Buried in Children Data

It’s Saturday night so nobody is reading this. Except you thousand+ subscribers, you’ll be reading this back at the office on monday.. hope the weekend was fun.

Madge Weinstein is talking to me from some expensive on-plane internet access. Which sounds fancy but actually the plane is not in the air. Actually according to Madge, the plane is “broken.” The saga continues.

I started researching the topic of children and the state of children’s lives around the world, for a podcast. I have a tendency to look at charts and seek percentages and figures that shed light on some undeniable fact. Then I start to consider my excessive focus on stats and numbers, there’s always more to a story than just that.

Unicef has it’s Millennium Development Goals. And apparently, from what I witness through both their vlog and podcast, they’re well on the way towards achieving things like, access to safe drinking water, school for boys and girls, proper nutrition/vitamins, etc. Yet other goals seem unreachable in the current global context, especially those involving keeping children out of conflict zones. I saw a figure recently somewhere – again with the numbers – it read “number of UN soldiers on the ground in Darfur: None.”

Whether its Darfur or any other corner of the world, where children suffer, die, and are born everyday into terrible situations, it’s mindblowing how relatively little is being done. While the UN is constantly criticized for different problems and alleged uselessness according to some, bodies within the UN, such as UNICEF, WFP, and the UNHCR have people who have dedicated their lives to DIRECT ACTION. To feeding the hungry. To healing the sick. To helping find solutions to important problems, which the world has the knowledge and capability to fix – if it wants to. They don’t make political speeches, complete with empty promises about money, security, personel, and supplies. They don’t just write a blog post, or compose a song, or forward an E-petition – they put themselves on the line… their physical self.

And while I admire those who speak up in the face of tremendous odds. While I cheer for the independent, activist voice. My greatest respect goes to those in the field… because they make the sacrifice that I have not.