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

Those fun, fashion-forward folks at Bravo TV have come up with a unique celebrity dress auction benefitting UNICEF. Right now, when you buy a dress at Bravo TV's online charity auction, you'll be helping UNICEF's relief efforts in Myanmar.

Imagine owning a dress that was worn by a celebrity on Bravo's "A-List Awards" show, which aired on June 12. The dresses were all designed by contestants on Bravo's hit show "Project Runway."

All proceeds from the auction will go to UNICEF's relief work in Myanmar. So you'll not only get a fashion original, you'll be helping save children's lives as well.

Go to http://bravo.auction.seenon.com to start bidding. But hurry! The auction ends on June 19.

File this one under "GoodNews." UNICEF will be featured on GoodSearch.com and GoodShop.com this Wednesday, June 11.

When you use GoodSearch.com and designate the U.S. Fund for UNICEF as the cause you support, we receive a penny every time you do a search.

And, don't forget GoodShop.com, where a percentage of each order is donated to us, as well (you don’t pay anything extra). Hundreds of great stores including Amazon, Target, Gap, Best Buy, eBay, Macy's, Barnes & Noble and others have teamed up with GoodShop.

Of course, you can use GoodSearch and GoodShop every day, but be sure to check us out on their homepages on Wednesday.

UNICEF’s success in helping reduce the global child mortality rate and its efforts to provide education to all children, even in the wake of emergencies, were highlighted earlier this week in a Financial Times profile.

The article related a brief history of UNICEF, including its embrace of education as a central tenet of its mission to save and improve children’s lives. It also discussed other current challenges, including the battle against HIV/AIDS and child exploitation.

As part of its rights-based approach to tackle inequities, UNICEF has made gender equality a priority in its education programs (see video). UNICEF also believes that education can break cycles of poverty, lessen the burden of disease and help foster sustainable development. Learn more about UNICEF’s myriad work in education here.

Do you follow UNICEF’s education initiatives? What programs do you consider most important?

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.

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.

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.

We got a lovely email this week from Amy at blogged.com informing us that they've given Fieldnotes a rating of "great" based our content and design.

Thanks, Blogged! We're going for "excellent" now...

In the wake of World Water Day last month, the water crisis has come into stark relief in war-riven Iraq.

A handful of news organizations, including Agence France Presse and Integrated Regional Information Networks, carried stories highlighting last week’s intense fighting and the warnings of UNICEF and other aid groups that the clashes were impeding humanitarian relief efforts.

UNICEF focused on the lack of access to safe drinking water as an especially serious problem, noting that it could cause a rise in the incidence of diarrhea (which can be deadly, particularly for young children). UNICEF’s bold efforts to address water scarcity amidst the chaos and violence garnered some brief mentions in news stories.

In the city of Basra, a local UNICEF team partnered with a contractor to deliver water via tanker trucks to families that could not previously be reached because of a curfew. Within two days, more than 2,000 families in Basra were receiving clean water.

Background note: The fighting in Basra has subsided, but the struggle to find safe water in Iraq continues. Iraq’s water and sanitation network has deteriorated after years of conflict and underinvestment. As a result, only 40 per cent of the country’s children have regular access to safe drinking water. Less than 10 percent of urban households outside Baghdad are hooked up to sanitary sewage systems. Due to scarce electricity, sewage pumping stations and treatment plants often release wastewater into Iraq’s rivers, contaminating the water supply.

UNICEF has been providing drinking clean water to civilians in Iraq for over four years, but an enormous demand for this life necessity is continually fed by ongoing violence. In February, UNICEF issued a funding appeal for $37 million to help deliver healthcare, clean drinking water, sanitation and other critical services to endangered children and families.

Were you aware of the water crisis in Iraq? What other humanitarian issues do you feel should be getting more coverage in Iraq? Have you followed UNICEF’s work there?

Let me know.

Cyclone Ivan pummeled the island nation of Madagascar last month, leaving a vast trail of mangled roads and bridges, smashed homes and schools and ruined crops.

Several news agencies, including the AP, Reuters and Voice of America, reported on the storm, its initial aftermath and the response of UNICEF and others. Commendably, the BBC ran a fairly in-depth story several weeks after the storm. Stories appeared in American newspapers mostly as briefs.

News coverage has since dwindled, although the story is far from over. In fact, just last week, nearly a month after Cyclone Ivan touched down on Madagascar, UNICEF issued an appeal for $14.7 million in additional emergency aid for the country. The appeal doesn’t yet seem to have drawn much media attention.

Ivan was a Category 3 monster whose strength has been likened to Hurricane Katrina. It hit Madagascar on February 17, killing at least 93 people, making more than 330,000 homeless, and stripping thousands of people of basic health care services. Here's video showing the storm’s devastation:

Cyclone Ivan followed on the heels of Cyclone Fame, which lacerated the island on January 27.

Nearby Mozambique is still reeling from Cyclone Jokwe, which struck on March 8. UNICEF and its partners have been providing a range of essential interventions in both Madagascar and Mozambique.

Background note: At least six cyclones struck Madagascar in 2007. The regularity of these brutal storms, along with chronic droughts and floods, makes it extraordinarily difficult for this already struggling country (Madagascar ranks 143 out of 177 countries on the Human Development Index) to rise out of poverty.

The UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development said in a press release earlier this month that cyclones have increased in frequency and intensity and named climate change as a culprit. Late last year, UNICEF released a report citing evidence that climate change can contribute to natural disasters and to the spread of lethal diseases like diarrhea and malaria—and that children in developing countries bear the brunt of these miseries.

Have you followed the humanitarian response in the wake of Cyclone Ivan? Do you feel the news coverage of this and other natural disasters in developing countries has been adequate? What do you think about the role of climate change in natural disasters and international development?

Let me know.

Somalia’s worsening conflict, and UNICEF’s efforts to help its youngest victims, drew several headlines over the past month. The BBC, Voice of America and NPR covered UNICEF’s emergency appeal to help thousands of under-nourished Somali children. UNICEF's efforts in the conflict-ridden country have been hampered by serious funding shortfalls.

Background note: These news organizations deserve credit for illuminating the increasingly dire outlook for Somalia’s children. But the fate of these children is not a regular part of the news cycle. In fact, the BBC quotes UNICEF's Christian Balslev-Olesen saying that Somalia is the “forgotten crisis.”

The UN Integrated Regional Information Network spotlighted a UNICEF survey showing that only one in four Somali girls attend primary school. The report, released on the eve of International Women’s Day, was tempered with the positive news that school enrollment for girls in Somalia has increased threefold over the last 10 years.

Background note: UNICEF is helping Somali girls complete their education by, among other things, addressing inadequate sanitation facilities in schools.

In other Africa news, United Press International cited UNICEF’s warning that children in Sudan’s West Darfur region had gone missing in the wake of violence.

Background note: The Darfur conflict has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people and driven at least 2.2 million from their homes. UNICEF is providing many interventions in Darfur, including immunizations, nutritional supplements and shelter.

Are you following the situation in Darfur or Somalia? What other crises should be getting more media attention? Do you believe there is a connection between news coverage and funding levels? What sorts of news stories do you think would be most effective in highlighting the plight of children in Somalia and Darfur?

Adam Fifield is on staff at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. He'll be doing weekly round-ups of news coverage of interest. This is his first post.

Greetings news buffs! For those of you who want to keep track of UNICEF’s news footprint, I will be posting regular reviews of items from various sources. With an organization as vast and diverse as UNICEF, I obviously can’t list everything, but I will try to compile a mix of reports that is interesting and informative. I may also throw in a small dose of commentary or a ‘Background note’ that will offer added context, history or other info.

© UNICEF/HQ94-0481/Press
James Grant with an unaccompanied child in Rwanda in 1994.

Background note: To fight what he called a “silent global emergency”—millions of children perishing from preventable diseases—Jim Grant launched the “child survival and development revolution” in 1983. This campaign, which coordinated local, national and international initiatives to provide cost-effective interventions such as immunizations and oral rehydration therapy, was estimated to have saved the lives of 12 million children by the late 1980s.

Are you familiar with James P. Grant? What other humanitarian heroes do you admire?

	An infant is weighed as part of a routine medical examination

Good news for kids everywhere: The plight of the world’s children is making headlines. In Yahoo’s listing of the year’s most notable stories, its 2007 Year in Review, children’s issues were prominently featured. Out of Yahoo's ten "Inspirations” stories, three dealt with issues of childhood survival and well-being. UNICEF is proud to play a role in all of these inspiring stories.

Most importantly, this was the first time that the number of children under five who die each year fell below 10 million. According to Yahoo, vaccination drives, breastfeeding, and mosquito nets--all part of UNICEF's work--have contributed to the drop in child mortality, from 13 million deaths a year in 1990 to 9.7 million deaths last year. The expectation is that childhood deaths will keep dropping as UN member nations work together to achieve the Millennium Development Goals they set in 2000. One goal is to cut infant mortality rates by two thirds by 2015.

It's great news for children that the world is taking such interest in their issues. We are honored that we could help bring about some of these positive changes, and we thank you for your support.

If you want to see all of the “Inspiration” stories, go to Yahoo’s 2007 Year in Review.

Meet a member of UNICEF’s MTV Generation! One of our dedicated volunteers, Andrea, now has her very own video profile featured on mtvU.com.

Here’s Andrea’s clip.

Andrea's currently president of a UNICEF Campus Initiative group at the University of Southern California to help raise awareness and support for UNICEF. The Campus Initiative is a group of like-minded students who want to help children in need survive. The group partners with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF (that’s us) to educate, advocate, and fundraise for UNICEF.

If you’re a student who wants to help children, click here to see if there’s a Campus Initiative you can join. If there isn’t, you can start one. Click here for info on how to start and run your group. And be a part of the generation that helps eliminate preventable deaths of children.

An editorial in today's Houston Chronicle shared the good news:

The United Nations Children's Fund reports that for the first time since record-keeping began, in 1960, global child deaths have reached a record low, falling below 10 million per year to 9.7 million, down from almost 13 million in 1990. While too many children still die before their fifth birthday, usually from easily preventable causes, this milestone illustrates how much can be accomplished in a comparatively short time and bodes well for greater gains in the future.

Thanks to all who helped us reach this milestone -- and all who are working to help us reach the next. Please use the comments to tell us how you're doing it.

Thank you, Fieldnotes readers and UNICEF supporters, for the emails and comments you've posted here in support of Mia Farrow's recent trip to Africa. I wanted you to know we're collecting your comments and sending them to Ms. Farrow.

At 5 p.m. EST tonight, Ms. Farrow will appear on PalTalk, a web-based radio talk show. She will be taking questions from callers.

Also, some of you have emailed and called to ask us what you can do to support UNICEF. "Is there also a direct way our families (our school communities) could help and know that the help was getting to the right people?" asked Amy.

Communities can gather together online to support UNICEF's work by creating your own Emergency Response Team. Our online tool allows you to build a customized donation page and email family and friends to ask for their help. Let me know if you have any problems setting up your own Emergency Response site. I'd be glad to help.

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow heads out for her week long trip to Africa tonight. She's looking forward to attending the kick-off of the Child Health Days program in Central African Republic and will also travel to UNICEF field sites in Chad.

While communication between remote locations in the field and our office here in New York City can be difficult, I'm hoping Ms. Farrow will be able to share news and pictures from her trip to Africa as it progresses. We'll keep you posted here. If you have comments and good wishes to share with Ms. Farrow as her journey begins, please post them here as comments and we'll pass them along to her.

Many of the regions Ms. Farrow and her team will be visiting are on the verge of humanitarian disaster. Her visit will bring renewed attention to these locations.

Here's more information about Ms. Farrow's work for UNICEF. To learn more about UNICEF's work in Africa, visit UNICEFUSA.org.

Mia Farrow is a true advocate for children and campaigns for their rights around the world. She has traveled extensively to Africa on behalf of UNICEF. In 2004 and 2006, Ms. Farrow traveled to Darfur to witness first hand the devastating impact of the civil war on women and children. Ms. Farrow began her film career with ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and since then has made more than 40 films. Her latest film is ‘Be Kind Rewind’ which will be in theaters later this year.