Become a Champion
There are many ways to show that you care about children and their wellbeing. Any action towards ending child poverty, big or small, counts. Champions carry out actions such as:
- Volunteering
- Supporting or starting an initiative to alleviate in your community
- Form an end child poverty team in your community or organisation
- Sharing your knowledge
- Fundraising to help overcome child poverty in your community and other communities as well
Educate
- Organise a cultural or educational event: Organize an educational or a cultural event together with young people in your local community. These activities can include writing essays, sports, dance, performing or expressive arts, music, games, drama, watching a film, or any suitable event to raise awareness about child poverty and actions to overcome it. Partner with children or youth organisations such as religious groups, children’s homes, sports clubs, scouts and peace clubs, in order to host this event.
- Involve your school: Partner with the school(s) in your community to organise and host an awareness activity. Together To End Child Poverty. Invite students, teachers and parents to take part in your event.In this school activity, provide a platform for children to speak about how communities can end child poverty and violence against children.Remember to provide space for children to showcase their work in addressing child poverty.
- Teach Sustainable Development: Teach children and youth the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and empower them to take action towards overcoming child poverty and achieving the Agenda 2030. Visit our SDGs Academy for Children, for more information.
- Sponsor a child: Sponsor a child or a group of children to participate in the SDGs Academy for Children, either in our Pioneer Hub (Kenya) or Model Classroom (Sri Lanka), or through the online interaction. Visit our SDGs Academy for Children, for more information.
FEED
Today, more vulnerable children are becoming malnourished due to the deteriorating quality of their diets and the multiple shocks created by the COVID-19 pandemic and its containment measures. In 2020, UNICEF and its partners tipped that an additional 6.7 million children over the edge to become wasted during its first year, as a result of the pandemic. In the recent years, we have been mobilizing our partners including members of the GNRC to ensure that all children have access to safe, nutritious and adequate food, all year round. This way, key drivers and root causes of poverty, that is, hunger and malnutrition – can be effectively tackled. The programme is currently active in Colombia, Cuba, Kenya, Mexico and Peru.
In commemorating this 10th anniversary with us, you too can take action towards alleviating malnutrition in children:
- Donate food for 10 children or 10 schools for the school feeding programme or start a feeding programme for 10 vulnerable families.
- Invite faith leaders in your community to organise (intrafaith or interfaith) prayer for children affected by hunger.
- Write to your local leaders or government representatives about the state of children’s malnutrition & hunger in your community and ask them to take actions against child malnutrition.
- Organise community mapping to identify number of children are affected by malnutrition & hunger in your community.
- Join our social media campaign by sharing posts on social media with information and facts about tackling child malnutrition & hunger . You can use our media kit for some messages and visual elements on the same.
- Join us to mark the World Food Day on October 16th, and the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17th, and use this to communicate about the need to end hunger and malnutrition in children.
- Donate $10 towards supporting our Meals-for-schools initiative; where we support our partners to provide nutritious school meals to children.
- Tell us what you’ll be doing to help feed children or Pledge any other action you aim to undertake your community. Post this in our ECP@10 Pledge and inspire others with your action as well.
Involve your faith community: Organise a spiritual observance according to your religion or faith tradition, such as prayers, meditation, and faith-based reflection based on your Holy Scriptures, all for the wellbeing of children. You can also organise an inter-faith event, where you invite people from different faith communities to collaborate and host a joint activity for children.
- Involve your school: Partner with the school(s) in your community to organise and host an awareness activity. Invite students, teachers and parents to take part in your event.
- In this school activity, provide a platform for children to speak about how communities can end child poverty and violence against children.
- Remember to provide space for children to showcase their work in addressing child poverty.
- Partner with a local business: Consider partnering with business enterprises through their Corporate Social Investment / Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes, their foundations, or other such opportunities. Let them know how responding to children’s rights and needs, including overcoming child poverty, is strategically beneficial to their work and to all of society.
LISTEN
- Listen to Children: Create spaces to listen to children with empathy and respect, welcome their wisdom and gifts, and continue to work side-by-side with children to address violence against them and end child poverty. Organize various ‘Listening to Children’ sessions with young people from your community, guided by the topic, Together To End Child Poverty.
- You can use the Learning To Live Together (LTLT) methodology to organise these sessions.
- Focus on providing a safe space for children to express their views on child poverty and violence against children, as well as their ideas for community actions to address both.
- Use the responses given by the children to help you in planning your future End Child Poverty projects.
- Organize a Forum: Organize a webinar, roundtable, workshop, debate or other such knowledge sharing discussion on ending child poverty.