Children whose lives you have helped improve

Send in your Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF contribution so UNICEF can put it to work saving children's lives!

When five-year-old Khesna Ibro arrived in her father's arms at Bissidimo Hospital in Ethiopia's Oromia Region, she was weak and glassy-eyed from acute malnutrition. Her father, Ibro Bekeri Yusef, had carried the young girl for a full day to get from his small farm to the UNICEF-supported feeding unit at the hospital. Immediately, nutrition workers there assessed Khesna's condition and began a feeding program to help her body recover from the shock of malnutrition.

Soon, Mr. Ibro and Khesna were sitting in the hospital's courtyard, where he gently gave her small sips of therapeutic milk from a bright orange cup. The milk is rich in vitamins and micronutrients and is the first food given to severely malnourished children (in small doses, eight times a day) because it helps condition their bodies to digest food again.

The global economic crisis has hit Ethiopia incredibly hard—in 2008, food prices nearly doubled. And severe drought exacerbated an already bad situation. Drought is particularly deadly in this country, where 80% of the population lives off the land. Khesna's father was grateful to know that, with continued help, Khesna would recover. But he was deeply worried about his six children back at home. "My other children are also suffering," he said.

In Ethiopia (and many other countries), UNICEF is the main provider of many therapeutic foods including Plumpy'nut—a high-protein peanut paste that is so effective at fighting malnutrition on a mass scale it's often called a miracle food.

UNICEF's nutrition programs are making a profound difference for malnourished children in Ethiopia—and around the globe. But with food shortages continuing, UNICEF will need additional support to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of other children like Khesna.

Twelve-year-old Ajimoh Yaya used to wake up at 4 AM every morning, walk more than a mile in the dark to a river, then trudge home with buckets of water for her family. The river was the only source of water for Ajimoh’s small village in Nigeria. During the dry season, when the river was low and prone to contamination, deadly diseases like cholera and diarrhea raged throughout her community.

The daily task of collecting water also meant Ajimoh was often late for school. And because there was so little water, it was hard for her and her siblings to bathe properly. “I had rashes all over my skin,” Ajimoh recalls.

But after UNICEF helped build two wells in her village, Ajimoh’s life has improved tremendously. “Now that we have the wells, nobody in the community goes to fetch water from Abata River anymore, not even to wash clothes,” she says. “I now wake up at 6 AM. I bathe twice a day, wash my school uniform every day, help my mother bathe my two brothers, eat breakfast, and still get to school early.”

Even more important, Ajimoh and members of her community no longer have to take a deadly gamble every time they drink water.

The stunning beauty of the cloud-capped peaks and azure waters of the northern Maluku Islands belies a deadly threat. 

Communities in this isolated part of Indonesia have lost young and old alike to malaria. The disease—which kills approximately 1 million people worldwide every year—is spread through parasites that are carried from person to person by certain types of mosquitoes. Watery environments are perfect breeding grounds for the mosquitoes.

For Esther Rahmat, who lives in a small village accessible only by boat, the disease resulted in heart-rending tragedy. When one of her twin twenty-one-month-old daughters came down with a fever, she took the infant to the health clinic. “They said it was malaria,” Esther recalls. “They gave her something, but it was too late.” The child died the next morning.

Two of her neighbors’ babies also succumbed to malaria around the same time. Esther then contracted the disease herself and was treated at the hospital. When malaria doesn’t kill, it can lead to debilitating anemia, vomiting, convulsions, and diarrhea. In children, the disease can also slow mental and physical development.
UNICEF and its partners are combating malaria in Indonesia through a prevention program that includes the mass distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets. The nets are particularly effective because malaria-bearing mosquitoes prey almost exclusively at night.

To protect her other children, Esther now sleeps with them under a new bed net. “I don’t worry when we go to sleep now,” she says. “I don’t worry about getting bitten by mosquitoes. We can all sleep peacefully.”

Fifteen-year-old Judith had almost arrived home from school when Haiti’s earthquake struck. She remembers that she was suddenly covered, head-to-toe, in white dust. And her mother was trapped beneath the rubble of what, just moments ago, had been the family’s house.

“My family worked frantically to remove the rocks, but they were too heavy to lift and we could not move quickly enough,” says Judith. “That night we buried our mother.”

Judith had suddenly lost so much—her home and her mother—but one thing she did not lose was her beloved school. L’École Nationale République du Brésil was one of many that were soon reopened with UNICEF’s help.

Since the earthquake, UNICEF has aided millions of Haitians by supplying clean drinking water, health care, therapeutic foods, immunizations, sanitation, shelter, child protection, family reunification, and more.

Reconstructing damaged or destroyed schools has also been a major UNICEF priority since the earthquake, because children desperately want—and need—to return to a sense of normalcy after their lives have been turned upside down by disaster. In many cases, schools in Haiti are now being “built back better,” with separate bathrooms for girls, hand-washing stations, and child-friendly spaces.

Judith now takes comfort in her education—and in keeping the memory of her mother alive through music, which she studies daily. Her school choir even composed a song about the earthquake. “Sometimes I want to give up, but a little voice tells me to stay determined, to keep going,” Judith says. “I go to school for my mother, for my future. It's my reason for living.”

Kessa age 7 and Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF participant—organized a yard sale to raise funds for and educate her friends and neighbors about the needs of children just like Judith in Haiti.