When I lost all my family at the age of 15 I decided to leave the Gambia. Since I didn’t have any money to buy a bus ticket I left by foot, walking for hours towards the border of Senegal. I had to cross five countries during my travels: Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Libya. The entire journey took me seven months. All in all,… Read more →←
“We used to think that when the mother has swollen feet she is pregnant with twins, but now we know that when we see a mother with swollen feet, it is important for that mother to go to the health unit.” In 2015, 19 out of every 1,000 babies born in Uganda died within their first 28 days of life – 30,000 newborns in total. Many… Read more →←
Impressive. That’s the word I’d use to best describe what’s happening at the shelter for Barbudan evacuees I visited. At the National Technical Training Centre in Antigua, I saw that, despite the trauma of Hurricane Irma, people were trying to get back to some kind of normal routine. There were a couple of seven year olds happily… Read more →←
My volunteer work over the past year has allowed me to work with refugee children from 21 countries worldwide as an academic and personal mentor at a shelter in London. Through this I have seen firsthand the challenges children and young people face when they are forced to flee their homes. 1. Mental Health: “I don’t feel so good.”… Read more →←
A force of determined women already involved in the fight against polio has been assembled to lead work to curb the spread of a cholera outbreak in northeast Nigeria. Displaced by conflict and themselves living in camps around the crisis region, these women are moving from tent to tent to help families understand the risks they face… Read more →←
There is enormous devastation here. Most of the telephone poles are down, roads are blocked, lots of trees uprooted. Many houses have lost roofs, including mine. Part of my house has a galvanised roof and most of these have blown off. Some buildings have totally collapsed. Across the whole island, electricity is off completely. We have… Read more →←
I am waking up to battering rain. Irma is coming closer. Packing winds of 185mph, Irma is the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record. Exceeding current storm category measures (above 5), Irma is far stronger than Hurricane Matthew, a category 4 hurricane that brought devastation to Haiti just one year ago. Irma is barreling across… Read more →←
The sun never sets on UNICEF – and when children are in danger, the global community leaps into action to protect them. Saturday night Panama. Sunday morning Bangkok. Middle of the night in France. What do they have to do with a hurricane forming in the Caribbean? It means using every available UNICEF channel to get life-saving ‘be… Read more →←
Reelmedia’s film “How Far Would You Walk for Clean Water?” was shown globally, on UNICEF’s social media channels, to highlight the situation of children in Somalia, especially around the difficulty of getting clean water. It was seen by over 10 million people. Tim Webster, the film’s director, writes about making the video. In… Read more →←
“I named my daughter Radiyé, which means ‘I accept’ in Arabic, because I delivered the baby easily only a few hours after having drunk the water from the new pump. With this first name given to my daughter, I wanted to illustrate my enthusiasm and gratitude, because we will be able to start another life thanks to the… Read more →←
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