Social networks are a fun way to keep in touch with friends and make new ones. They help share information that might otherwise have gone unheard. With 200 million active users on Facebook, at least 100 million MySpace users, and over 1 million Twitter users, we must share this vital piece of information: Every day, 25,000 children die from preventable causes.
We need your help in getting these 300 million+ people to believe that no child should ever die from a preventable cause.
A USF reimagining of Twitter’s “fail whale” originally created by Sydney artist and designer Yiying Lu.
Join our UNICEF USA Facebook fan page, where you can get the latest updates and information on UNICEF’s lifesaving work. Then, spread the word by inviting your contacts to support our Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF, Believe in Zero, and Tap Project Causes. You can even spread the word about your favorite cause, UNICEF, and build a child’s future with the Super Poke! application. Why not dedicate your status to UNICEF and let all your friends know that you believe in zero.
Help us reach even more people by inviting us to be your friend on our UNICEF USA and Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF MySpace pages. Then follow us on Twitter and retweet our updates or start your own conversation about UNICEF’s work.
From March 22 to 28, thousands of volunteers, restaurants, agency, government and corporate partners joined together to support UNICEF’s Tap Project. While World Water Week may have officially come to a close, there is still much you can do to help UNICEF put an end to the preventable deaths of children due to a lack of clean water!
The power of technological innovation to produce positive change in the developing world was the focus of the fifth annual Web4Dev conference, hosted last week by UNICEF. The gathering of experts from the UN system, academia, and the private sector, explored how new and existing mobile and online technologies can be used to tackle poverty and disease and help achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
UNICEF executive director Ann M. Veneman called upon participants to put innovation at the service of humanity. Ms. Veneman cited an example of a remarkable joint initiative between UNICEF and Columbia University in which health workers in developing countries are using mobile phones and SMS text messages to track the nutritional status of children in remote communities. To learn more about this amazing project, read this earlier post by my colleague Jen Banbury.
Faced with one of the country’s worst economic crisis in history, Uruguay is struggling to provide their children with a good education. Many rural schools are in tatters, with few books and scant schools supplies. Current school drop-out rates top 40 percent in some communities.
To turn the spotlight on this issue, the creative staff at UNICEF in Uruguay grabbed the media’s attention this past winter by organizing a cross-country horseback trek to visit rural schools. Why on horseback? Because it’s the traditional way many countryside children travel to school in Uruguay.
Thirty years ago, only one out of five children were immunized against killer diseases like measles and polio. Throughout the developing world, millions of children were dying of illnesses that had all but disappeared in the world’s wealthier countries. Since then, a near miracle has taken place. Now, four out of five children are protected by vaccines. Polio is on the verge of elimination. Measles and tetanus deaths have been reduced dramatically. This miracle did not happen by itself.
Welcome to Fieldnotes. Blogging gives us the ability to quickly report from the field, alert you to media coverage of interest, and share the success of UNICEF's lifesaving work around the globe.
We want to hear from you, so consider using the comment functionality to let us know what you think. Readers, please keep in mind that comments do not necessarily reflect official positions of UNICEF or the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. While we welcome multiple points of view here, we will review each comment prior to posting it and will not post comments that are off-topic or inappropriate for this public forum.