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| John Liddle gets ready to skate a marathon |
When you spend a lot of time writing about vulnerable children, you’d have to be a hard-nosed hack to ignore their cry for help.
Elliott House write and design publications to promote what our client Kantar’s 28,000 colleagues are doing for a campaign called Brighter Futures and we report back on the children who are benefiting from those donations. The company is aiming to raise US $1m for UNICEF to help change the lives of children in Bangladesh, Bolivia and Malawi.
It can be heart-wrenching. Poverty, sexual exploitation, the need to abandon education in order to make a living or support a family – the wretched plight of people who have had the misfortune to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And yet it wasn’t the horror that prompted me to do something that might raise a few pounds to help.
It was the hope.
Because when you read more closely about the work that UNICEF is doing in these countries, it isn’t just about the direct aid to help children at the front line of poverty.
It is about helping governments and NGOs transform a political vision into a legacy that will result in sustainable change.
Take Bolivia. The South American country enacted a new constitution in 2010 that recognised the rights of children and adolescents.
That’s an important step. More than 40% (around four million) of the population is under 18, with half-a-million of those orphaned or abandoned. Another 800,000 have to do some kind of work to help support a family – that could be working in a shop or it could be prostitution or drug trafficking.
But Bolivia has recognised the problem and ensured that the rights of children form one of the fundamental pillars of how the country is run.
Of course, that doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, it raises more issues because the poverty of the country and the years of neglect of children mean that it hasn’t got the resources or the infrastructure to make their good intentions reality.
But that is the beauty of the support offered by UNICEF. As well as helping children directly at the front line, UNICEF has the muscle and the corporate ability to guide governments to putting in place an infrastructure to help young people.
These projects are not raising funds that will just end up in the pocket of some corrupt official or warlord. They have created a political will to make positive changes and are providing the support to make them last.
So when I pull on my skates next week at Planet Ice to do my marathon, yes I’ll be thinking of the blisters my feet will have by the end of it, the numb hands and the aching back. But I’ll also be thinking of the generosity of the people who have supported me and the future we may have given a child in Bangladesh, Bolivia or Malawi.
Please click here if you would like to support UNICEF and my marathon on ice.
Elliott House write and design publications to promote what our client Kantar’s 28,000 colleagues are doing for a campaign called Brighter Futures and we report back on the children who are benefiting from those donations. The company is aiming to raise US $1m for UNICEF to help change the lives of children in Bangladesh, Bolivia and Malawi.
It can be heart-wrenching. Poverty, sexual exploitation, the need to abandon education in order to make a living or support a family – the wretched plight of people who have had the misfortune to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And yet it wasn’t the horror that prompted me to do something that might raise a few pounds to help.
It was the hope.
Because when you read more closely about the work that UNICEF is doing in these countries, it isn’t just about the direct aid to help children at the front line of poverty.
It is about helping governments and NGOs transform a political vision into a legacy that will result in sustainable change.
Take Bolivia. The South American country enacted a new constitution in 2010 that recognised the rights of children and adolescents.
That’s an important step. More than 40% (around four million) of the population is under 18, with half-a-million of those orphaned or abandoned. Another 800,000 have to do some kind of work to help support a family – that could be working in a shop or it could be prostitution or drug trafficking.
But Bolivia has recognised the problem and ensured that the rights of children form one of the fundamental pillars of how the country is run.
Of course, that doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, it raises more issues because the poverty of the country and the years of neglect of children mean that it hasn’t got the resources or the infrastructure to make their good intentions reality.
But that is the beauty of the support offered by UNICEF. As well as helping children directly at the front line, UNICEF has the muscle and the corporate ability to guide governments to putting in place an infrastructure to help young people.
These projects are not raising funds that will just end up in the pocket of some corrupt official or warlord. They have created a political will to make positive changes and are providing the support to make them last.
So when I pull on my skates next week at Planet Ice to do my marathon, yes I’ll be thinking of the blisters my feet will have by the end of it, the numb hands and the aching back. But I’ll also be thinking of the generosity of the people who have supported me and the future we may have given a child in Bangladesh, Bolivia or Malawi.
Please click here if you would like to support UNICEF and my marathon on ice.
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