Child trafficking. It’s a horror that no child should ever have to experience. But around the world, some 5.5 million children are trafficked for forced labor or sexual exploitation. Human trafficking is a $32 billion a year industry, one of the world’s most profitable criminal activities. Children are especially vulnerable, and UNICEF is working across the globe to keep children safe from exploitation.
We recently had a visit here at the U.S. Fund offices from two UNICEF representatives,who described a successful UNICEF campaign to prevent child trafficking in Latin America.

We are proud to announce that the Good Shirts fundraising campaign for the Horn of Africa in partnership with Threadless and BBH recently received the Silver award in the “Direct” category at the Cannes Lions awards! The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is the world’s biggest celebration of creativity in communications.

I blogged a few weeks back about the “Help us save some lives!” Campus Challenge.

UNICEF has partnered with the Association of College Unions International (ACUI) and the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF in a nationwide challenge, where fundraising efforts will be matched dollar for dollar by the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF. Watch this special message from UNICEF Ambassador Alyssa Milano abut the challenge.

The challenge launched on September 5, 2008 and will conclude on February 28, 2009 with the goal of raising $150,000. We are happy to announce that we currently have more than 20 universities and colleges registered to date, and we’ll be unveiling a media outreach strategy this fall to continue recruiting participating campuses. To sign up your alma mater involved or to learn more, please visit the campus challenge site or email campuschallenge@unicefusa.org.

Thanks to everyone who participated in Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF this year!
If you’ve got a box full of change, it’s time to count it out and send it to UNICEF to help save kids’ lives. Also, if you created a Trick-or-Treat Online page, be sure to update it with your offline donations!

We’ve heard lots of great stories from people everywhere about how they made Halloween count for kids this year. Email us your stories and pictures, or share them with us on Flickr.

We have our own story to tell…on Halloween, we hit the streets of New York City and raised nearly two thousand dollars from generous commuters and passers-by. It was a lot of fun, but best of all, it made us even more proud of the good work we do to put an end to 25,000 daily preventable deaths.

Halloween may be over, but there are so many other ways to help us save lives. Sign up to receive regular updates on the important work we do year round.