At a time when multiple, overlapping world crises demand attention equally, UNICEF is deeply grateful to work with partners that share an enduring commitment to investing and innovating for a better future for children. UNICEF USA partners with purpose-driven companies, foundations and philanthropists who contribute immense resources to serving the world’s most vulnerable children. In life-threatening conflicts and disasters, these partners enable UNICEF to respond rapidly and effectively. Over the longer term, their contributions help address systemic inequities, stimulate national investment and capacity building, implement and scale up data-driven solutions and leverage digital and technological advances so that every child can grow up healthy, educated, protected and respected.
There are only seven years left to achieve the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the 17-point plan to ensure the rights of all and save the planet. If the foreign network fails to meet the plan’s goals, the world’s 2 billion young people may be deprived of their basic right to have a healthy planet and thrive on it. Unfortunately, the global polycrisis – multiple and worsening disasters, coupled with climate change, violent conflict, COVID-19 and economic crises – have led to an alarming lack of investment in the lives and futures of young people. To drive progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), governments, civil society and businesses will need to cooperate to design, scale up and deliver cutting-edge solutions.
Many UNICEF partnerships address multiple SDGs, which are interconnected through design. Each purpose applies to children’s ability to succeed in their future to some extent, SDG 3, which aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. it applies to a wide range of UNICEF programmes.
Community fitness staff (CHS), usually women and trained volunteers, play a very important role in bridging the gaps between regional and national fitness systems. As trusted members of their communities, CHWs provide essential and essential facilities and assistance to families. informed decisions about fitness care. However, many CSL systems remain underfunded, leaving staff with insufficient education and resources to meet their responsibilities.
For more than 35 years, Johnson
Thanks to investment from the Johnson Foundation
Equitable access to information, data and technology underpins UNICEF’s health systems strengthening (HSS) efforts. In 2020, UNICEF received $30,000 in cloud credits from Google.org, which UNICEF used to develop representative, unbiased data for programs like school mapping and vaccinations. The data also helped shape UNICEF Innovation’s Magic Box, which leverages AI and data to address issues like epidemic response (including COVID-19), infrastructure mapping and demographic mapping for vulnerable populations.
Enciani Radja holds four-month-old Fayra after her daughter won the polio vaccine at a clinic in Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province, where UNICEF is working with partners to increase immunization rates to eliminate the disease once and for all.
Quality maternal and neonatal health care offers a child the best start. For over two decades, Kimberly-Clark has helped UNICEF maintain and scale critical programs that have strengthened neonatal health systems in rural communities across China and Vietnam, to support over 15 million babies and their families. The partnership has also helped UNICEF reach over 1.4 million children and 1.1 million parents across Latin America and the Caribbean with quality early childhood development (ECD) interventions.
More than six hundred million people worldwide will face famine by 2030 if progress towards the SDG 2 goal of Zero Hunger is not accelerated. 149 million children suffer from malnutrition in early childhood; Globally, it affects 22 percent of children under the age of 5. A contribution from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supports UNICEF’s “No Time to Lose” strategy to prevent, detect and treat severe acute malnutrition or wasting in young people.
Adolescence (10-19 years) marks a new threshold of interaction with society. Ninety percent of the world’s 1. 2 billion adolescents live in low- and middle-income countries. Of these, 125 million are in areas affected by armed conflicts. Poverty, gender Inequality and other bureaucracies of discrimination are exacerbated by climate change, clashes, and humanitarian crises, all of which jeopardize the well-being of adolescents.
UNICEF supports programmes that promote gender equality, reduce stigma and discrimination, and provide adolescents with data to make decisions that impact their sexual, reproductive and intellectual fitness. Achieving gender parity and women’s empowerment and women, at the heart of SDG 5, requires big ideas to dismantle systemic barriers. Girls who enter puberty and menstruate without adequate help face stigma and social exclusion and lack educational, social and economic opportunities. Kimberly-Clark is helping UNICEF raise awareness about safe menstrual health and hygiene (MHH). , enabling women to stay in school and adopt hygienic and fitness behaviours. This partnership focuses on the implementation of gender- and disability-sensitive water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes, and publicises advocacy messages to break the stigma around menstruation.
For decades, Zonta International’s work with UNICEF has preserved and improved thousands of lives by supporting adolescents with the services, information, and inclusive environments needed to reach their full potential. In Madagascar, Zonta supports systems to ensure that children, especially girls, are informed in an inclusive environment and empowered to contribute to building climate-resilient communities. Students and teachers get education in water conservation, environmental education, and MHH.
In Peru, 157,000 students have benefited from the Zonta-supported violence prevention strategy (PREVI) in schools; the partnership has also given 49 health centers tools to collaborate with schools to protect students’ mental health.
Students wash their hands and faces at a school in Balkh province, Afghanistan, in June 2023. In collaboration with partners, UNICEF has built latrines and handwashing facilities (with solar-powered pumps) for women and children.
Worsening the climate crisis requires ordinary and urgent action, as set out in SDG 13. This includes the progression of resilient and adaptive responses to climate-related hazards and natural disasters. SDG 6 calls for universal, sustainable and equitable access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. In 2022, 2. 2 billion people did not have access to controlled drinking water and 2. 2 billion did not have handwashing facilities. Since 2020, the Baxter International Foundation has been helping to drive progress towards SDG 6 through investment in WASH. In the La Guajira program, Colombia. La partnership ensures that thousands of children, adolescents, families and communities, including refugee and migrant communities, have access to sustainable water resources in one of the country’s most water-threatened regions.
Baxter and UNICEF are rehabilitating water systems, promoting basic sanitation using community-based solutions, installing solar panels, monitoring water quality, and distributing water filters and hygiene kits to families. Recent weather-related emergencies in Colombia have increased the demand for water filters and hygiene kits, highlighting the demand for long-term, sustainable solutions. Baxter, whose contribution also supports SDG 9, which pertains to infrastructure and innovation, extended its support to UNICEF for a climate-resilient WASH program in Egypt.
With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF identified innovative and sustainable interventions to treat and dispose of wastewater and fecal sludge and to improve the sanitation infrastructure for Syrian refugees in Lebanese host communities. The Foundation also supports a UNICEF pilot to remove pathogens from anaerobic sludge and test the viability of a new market for locally produced compost and co-compost. These collaborations highlight the importance of scaling innovative solutions to meet WASH needs. The worsening climate crisis requires extraordinary and urgent action, as laid out in SDG 13. UNICEF works with governments to put children at the center of their climate change strategies and response plans; nearly 90 percent of the disease burden attributable to climate change globally is borne by children under 5. This includes developing resilient and adaptive solutions to climate-related hazards and natural disasters.
Climate-resilient WASH interventions and infrastructures use other strategies to identify safe and adaptable water sources and sanitation facilities for communities affected by climate change. In India, the fifth most vulnerable country to climate change, Xylem Inc. , through its UNICEF WASH work, has directly helped at least 1. 24 million young people gain benefits through improved access to and schooling in WASH in schools and preschools. A whopping 860,000 schools, 889,000 kindergartens and 35,000 public establishments now have access to running water. In addition, Xylem-ed campaigns have helped raise awareness about menstrual health and hygiene among millions of people, adding that it reached 12 million people on World Menstrual Hygiene Day.
UNICEF works with governments to put children at the centre of their sustainability and climate update strategies and reaction plans; More than one million deaths of children under the age of five are attributable to unsanitary environments. With the help of the Clarios Foundation, UNICEF’s Healthy Environments for Healthy Children (HEHC) programme is being implemented to protect children from the effects of pollutants and climate. in 14 countries. HEHC calls for mobilizing collective action from all government sectors and the network, adding the empowerment of youth and youth to act as replacement agents. So far, 1. 7 million caregivers have been reached (with awareness programs on environmental threats affecting children and how to protect them), 7,51 youth activists and five youth groups are involved (in advocating for actions at national and local levels to address climate degradation and environmental issues) and many fitness teams receive training on children. Environmental fitness issues (and how to prevent, detect, and control lead poisoning).
Children in an informal tent arrangement in Jordan are vaccinated through a UNICEF-supported cellular fitness team. “I think it’s very important to vaccinate young people so they don’t get sick. There’s a lot of dirt here, which increases the risk of our young people getting sick. “, and that’s why we’re vaccinating them,” said Abu Amir, seen here with his son.
Rotary International and the Bill Foundation
In 2016, Google.org announced a $1 million donation to UNICEF and raised additional funds through employee giving campaigns to fight the spread of the Zika virus. Google technical volunteers worked with UNICEF to build a platform to map and anticipate virus outbreaks and to develop technology applicable to Zika that could be adapted for other health emergencies.
UNICEF has recently prioritized the detection, prevention and treatment of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) to strengthen health systems. NCDs in children and adolescents are accompanied by type 1 diabetes, cancer, congenital and rheumatic core diseases, sickle cell anemia, and asthma. Although many NCDs are preventable and treatable, these diseases kill around one million people under the age of 20 worldwide each year. Behaviors such as smoking, physical inactivity, poor diet, and excessive alcohol consumption can increase the risk of dying from some cause. ENT.
In December 2021, UNICEF secured its first grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust to encourage greater inclusion, prioritization and resource mobilization for NCD programming globally. The allocation also follows the PEN-Plus style of progressive decentralization to expand staffing, training, and interventions. and materials needed in first-level district hospitals to address severe chronic NCDs in Malawi and Mozambique.
Another strategic and innovative collaboration working to change the landscape of childhood NCDs is with Eli Lilly and Company. A special event at the 2023 UN General Assembly focused on accelerating greater multisectoral action on childhood NCDs and advocating for further investment in health systems strengthening. In 2022, Lilly and UNICEF joined forces to improve health outcomes for 10 million children and adolescents with NCDs in Bangladesh, Malawi, Nepal, the Philippines and Zimbabwe. Lilly committed $14.4 million to support UNICEF’s efforts to address NCD risk factors, strengthen country-level health systems and enhance the ability of health workers to provide care and support.
Rupa, Sonam and Kajal Kumari explore learning virtual literacy at a school in Kalyanpur Panchayat, Patna, Bihar, India.
SDG four, which prioritizes quality education, recognizes that building the foundation for long-term learning, smart fitness, and income-earning prospects begins in the early years of a child’s life. “School infrastructure and the adoption of virtual transformation are essential” to achieving the four SDG benchmarks by 2030, according to a 2023 special report on SDG progress.
UNICEF and Microsoft have helped millions of young people acquire and expand essential skills through UNICEF’s flagship programmes, Passport to Learning and Passport to Earn Money. Learning Passport, a flexible virtual platform and remote learning solution, has reached more than 6 million young people in 36 countries, adding students with limited or no access to the web. By offering a virtual learning experience without the web, the Learning Passport represents a cutting-edge technique for bridging the virtual divide, which prevents part of the world population from benefiting from virtual advancements due to a lack of internet connectivity. The Passport to Make Money empowers young people with free, employment-relevant skills that enable them economic opportunities and has so far trained and qualified more than one million young people. in India in the spaces of monetary literacy and virtual productivity.
Fundamentally, achieving universal Internet access for all starts with locating attachment gaps. Dell Technologies provides valuable technical information to drive Giga’s project to connect each and every school to the Internet. Data scientists at Giga, a joint initiative of UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), use device learning algorithms and high-resolution satellite imagery to map the precise location of schools. The application of Dell’s High Performance Computing (HPC) generation has particularly reduced the time it takes to download, process and apply those models. to satellite imagery. In Sudan, for example, the processing time was reduced from one year to six weeks, as the team learned about more than 13,000 schools that had not been mapped in the past. With an accurate map of school locations, Giga can upload critical insights such as attachment prestige and infrastructure in real-time, helping governments implement attachment responses that drive virtual inclusion efforts for schoolchildren.
UNICEF introduced Learning for Life in 2018 with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This multinational program provides ECD and school facilities to refugees and vulnerable youth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. More More than 114,380 young people had access to ECD, schooling or choice learning opportunities.
Since 2019, UNICEF and SAP have created inclusive opportunities for more than 7. 6 million adolescents through cutting-edge skills progression systems aligned with the SDG 4 goal on quality education and the SDG 8 goal on a job. worthy for all. Globally, one in four young people were not. Young women were more than twice as likely to be in this scenario in 2022 as young men. The association supports Generation Unlimited (GenU) and contributes to a standardized approach. National curriculum, preparation systems. , and in-depth studies to better count and connect the private sector with long-term talent.
The initial partnership was announced in 2019 in India, Turkey, and Vietnam, while the partnership expanded in 2022 aimed at impacting youth in Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, and South Africa through the expansion of YOMA, a virtual marketplace for young people’s social interaction has an effect on tasks and money-making learning opportunities that will reshape their future.
The collaboration included the launch of the SAP Educate to Employ (E2E) initiative, a “learn to earn” adventure aimed at equipping disadvantaged youth with must-have skills, knowledge, attitudes and values to prepare them for job opportunities in the vast SAP ecosystem. Since the beginning of 2023, more than 1,000 young people have been trained.
These stories represent just some of the game-changing ways that our partners’ investments of funding, expertise and time amplify UNICEF’s impact for the world’s most disadvantaged children. The private sector is critical to fulfilling the SDGs’ promise to radically improve people’s lives and the planet. Halfway to the 2030 deadline, UNICEF continues collaborating with partners to design scalable and sustainable solutions for the low- and middle-income countries that will bear the brunt of failing to meet these goals. The good news is evidence shows that investing in children, particularly in the early years, can be the best way to accelerate progress toward the SDGs. Our partners’ commitment enables UNICEF to direct resources toward strengthening national capacity, accountability and policies to create a better world for children.
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