A quick dive into UNICEF

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), now officially United Nations Children’s Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide. Present in 192 countries and territories, UNICEF’s activities include providing immunizations and disease prevention, administering treatment for children and mothers with HIV, enhancing childhood and maternal nutrition, improving sanitation, promoting education, and providing emergency relief in response to disasters.

UNICEF relies on country offices to help carry out its work through a unique program of cooperation developed with the host government. The programs seek to develop practical strategies for fulfilling and protecting the rights of children and women. Regional offices guide this work and provide technical assistance to country offices as needed. Overall management and administration of the organization take place at its headquarters in New York City.

In September 1943, Polish health specialist Ludwik Rajchman suggested, in an article published in Free World entitled “A United Nations Health Service, that a health service should be incorporated into the future international organization. He also proposed a “health tax” paid by member states. At the end of the UNRRA, Rajchman proposed to use its residual funds for a child-feeding program beneficiary of US funding. The organization was created by resolution 57(I) of the United Nations General Assembly on 11 December 1946 and named United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). As its first chairman, Rajchman chose Maurice Pate of the Commission for Relief in Belgium to direct the agency and “to think about organizing an action, a fund for the benefit of children, war victims chiefly.” From a temporary emergency relief agency in 1946 providing food and clothing to children and mothers displaced by World War II, the agency became a permanent UN Organization in 1953 and extended its efforts toward general programs for children’s welfare.

It is possible to sustain this agency, by donating, and volunteering in its programs, however the most important thing all the non-profit associations want to convey, is that, even in your own small world, when you try to change things for the better and do it together, somehow it will work out. The important thing is giving kindness and altruism, not what you get out of it.