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

Elizabeth Kiem is the online producer of unicefusa.org.

On January 9, Sudan will hold a week-long referendum to determine whether the country will remain as one territory or will be divided. The upcoming vote on Southern Sudan's independence has created significant instability in an already precarious landscape and could result not just in the world's newest nation, but in escalated violence and human displacement as well.

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	A malnourished child at a UNICEF-supported feeding center in Al-shabbah.

UNICEF is pre-positioning supplies in anticipation of a humanitarian crisis in an area currently populated by m a million people uprooted by tribal conflict, rebel attacks and clashes with armed forces. These are not mild conflicts - these are attacks targeting and killing women and children. Child abduction is a common tragedy associated with the violence.

Meanwhile, food insecurity has caused widespread nutrition crises with acute malnutrition rates above the emergency threshold of 15%.

UNICEF has been in Sudan since 1952 and is the largest UN agency working in the country to protect women and children. Since the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Accord, UNICEF has operated out of one country office in Khartoum and two area programs - one for the north and one for the south.

Southern Sudan is a vast region with limited infrastructure. Its humanitarian context has been characterized by disease outbreaks, food insecurity, flooding and localized conflicts.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kiem, UNICEF USA on January 4, 2011 10:42 AM
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Jean-Andre Durvier is a single father living in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He has 2 sons, Mackintosh and Freddy, who are presently studying at the Delmas 33 Die Gloria temporary primary school. It is one of some 250 temporary schools that UNICEF is supporting to ensure that an entire generation is not denied an education in the hard years of recovery and reconstruction ahead.

Mackintosh (left) and Freddy Durvier (right), with their father, Jean-Andre Durvier. While Jean-Andre and his boys survived the earthquake, they have lived on the generosity of friends and found support within the school community. One year on, the Durvier boys are back at school, a temporary classroom next to the ruins of their school.

On the day of the earthquake at around 4:30 pm, I decided on a whim to pick up Mackintosh and Freddy from school. I work from home as a mechanic and the school is 15 minutes away. As we turned into our gate at 4:52 pm, I felt the car being twisted and pulled. My house-helper, Kaida, was outside looking terrified.

Right in front of my children's eyes, our house collapsed. It was too much for the children to see.

Now, they are back in school, which is good for them to be with their friends.

So many things have happened this year. They are asking me what is happening to Haiti -- first the earthquake, then the hurricane and now the cholera. I am their father and I am the key figure in their life. I have to keep their morale up and keep them stable, particularly now. I have to be their anchor.

I live from day to day, relying on the generosity of friends and family and what little work I can get. It's my responsibility to protect them, and provide for them, it's very difficult.

Thank you for all you do to support UNICEF in Haiti. We are doing all we can for families like this one who deserve a better year and brighter future.

Posted by UNICEF USA on January 3, 2011 1:06 PM
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Vijita Kumar is an Interactive Marketing Officer at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF

I tend to ring in the New Year quietly. No party hats, no balloons and no grand resolutions -- just a quiet dinner with family. Since I have lived in New York City for the past 10 years I have tried Times Square with its hundred thousand people, but after that, realized it is just as easy to hold on to the holiday spirit at home. Whether at home or at Times Square the thought in my heart is always the same - how do I hold on to the warmth of the holiday lights until the same time next year?

This year I will do so by purchasing a Winter Child Survival Pack from UNICEF Inspired Gifts.

A first-grade student walks several miles to her home after school in the district of Altai, in Khovd Province, Mongolia. This photo was featured as a Monday Photo on Fieldnotes Blog earlier this year.	The Winter Child Survival Pack from UNICEF Inspired Gifts provides essentials of nutrition, health and clean water for a child for six months to survive the cold months ahead.

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Posted by Vijita Kumar, UNICEF USA on December 31, 2010 12:26 PM
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3-year-old Dan is the youngest unaccompanied child to be registered in the crisis. "I was playing, and I saw many people in line walking by, so I followed them," he said to a UNICEF assessment team. Dan is currently in the care of a refugee family.

UNICEF is closely watching the situation in Ivory Coast, where civil unrest is forcing as many as 20,000 people -- mostly women and children -- to flee their homes.

There have been hundreds of allegations of killings, torture, and arrests in the wake of disputed elections held one month ago.

Concern that the violence could blow into civil war has prompted a large cross-border exodus, with more than 13,000 refugees registered in Liberia alone. While host communities are hospitable to refugees, many fear that the escalating conflict in Ivory Coast will cause violence in Liberia, which is still recovering from the 14-year-long civil conflict that ended in 2003.

Refugees and displaced people in host communities are in urgent need of safe drinking water, food, shelter, sanitation and primary health services. UNICEF is providing vital services and has sent additional staff and is conducting assessments of the sectoral needs.

Relief supplies for 65,000 people are pre-positioned in Ivory Coast and in neighbouring Liberia and Guinea.

Learn more about UNICEF's emergency relief work. You can support our efforts. Thousands of children are vulnerable and at risk.

Posted by Elizabeth Kiem, UNICEF USA on December 28, 2010 3:48 PM
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Kristi Burnham is the Vice President of Program & Strategic Partnerships at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

During this holiday season, we are reminded that here in the United States most of us enjoy shelter, access to vaccinations, clean and sanitary drinking water and food on the table. Not everyone in the world is so lucky. UNICEF works to ensure that these basic amenities are available to the world's children, but still, 22,000 children die every day from preventable causes. UNICEF and its supporters believe this number should be zero.

Clockwise from top left: 2010 UNICEF Tap Project City Coordinators, the Campus Initiative Summit at Columbia University, Team UNICEF gets ready to run for Zero at the 2010 New York City Marathon, Members of the Alumni Council of the UNICEF Campus Initiative program.

Throughout 2010, more than 30,000 volunteers committed themselves to supporting zero preventable child deaths. From the UNICEF High School Clubs, to those who hosted Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF Halloween parties, to the tens of  thousands of hours volunteered by our Campus Initiative Clubs, and to all our volunteers who took an action this year, our cadre of volunteers brought UNICEF's message to their local communities, and can rest this holiday season assured that we are working toward zero and we won't stop until we reach it.  

On behalf of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF Volunteer and Community Partnerships Department, thank you, and happy holidays.

Posted by Kristi Burnham, UNICEF USA on December 24, 2010 8:48 AM
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Victor Chinyama is Chief of Communication at UNICEF Malawi. He is a large part of the enormous success of the K.I.N.D. collaboration with MSNBC that has raised close to $1 million in just one week for Kids in Need of Desks.

The email was simply titled "Request - Malawi." I would have missed it in the dozens of emails I receive everyday, most of them unsolicited, were it not for the words NBC Universal in brackets after the sender's name. That got my attention. I opened the email, and thus began a journey that is likely to transform hundreds of classrooms and potentially change the lives of thousands of children in Malawi. 

The email was from Dana Haller, a producer at MSNBC. Dana told me a new host, Lawrence O'Donnell, was traveling to Malawi on a personal trip and was wondering if we could assist him visit a couple of schools. I said "no problem," and Lawrence arrived at the end of July this year.

I was not sure what to expect. Dana had told me that Lawrence had been made aware of the school furniture problem in Malawi by a personal friend who had visited Malawi. He therefore wanted to see the situation for himself, buy desks for a school, film the delivery, and show his audiences back home that something can be done. 

I explained to Lawrence the challenges schools in Malawi face: the lack of furniture, which forces students to sit on the floor, a shortage of 30,000 classrooms, which means students learn in the open or under trees, average class sizes of 100, and the absence of running water and toilets in some schools. Only 35%  of children complete primary schooling and, because Malawi's current system requires students to write exams at the end of every grade, about 20% of all students in any given year  are forced to repeat the grade because they don't pass. We estimate that 65% of the education budget is wasted on teaching children who drop out altogether or repeat grades.

Lawrence and I visited a local manufacturer where he placed an order for 40 desks. Two days later, we were at Mchesi Primary School to witness the delivery. When the desks were delivered, that is Christmas! It was an uproarious scene, hundreds of children running towards the truck, others breaking out in song and dance, and still others screaming with excitement. Some of the students who sat on those desks were doing so for the first time in their lives.

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Posted by UNICEF USA on December 23, 2010 11:15 AM
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If you've heard about Yemen at all recently, the news likely hasn't been good. Two suicide bombings last month--likely the work of Al-Qaeda--killed 25 people in the north and terrified a region already battered by unrest. Despite a ceasefire, clashes between militants and government forces in the northern region of Sa'ada continue to displace thousands of people. And last year's thwarted Christmas day underwear bomber received training in Yemen.

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	In October 2010 in Yemen, a UNICEF-supported screening revealed alarmingly high rates of child malnutrition. Here, a boy's height is measured to assess his nutrition status at Najid Al-Jumai Health Clinic.

But if I learned one thing when I lived in the Middle East, it's that the story is always more complicated than what you see in the news. For every individual that would wish harm to the U.S. or his own countrymen, there are hundreds of thousands who just want to live a quiet peaceful family life, with health and education for their children.

Unfortunately, conflict can get in the way of that very simple dream. In Sa'ada, conflict has not only displaced families, it's led to severe food shortages. Right now, nearly 1/3 of the children there suffer from acute malnutrition. And with security so bad, it's been too dangerous for aid organizations to get children enough therapeutic foods to fully combat the malnutrition.

Imagine not having enough food for your children. Fearing every day for their safety. Wondering whether you'll have to flee your home if the fighting breaks out in your village. And if you do have to flee, will you and your kids be able to get far when you're so weak from malnutrition?

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Posted by Jen Banbury, UNICEF USA on December 21, 2010 9:50 AM
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Kristi Burnham is the Vice President of Program & Strategic Partnerships at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

For the very first year, the U.S, Fund for UNICEF and the UNICEF High School Club program participated in the United Nations Student Conference on Human Rights, a 3-day conference during which over 250 students from the U.S., Canada, Mexico and France and Mexico joined to discuss issues around discrimination.

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(Left) Students from Fairmont Prep UNICEF Club at the General Assembly: Austin Kaidi, Aditi Sinha, Deborah Terra, Melanie Lim, Shabaz Malik. (Right) Students from Argyle High School UNICEF Club at the General Assembly, from right to left: Claire Edwards, Taylor Martin, Lexie Cargile, Emiliana Lopez.

The two clubs chosen to represent the UNICEF High School Club program were Argyle High School, from Texas and Fairmont Prep, from California. The Argyle High School UNICEF Club made a presentation on gender-based discrimination, while Fairmont Prep UNICEF High School Club presented on the topic of discrimination against immigrant and migrant children.

On the last day of the conference the students put a series of recommendations forward to a panel of experts from the UN, UNICEF and the New York State Division of Human Rights to take back to their respective communities and implement on a local level to stop discrimination.

For more information about the UNICEF High School Club program or to learn how to start one at your school, please visit www.unicefusa.org/highschoolclubs.

Posted by Kristi Burnham, UNICEF USA on December 20, 2010 12:43 PM
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