UNICEF is a UN agency which aims to provide humanitarian and developmental help to children worldwide. With a presence in 192 countries and territories, UNICEF 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.
To help achieve SDG 2 – Zero Hunger, UNICEF published five key asks. There are five key responses essential to improvising children’s nutrition that should be included in the development plans and agendas to put children’s nutrition rights first.
1. EMPOWER PEOPLE BY ENCOURAGING THEM TO DEMAND NUTRITIOUS FOOD
When healthy options are affordable, convenient, and desirable, parents and caregivers make better food choices for children. As children grow older, knowledge and information can make them powerful in demanding change. Stimulating demand for nutritious food educates children on the benefits of healthy diets, but also fights this SDG culturally and socially.
2. DRIVE FOOD SUPPLIERS TO DO THE RIGHT THING FOR CHILDREN
Make healthy food available, affordable, safe, and sustainable. Food producers have a key role, ensuring that their actions align with children’s best interests.
3. BUILD HEALTHY FOOD ENVIRONMENTS FOR ALL CHILDREN
Context-appropriate actions such as mandatory front-of-pack labelling and protection against exploitative marketing practices can help create food environments that build towards nutritious diets for children.
4. MOBILISE SUPPORTIVE SYSTEMS TO IMPROVE NUTRITION RESULTS FOR EVERY CHILD
Other key systems must be mobilised to achieve nutritious services. The health, water and sanitation, education, and social protections must be delivered to complement nutritious food. These systems will ensure that children and families have access to healthy diets, so that children receive the nutrition services to develop to their full potential.
5. COLLECT, ANALYSE, AND USE GOOD-QUALITY DATA AND EVIDENCE TO GUIDE ACTION & TRACK PROGRESS
Accurate and timely data help specialists understand malnutrition, and then take coordinated, evidence-based action. Data collection methods and frequency must be transformed to expand what we know about the diets and nutrition of children, adolescents, and women at every stage of life. Data systems must become responsive, and a culture of data-sharing and transparency must be developed.
UNICEF @ IST
Last year, the IST UNICEF team raised money and awareness through three main events. Despite the strong COVID restrictions preventing year groups mixing, we did our best to create events that were fun for everyone, whilst adhering to the regulations.
Our first event was a Decorated Mask Competition. Even though we had a disappointing lack of entries, we still raised awareness and donations. The competition itself was a fun way to show off creativity, and it was a great first event.
Our Blue Week in March was our greatest success. Firstly, we encouraged people to play the FreeRice vocabulary game during registrations, every question answered correctly resulted in an automatic financial donation to the World Food Programme. On the Wednesday, we invited everyone to wear as much blue as possible, as well as donating money, and participating in our quiz, all to raise donations and awareness for the Yemen Crisis. We awarded prizes to the tutor groups with the highest scores in our quiz, and the class who wore the most blue! During this event alone, we raised over €225, a huge success.
Our third and final event of the year was joint with Fairtrade. Together we organised a pride month dress-up day, which was a great success. We raised just short of €200, to donate to two different charities, Galop, an LGBTQ+ charity, and UNICEF. On Wednesday 9th June, the school looked like an explosion of colour to celebrate the 2021 Pride Month. We hope events such as these get an equal amount of enthusiasm this year too.
We raised money for the Yemen Crisis, to find out more about that, read Marloes’ blog!
Overall, the previous year of UNICEF was a great success, even amidst such trying times. We would like to give a huge thank you to everyone who supported UNICEF last year through these difficult times and to everyone who has donated. We have many fun events planned for this year, so get prepared!
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