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

Elizabeth Kiem is the online producer of unicefusa.org.

UNICEF supports efforts to ensure that HIV-infected women have access to and continue to use antiretroviral drugs during their pregnancy and during breastfeeding to prevent the transmission of the virus to their newborns.

In fact, a new product launched this spring and available through Inspired Gifts is designed to ensure ARV treatment for women with limited access to health care.

As Jimmy Kolker, UNICEF chief of HIV and AIDS programs points out in the article, 1 in 3 infants born with HIV die in their first year of life if not treated. But beginning ARV treatment during the first 12 weeks of life quadruples their chances.

You can support the prevention of mother-to-child-transmission of HIV by purchasing one of UNICEF's Mother Baby Packs for use in the field today.

Vijita Kumar is the interactive marketing coordinator for unicefusa.org.

They are bright, they are colorful, they sport one of the hottest fashion trends, they celebrate the skills of the women who make them ... and they will provide lifesaving nutrition for children. Need we say more? With Mother's Day just around the corner, the FEED Guatemala Bags for UNICEF really are a bright idea!

Handmade by women artisans in Guatemala from traditional Ikat fabrics, the FEED Guatemala pouch and bag will be available for purchase exclusively at Lord & Taylor stores nationwide and online just in time for Mother's Day.

FEED Projects is co-founded by UNICEF's Next Generation steering committee member Lauren Bush, with the goal to support partners like UNICEF who provide nutrition to children through the sale of FEED bags. Poor nutrition is a serious problem in Guatemala, where nearly 23% of children over three months and under five years of age suffer from malnutrition and almost one-half suffer from chronic malnutrition. After traveling to Guatemala with UNICEF, Lauren wanted to double her efforts for the nutrition programs there - hence, the FEED Guatemala bags.

Here's how it works: for every FEED 1 pouch sold, FEED donates $3.50 to the U.S Fund for UNICEF to provide daily nutrition for a child in Guatemala. For every FEED 3 Guatemala bag sold, FEED donates $10.50 to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, to provide daily nutrition for 3 kids for a year. 

That's a whole lot of numbers but it's really quite simple - FEED 1 pouch will help 1 child and FEED 3 bag will help 3 children -- not for one day or one month but for an entire year.

Tune into Good Morning America on ABC between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m. on April 29 to get to know more about the FEED Guatemala Bags for UNICEF and other Mother's Day gift ideas.

If you miss tuning into the Show all the featured gifts ideas are also posted on the Good Morning America website.

My name is Saweba. I'm a young mother from Ghana. I have given birth to three children but I only have one child. Two of my children died because of malaria. My first child, a girl, died at eighteen months old and my second, a boy, died a year later. I miss my children and I worry that I may lose my younger one to malaria as well. The thought of losing my third child is always in my heart.

© UNICEF

Saweba learns about malaria bednets from a UNICEF representative.

Malaria kills almost one million children every year in this region (sub-Saharan Africa) but all we need to prevent our children from dying are mosquito nets. With these nets, our children can sleep safely at night.

UNICEF is working with our government and has distributed free bed nets to many families in the Ghana. I recently received a UNICEF bed net at a health distribution center. I am so happy that my baby will not get malaria. Because our child is healthy, it means that we will now have more money to spend on things like education. I hope every mother gets the same help. It has brought joy back into my life.

If you would like to buy a Mother's Day present that really makes a difference, and help other mothers like Saweba to combat the severe threat posed by malaria, you can buy a Mosquito Net from UNICEF's range of Inspired Gifts. These bed nets provide effective protection, halving the number of children who become unwell, and reducing child mortality by 20 percent.

My name is Marie and I'm from Haiti. I live with my husband and our four children in a town called Léogâne, which is about an hour's drive from the capital Port-au-Prince.

	Marie and her baby, Inspired Mother from Léogâne

Our lives changed completely when the earthquake struck in January. Our house was destroyed. We went to the countryside for shelter in an area where our families are from originally. Before the earthquake I had a good job at the Secretariat of State for Literacy. Now, I cook pies and sell them to make some small money and provide for our children. We all sleep in a tent that we built from sheets and sticks. Today, we are out in the open because the sun is hot like an oven. We just use the tent for sleeping.

It is very difficult to access a lot of services like health care, education and nutrition. But, clean drinking water is the most difficult to access. Most of the roads are impassable and many families set up shelter on the hillsides. About one in five families here have no clean water. UNICEF and other organisations have been distributing water buckets to homes and families in order to provide people with drinkable water in our region.

If you want to buy a Mother's Day present that really makes a difference, and help mothers like Marie to access clean drinking water for their families, you can buy a Family Water Kit from UNICEF's full range of Inspired Gifts. This kit contains buckets, collapsible water containers, soap and water purification tablets which can help families during an emergency situation.

With holiday season gearing up, U.S. Fund for UNICEF corporate partners are offering a varied range of gifts that give back.

Want to give a present that also makes a difference for children? From bracelets to luxury goods and accessories, writing instruments to soft toys, several corporations have created dedicated items that will help UNICEF. Gucci, IKEA, Montblanc and Cartier have joined this year in support of UNICEF's mission, and will make a donation for each purchase of dedicated items this holiday season to support UNICEF's lifesaving programs. Click here for details of each company's offer.

In addition, several U.S. Fund for UNICEF corporate partners: American Airlines, Pampers, Microsoft, Delta Air Lines, and Causes on Facebook are offering unique ways to give back through various online activities.

Participation in these activities will help UNICEF do whatever it takes to save children's lives, and help achieve our goal of reducing the number of preventable childhood deaths from 24,000 per day to zero.

Happy shopping!

This holiday season, there is LOTS going on at IKEA stores to support UNICEF!

For the 5th year, IKEA will hold its annual soft toy promotion. The campaign has raised $16 million for UNICEF and has benefited 7.6 million children so far!

For each soft toy sold at stores around the world between November 1st and December 24th, IKEA will make a donation of 1 Euro (approximately $1.47) to be split between the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and Save the Children. The 2009 campaign will support UNICEF’s "Schools for Africa" program and will help provide vital education programs for children in Niger, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Mali, Ethiopia and South Africa.

There’s a fun new way to participate in the campaign this year. Everyone is invited to join IKEA soft toys in an attempt to create the world’s biggest choir! You can record your own singing with just a few simple clicks and can select which soft toy character you want to be, and make it dance, all by going to IKEA.com/softtoysaid.

It’s Gucci/UNICEF time again—Gucci fans have the opportunity to purchase holiday gifts for friends and family and help UNICEF save children’s lives, beginning today!

November 16 marks the launch of the fifth anniversary of the annual Gucci Campaign to Benefit UNICEF—the company’s most successful philanthropic partnership.

	© Gucci/2009

Gucci’s Creative Director Frida Giannini again designed a special collection of accessories, including handbags, charms, and small leather goods, to benefit UNICEF. The collection, as well as a new Gucci Gift Card to benefit UNICEF which ranges from $50-$5,000 USD, was created based on inspiration from Fashion Director, author and illustrator Michael Roberts, who was commissioned by Giannini to create a new children's book.

	© Gucci/2009

Snowman in Africa will be sold alongside the other Campaign items exclusively in Gucci stores in over 20 countries worldwide and on Gucci.com from November 16-December 31, 2009.

Gucci will donate 100% of the USD $25 retail price of the book to UNICEF, and 25% of the retail price of sales from the dedicated accessories collection and special edition Gift Cards to support UNICEF’s “Schools for Africa” campaign in Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa, where over 2.3 million children have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS.

For more information, visit www.gucci.com.

Nearly everyone I know owns IKEA furniture. I've had mine for five years! It was the perfect purchase for me: beautiful, good quality and affordable.

So it makes me proud to see that IKEA has supported UNICEF since 1988 though grants, greeting card sales, in-kind product donations and cause-marketing programs.

One of IKEA's programs that benefits the world's children is going on in IKEA stores—all over the world—right now. When you buy their adorable soft toys, IKEA donates approximately $1.30 (1 Euro) for each sale, which is split between the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and Save the Children. Since 2003, soft toy sales have raised a total of $15 million to help save and improve the lives of children around the world.

IKEA also sells UNICEF holiday cards and donates an additional $1 per pack sold.

I am amazed to hear that over their 10-year partnership with UNICEF, IKEA has committed more than $100 million in cash and in-kind donations, including a multi-million dollar investment in support of child protection and immunization programs in India. This makes them UNICEF's largest corporate cash donor.

For more information, visit ikea.com/us.

Gucci. Ladies, need I say more?

For each purchase from Gucci’s new white TATTOO HEART COLLECTION from November 19 through January 31, Gucci will donate 25 percent of retail sales to support UNICEF programs for orphans and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Malawi and Mozambique. How cool is that?

Gucci’s Creative Director, Frida Giannini, has designed a special version of Gucci’s new TATTOO HEART gift and accessories collection. Items to benefit UNICEF are distinguishable by their solid white background and feature a stylized, illustrated heart tattoo decorated with Gucci’s most iconic symbols—the horsebit and the web.

Oh, and have you seen Rihanna in the Gucci advertising campaign lately? Love her! Check it out:

Visit gucci.com/unicef to learn more and see their other videos about the TATTOO HEART COLLECTION featuring Rihanna.

Or, click here to find out more about the Gucci Campaign for UNICEF.

Are you an American Airlines AAdvantage® member and UNICEF supporter? I am. And if you are too, you've got to check out this special offer.

From now until January 31, 2009, for every dollar that we donate to UNICEF at unicefusa.org/aa, we can earn two AAdvantage miles, up to 5,000 miles! It’ll be nice to stock up on miles for that vacation I’ve been thinking about. I’m debating between the beaches in Florida or California. Do you have any suggestions?

My hat's off to American Airlines, who have been long time supporters of UNICEF. You may have been on an international American Airlines flight where you heard about the Change for Good program. Their flight attendants have raised more than $2 million for UNICEF since the program began in 1994.

I am always excited to buy holiday gifts that are beautiful and that give back! Cartier offers one of the best: a LOVE Charity bracelet with an 18K gold mini LOVE ring set into a cyan-blue knotted silk cord. There is also a new bracelet that features interlocking miniature LOVE bracelets in 18K white gold and 18K rose gold.

Get this: for each single bracelet with the cyan-blue cord purchased between now and June 19, 2009, Cartier will donate $100 to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, and $200 from the sale of each double bracelet. I can think of several people who might like this. And, they’ll love it even more because it helps children in need.

The Cartier LOVE Charity Bracelet benefiting UNICEF is available in 34 boutiques across the U.S. and Canada. For more information, call 1.800.CARTIER or visit www.love.cartier.com.

Recently, I had a great conversation with Shanelle Hall, director of UNICEF's Supply Division. As if I didn't know it already, she really gave me a vivid sense of how many essential, lifesaving supplies UNICEF gets to children all over the globe, every day.

In 2007, for example, we shipped enough educational kits to supply over 12 million children and 100,000 teachers. We procured 3.2 billion doses of vaccine, at a value of $617 million—that's enough for 40 percent of the world's children. But, as massive as these achievements are, we're always thinking about the children we haven't yet reached: children who don't have the tools they need to learn, or who are dying from a disease that 27 cents worth of vaccine could have prevented.

© UNICEF/ HQ05-1695/Josh Estey

INDONESIA: A girl holds a UNICEF school kit bearing outside her new school in Banda Aceh, capital of Aceh Province. The school kit contains workbooks, pencils, pens, crayons, rulers and sharpeners.

You may have gotten an email recently about becoming an online monthly donor. If you aren't on our email list, you can read about it here. Regularly scheduled giving—where you commit to an ongoing monthly, quarterly or yearly donation paid automatically through your credit card—is a godsend to us. It makes it easier to sustain those programs that kids around the world need so badly. Because there are always new babies to vaccinate, and there are always children who want and need to learn.

Scheduled giving also saves us tons of money on fundraising, which means more money going straight to helping kids. And it means we're not sending you regular paper mailings, asking you to renew a pledge (this, of course, has the added bonus of saving trees).

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, but it's not too late to honor that special woman in your life with gifts that will make a lasting impression—UNICEF Inspired Gifts.

Inspired Gifts is an innovative program that allows you to purchase real, lifesaving products—like family water kits and oral rehydration salts—to be shipped directly to one of over 150 countries where UNICEF is saving children's lives.

Unfortunately, we know mothers in Myanmar are facing unbelievable challenges this Mother's Day. Thankfully, UNICEF's Myanmar office has already delivered essential supplies—including first aid kits and oral rehydration salts—to the hard-hit areas of Myanmar.

Help us restock our warehouse shelves with family water kits, oral rehydration salts, and mosquito nets before the next disaster strikes. Then, let her know about your gift with a personalized ecard. 

She'll be honored, and both of you will be proud. Happy Mother's Day!

This winter, American Airlines and UNICEF want to reward YOU for helping save children’s lives. Until January 31, 2008, you can earn American Airlines miles when you donate to UNICEF. For every dollar you donate to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, you’ll receive two AAdvantage miles. Of course, you must be an AAdvantage member to get your miles; and you can only take advantage of this online offer by visiting our Donate and Earn Miles page. Go to our Gifts that Give page to find out more.

You can also donate your unused Delta or Northwest Airlines miles directly to UNICEF. If you’re a Delta SkyMiles member, you can donate your miles to any of the charities participating in Delta’s SkyWish program, including UNICEF. If you have a Northwest WorldPerks account, you can donate your miles to participating AirCares charity partners, including UNICEF. With UNICEF active in over 150 countries to save children’s lives, you know those miles will be put to good use.

If you want to find out more about giving a gift that helps save children's lives, visit our Gifts that Give page.

Things are getting festive! If you give one of our Gifts that Give to deck your halls, part of the sales price goes back to UNICEF. Here are some gifts that celebrate the holiday spirit.

Every year, Baccarat designs a limited edition holiday ornament commemorating the UNICEF Snowflake that hangs above Fifth Avenue in New York and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. This year’s stainless steel ornament features a dye cut of the UNICEF Snowflake, and retails for $95. For every ornament sold, Baccarat donates 20 percent of the purchase price to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

Twenty million children are currently displaced through conflict or human rights violations. Hallmark has designed a special commemorative bouquet to support UNICEF’s program for children caught in such emergencies. For every UNICEF bouquet sold (purchase price $59.95), Hallmark will donate 5 percent of the purchase price to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to help children in emergencies.

This season, your holiday gifts can help save children’s lives. Go to our Gifts that Give page for more information.

Water: It’s the most basic necessity. Yet one billion--that’s right, one billion--people do not have access to safe water. 425 million children under 18 face water shortages. And 1.5 million children under five die every year from diseases where lack of adequate sanitation and clean water is a contributing factor. You can help UNICEF reduce these needless deaths by buying an Inspired Gift that gives children access to safe, clean drinking water.

By giving a water pump ($408), you are providing clean water for an entire community. UNICEF designed this sturdy deep-well hand pump, which has already been installed in over a million communities.

A basic family water kit ($130) contains buckets, collapsible water containers, soap, and water purification tablets and is especially useful in emergencies. Your gift will help 10 families.

When you give water, you really do give life.

This holiday season, you can add a little sparkle to someone's life and help save a child at the same time. If you give one of our Gifts that Give this holiday season, part of the purchase price will be donated to UNICEF. Who said all that glitters isn't gold?

To celebrate its partnership with UNICEF, Tiffany and Co. created a silver snowflake charm inspired by the UNICEF Snowflake that shines outside Tiffany's Fifth Avenue store. The sterling silver charm comes in two sizes and retails for $85 and $100. When you purchase a charm at any New York area Tiffany store through December 31, Tiffany's will donate 25 percent from the sale to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

Cartier donated $1.2 million dollars from the sales of its LOVE Charity bracelets to charities last year, and is continuing that tradition this year. UNICEF Ambassador Sarah Jessica Parker is supporting the blue silk cord UNICEF LOVE Charity bracelet, and Cartier will donate $100 from the sale of each bracelet (retail price $475) to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Available in 35 boutiques. For more information and boutique locations, visit www.love.cartier.com

Nearly 10 million children under five die each year. Malnutrition plays a role in over half of these deaths. 20 million babies a year are born with low birth weight and need nourishment to grow healthy and strong. If you would like to help feed these vulnerable children, give an Inspired Gift this holiday season.

Plumpy Nut Therapeutic Nutrition is a new, high-protein food paste. Three packs a day can save the life of a malnourished child. First used in Darfur, Sudan, Plumpy Nut reduced malnutrition there by over 50 percent. For $68, you can feed ten children for one whole month.

Other gifts that nourish include High Energy/Protein Biscuits, which are used in emergency situations to quickly provide nourishment to young children. And when breastfeeding is not an option, therapeutic milk helps a baby grow . Finally, an infant scale can help monitor a child's growth and keep illness at bay.

For more information on these and other gifts, go to our Inspired Gifts page.

Who doesn't like getting a new book to curl up with? And this holiday season, Tommy Hilfiger has partnered with UNICEF to offer some unique gifts that keep on giving.

When you purchase his new book, Iconic America: A Roller-Coaster Ride Through the Eye-Popping Panorama of American Pop Culture (retail price $60), Tommy Hilfiger will donate $5 to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. The coffe-table book, created with George Lois, features a mosaic of iconic images that describe the American experience.

But that's not all! The designer has also launched a new clothing line, the Capsule Collection, to support UNICEF this holiday season. T-shirts sell for $52, while sweatshirts go for $75-$100. For each item from the collection sold, Tommy Hilfiger will donate $5 to the U.S. fund for UNICEF.

To see more books to give, go to our online store, where all your purchases help UNICEF save children's lives. For all of our partners' gifts that support UNICEF this holiday season, go to our Gifts that Give page.

Give someone a gift that works twice as hard! Every time you buy one of our special Gifts that Give this holiday season, our partners donate part of the purchase price directly to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Here are some more of our partners’ gifts, or go to our Gifts that Give page to see all the goods.

Gucci is celebrating its longstanding partnership with UNICEF in two ways. First, the company has designed an entire line of accessories to support UNICEF. Until December 31, Gucci will donate 25 percent of its sales from this line to UNICEF programs that provide lifesaving health care, protection, clean water, and education to children in Malawi and Mozambique. The iconic piece in this collection is an exclusive version of Gucci’s much-loved Indy Bag. Gucci will donate 25 percent of the sales of its "Gucci for UNICEF" Indy bag to support UNICEF’s critical treatment and prevention programs for children in Mozambique and Malawi through November 2008.

While the pen may be mightier than the sword, millions of children around the world cannot read or write. This holiday season, Montblanc is supporting UNICEF's efforts to educate children and reduce illiteracy. When you purchase the special edition Meisterstück 149 "Power to Write" pen (retail price $695), Montblanc will donate $149 to support UNICEF education programs around the world. So your gift will keep on giving long after the holidays are over.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child--a guiding principle for UNICEF--is the most ratified human rights treaty in history. One right of a child is the right to education and recreation. Schools are often destroyed in emergencies, and recreation--vital for children's psycho-social well-being--is easily neglected. With our Inspired Gifts program, you can help protect these rights.

A School-in-a-Box kit contains pencils, notebooks, multiplication tables, and even a chalkboard. This portable school has been used in emergencies all over the world, so that children can go to school even during a crisis.

Here’s a video of the journey that a UNICEF School-in-a-Box takes.

Playing sports can give children hope and confidence. Our recreation kit, containing sports equipment like balls and team vests, lets children get healthy, socialize with other kids, and simply have fun--even in dire circumstances.

You can also give a gift that fulfills basic needs in an emergency. A tent protects a child from the elements and gives a family a much-needed home. A manually powered radio can warn remote communities of impending natural disasters.

To see all our gifts that can help save a child, go to the Inspired Gifts page.

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day.

For too long, children have been the missing face in the HIV and AIDS response and their needs are often overlooked. But they are the ones who offer the greatest hope for defeating the epidemic.

Mother-to-child transmission is the primary cause of HIV infection in children. And it is preventable. HIV test kits can help stop the transmission of HIV to unborn children. This holiday season, you can purchase an HIV test kit in yours or someone else's name and help stop the spread of AIDS.

Another way to make a big impact: give a gift that helps immunize children against deadly childhood diseases. Vaccination works: The Measles Initiative just announced that through global efforts measles deaths in Africa have fallen 91 percent since 2000!

For $23, you can buy enough measles vaccine to vaccinate 50 children. $40 can buy a bicycle that will allow field workers to deliver vaccines to remote villages. And $560 can buy a cold box to store vaccines in the hottest climates.

Check out our Inspired Gifts shop to learn more about giving gifts that help UNICEF save children's lives.

UNICEF is all about children. So our partners have come up with some gifts for the kids on your holiday gift list. If you purchase any of our Gifts that Give, part--or all--of that purchase price will benefit UNICEF.

Here are just a few of our Gifts that Give:

IKEA Soft Toys. For every soft toy you buy at IKEA during the holiday season, IKEA will donate $1 to be split between the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and Save the Children. Toys range in price from 99 cents to $19.99.

ATP “Feder-bear” Beanie Baby. Roger Federer, UNICEF's Goodwill Ambassador and the world’s Number 1 Tennis Player, is now also a Beanie Baby! For every one of these specially designed plush bears purchased for $8, ATP will donate $5 to its ACE partnership program with UNICEF, helping children around the world.

You can even donate Pampers Rewards Points. If you’re a member of the Pampers Gifts to Grow Rewards program, you can donate your points to UNICEF. For every point you give, Pampers will donate 5 cents to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to help provide life-saving tetanus vaccines to pregnant women.

And don't forget UNICEF's online shop, where you can buy children's games, puzzles, toys, books, and videos. So give a gift that helps save a child's life.

UNICEF is making it possible for you to purchase some of the products it uses in emergencies like the Bangladesh cyclone to save kids' lives.

You can buy these items either in your own name, or give them as a gift in someone else’s name. For example, for $22 you can give oral rehydration salts (pictured here) that can save a child from dehydration. For $30 you can give high-protein biscuits, developed especially for emergency situations. And for $305 you can purchase an emergency health kit that provides three months of health care for 1,000 people.

Visit our Inspired Gifts store to see how to purchase these and other lifesaving gifts.

This holiday season, give an Inspired Gift and help save a child’s life.

Some very important people were recently honored here in our New York office: the winners of the Pier 1/UNICEF/Weekly Reader greeting card contest! Here they are with U.S. Fund for UNICEF President Caryl Stern: Karen Hong (age 13), Shone Williams (age 8), and Josephine Kao (age 11).

The cards they designed will be sold exclusively at Pier 1 Imports stores through the holiday season. Each pack of ten cards costs $10, and Pier 1 is donating 100% of the sale price to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF! So your money goes directly towards helping save children’s lives.

UNICEF started selling greeting cards in 1949, when a 7-year-old girl gave a painting to UNICEF to express her gratitude for the aid given to her war-torn Czech village. Congratulations to our young winners, who are carrying on this tradition.

Yes, the holidays are pretty much here.

And that means cards to write, meals to make, traffic to navigate—and gifts to give. But does your niece really need another doll? And doesn’t your bookworm friend get all his reading material at the local library anyway? How about giving a gift that really matters--a gift that can help save a child's life.

UNICEF USA has launched a new online store called Inspired Gifts.These are lifesaving items that you purchase in your own or in someone else’s name that will go directly to children in need in one of the 150+ countries where UNICEF works. They range from vaccines, to protein biscuits, to recreation kits. So now you can show your niece the true meaning of the holiday season, give your friend the gift of making a difference, and, best of all, give a child the gift of life.

We’ll be highlighting all of the Inspired Gifts and other special shopping opportunities on this blog throughout the holdiday season. To get you started, how about 2 insecticide-treated mosquito nets for $15?

In Africa, a child dies from malaria every 30 seconds. A mosquito net can lower the rate of infection by 50 percent. Just $15 buys two repellant-treated mosquito nets that can save a child’s life. That's pretty simple math.