today, I saw nothing about the issue of conflict and child mortality/morbidity. Yet I think a majority of problems are caused or aggravated by war…."

Even though I'm focusing my posts on certain core child survival issues, I don't want to leave anyone with the impression that UNICEF isn't incredibly dedicated to children impacted by armed conflicts. In fact, UNICEF was created in 1946 to come to the aid of children devastated by WWII. And we've been helping children in war ever since.

Let's take Darfur—the ongoing conflict there has created one of the worst humanitarian crises in history. Over a million children forced to flee their homes are now living in refugee camps in Sudan and Chad. And Kathryn is absolutely correct when she writes that the fallout from such a conflict is massive—lack of clean water and sanitation, malnutrition, destruction of the education infrastructure, increase in disease, compromised health care, land mine danger, etc. The list is depressingly long.

As you can tell by looking at the unicefusa.org website, we have a whole new look. We also have a new and improved Online Volunteer Center.

Our volunteers received an email asking them to be among the first to log into the Online Volunteer Center, take a look around and let us know their thoughts. The response was overwhelmingly positive and we couldn't be more thrilled.

Many of the resources available on the previous site can still be found here, including our online training modules, toolkits, downloadable flyers and more. Over the coming months, we will be adding more resources, launching new features and using our volunteer feedback to make it as user-friendly as possible. So let us know what you think!

It's hard to believe that the simple act of sending an instant message can make such a difference, but it can. Through Microsoft's i'm Initiative™, Windows Live Messenger users who selected UNICEF as their cause of choice helped raise more than $250,000 to save children's lives, making us #1 out of the ten cause organizations that the initiative supports. If you're one of those users, we hope you'll like the video we made for you.

If you haven't joined the i'm Initiative yet, it's so easy to do. Just click the button at left and get talking! And then, spread the word. The more people that join us, the more lives we can save.

We wanted to let you know about a brand new initiative that UNICEF just launched. Last week, UNICEF announced a unique pilot program to help children living with disabilities in Vietnam. Together with the Ford Foundation, which has provided a $1 million matching grant, our goal is to raise $1 million to help disabled children in Vietnam.

It’s estimated that about 1.2 million children with disabilities live in Vietnam, including children who have been exposed to Agent Orange (dioxin). Disabled children may spend their whole lives at home with only their parents to tend to them. They often receive no financial support, social services, or rehabilitative aids like wheelchairs, because their families are unaware such services exist. Most disabled children do not even finish primary school.

UNICEF wants to give these forgotten children a better life. It is launching a pilot program in the city of Da Nang to get Vietnam’s disabled children the help they need. The initiative will train teachers and health workers to recognize and fulfill these children’s needs and will provide medical care and rehabilitation aids for children, along with proper nutrition and sanitation access. UNICEF is also working with the government of Vietnam to implement this program all over the country, so that all children living with disabilities in Vietnam get the support they neeed.

So be on the lookout for more about this unique initiative--here and in other media outlets. You can also read our press release here. And please join us in supporting this groundbreaking campaign. Visit our special donation page to contribute--and remember, every dollar you donate will be matched by the Ford Foundation. Your support will help the disabled children in Vietnam live a full and dignified life.

UNICEF just received some new photos from the Pacific Islands that we wanted to share with you. Kiribati, where the photos below were taken, is one of 14 Pacific Island countries, which spread across 12 million square miles in the Pacific Ocean.

Because the population lives on so many small islands, and because the area is vulnerable to natural disasters like typhoons and volcanoes, this region has some unique challenges when it comes to reaching its children. UNICEF is working across all the islands to bring medical services, vaccines, clean water, and education to the children of the Pacific Islands.

© UNICEF/ HQ06-2470/Giacomo Pirozzi
Above, Kavarerei holds his six-month-old baby brother, Naonao, in front of their home in Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati. Their father died and they live with their mother and four siblings.

In October 2005, UNICEF, along with UNAIDS and other partners, issued a call to place children center stage in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The Unite for Children, Unite Against AIDS campaign set out four key program areas and urged all stakeholders to strive for an ambitious target: an AIDS-free generation.

“Children and AIDS: Second Stocktaking Report,” put out last week by UNICEF, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization, proclaimed that this goal is attainable but that huge challenges still stand in the way.

The report received modest coverage from a range of news organizations. Bloomberg News ran a short story highlighting the impressive gains that have been made, including a 70 percent jump in the number of HIV-positive children in low and middle-income countries benefiting from AIDS treatment programs between 2005 and 2006.

Reports from Voice of America, Reuters and AllAfrica.com emphasized the mixed nature of the findings, citing the positive along with the sobering.

The successes are noteworthy, but there are still millions of women and children affected by HIV/AIDS who have yet to be reached. In 2007, an estimated 2.1 million children were living with HIV; as of 2005, more than 15 million children under the age of 18 had lost one or both parents to AIDS.

Background note: About half of the infants who contract HIV from their mothers die before they turn two. One of the report’s key recommendations is the integration of services that prevent mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV with maternal, newborn and child health programs.

UNICEF has implemented and supported PMTCT services worldwide. In the African Kingdom of Lesotho, which has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world, UNICEF has supported the government’s efforts to expand the number of clinics and hospitals that provide PMTCT services.

Antiretroviral drugs can reduce the risk of mothers transmitting the virus to their infants. The stocktaking report found that the proportion of HIV-positive pregnant women in low and middle-income countries who received antiretroviral drugs rose by 60 percent between 2005 and 2006. But even with this extraordinary development, it’s estimated that the vast majority of HIV-positive pregnant women—more than three-quarters—still do not get these lifesaving drugs.

Want to support UNICEF's fight? Tell your friends about it, and consider making an online donation here.

Goodwill Ambassador Sir Roger Moore shares his thoughts about the importance of legacies:

I have had the rare privilege of seeing first hand UNICEF's work with children around the world.

I have met countless children who are benefiting, whose lives have been saved by UNICEF programs. Many are living in appalling poverty, without the day-to-day essentials we take for granted. Others are bravely struggling to survive in situations of conflict.

The work we do today is vital and lifesaving. But I have some grave concerns about the future. Though UNICEF staff and volunteers work tirelessly, the hardships that so many children face–drought, famine, war–will not go away in the foreseeable future.

The legacies left by UNICEF supporters enable us to be there for future generations… and continue to save and uplift the lives of our world's most precious citizens in years to come.

Inspired? Visit our Planned Giving page to learn how to make a Legacy Gift for the world's children.

Today I’m responding to some of the comments I received on my original child survival post (with thanks to all of you who commented). A number of commenters want to get involved and help. We always love to hear that. A few, like Shahidha, worry they don’t have a lot to give financially. The truth is, there are many ways to help besides money. We’d be lost without our volunteers. If you are interested in giving your time, go to our volunteer page for a soup-to-nuts explanation of how you can join. If you can’t volunteer your time, there’s an even easier way to help–just talk about us. Tell your family/friends/coworkers about UNICEF and the child survival movement. The more people feel engaged in our work, the more likely they are to donate or get involved themselves in the future.

© UNICEF/ HQ99-0573/Radhika Chalasani

We enjoyed great support from our Tap Project volunteers this year during World Water Week, and we want to keep that momentum going.

U.S. Fund for UNICEF volunteers can participate in programs year-round that support our education, advocacy and fundraising efforts. And that’s why we’ll be asking both Tap Project volunteers and our previously registered volunteers to participate in UNICEF’s Unite for Child Survival: Advocacy Week. Beginning April 28th, we’ll be asking our volunteers and supporters to become acquainted with three issues very important to UNICEF, and asking you to take action every day during that week.

We’ll be sending announcements and reminders between now and then, and developing some new resources including an online training module, discussion questions, and more. Stay tuned for updates.

If you are interested in getting involved now, check out our new online volunteer center by clicking here and registering as a new volunteer!

2007 winning design by Josephine Kao

Sometimes, we could use a little help in the creativity department. Every year since 1992, Pier 1 Imports and UNICEF have been asking kids to get their Picasso on and send us their original designs for a UNICEF holiday greeting card.

This year, too, we’re asking kids 14 and under to submit their designs. The winning drawing will be printed as a UNICEF holiday card and will be sold at Pier 1 stores nationwide during the holiday season. And best of all, 100% of the sales proceeds will go directly to UNICEF!

You gotta hurry, though, 'cause all submissions for this year's contest have to be received by April 12. All designs must be drawn by hand, and the theme this year is "Making Spirits Bright."

2007 winning design by Karen Hong

So sharpen those pencils, put on your smocks, and get inspired to help UNICEF save children’s lives. 'Cause the UNICEF card contest is on!

For all your contest info, go to our contest page, check out the Pier 1 site, or call Pier 1 at 1.800.245.4595. And get creative!