QUOTES
“I
spent the past week here in India getting a sense of the reality of HIV and AIDS
in people’s lives. Fathers and mothers are dying, leaving children with no support.
Stigma and discrimination is ruining the family lives. There is an urgent need
for education, information, and increased awareness of HIV and AIDS. The response
needs to be now. We cannot afford to become fatigued.”
...the
world is a giant community now. This excuse of distance, time, doesn’t work...We’re
all so connected. We can’t spend every second of our lives worrying about another
family miles away but we somehow have to factor it in where we can.
News
reports can overwhelm us. We can be appalled, we can sympathise. But what is hard
to grasp is the sense that, at this moment, people are working, organising - not
just at an executive level, but on the floor, in the warehouse. A man is packing
a box of oral rehydration tablets; maternity kits are being prepared; education
kits are being packed. And somewhere, tomorrow, those boxes will be unpacked and
a child with life-threatening diarrhoea will be saved, a baby will be born in
more hygienic circumstances, a girl will receive her first exercise book and her
first pencil.
Unicef's
education initiative does not seek to impose, but to initiate and integrate. It
does, however, aim to address the huge bias towards education for boys at the
expense of girls in so many cultures.
Unicef
wants to encourage a sense of stability for a child.
