After spending the first part of 2014 trying to lose weight and get back in shape after a pretty heavy Christmas, my mind began to wonder a few nights ago when I saw an advert on the television for the charity Unicef. As you should be able to see from the picture I’ve chosen to include with this post, volunteers who donate time to this organisation spend their days in some of the poorest and most war-stricken countries on the planet in the hope of bringing joy and some kind of normality to children who’re born into this environment.
I went over to their website and did a bit of reading. It was clear that many people, especially those in Africa, are in dire need of our financial assistance. Whilst I would love to go over there and take the hands on approach, like many of you, my own family and social commitments simply won’t allow me to do so. However, this doesn’t mean we can’t help in our own individual ways, which is precisely why I donated a significant sum of money to their cause, and why I implore you to do the same. At the end of the day, our brothers and sisters are suffering terribly in this part of the world, and a failure to help them would be a tragedy for the whole of humanity.
Incidentally, those of you who’ve ever read the Qur’an will remember a quote that goes something like “to kill a single human being is like killing the whole human race”, and I think that’s a rather poignant sentence given the current situation. We’re all sat at home in the west with our central heating, our running water and our electricity, whilst those people living in Africa struggle to find enough food to make even one single meal. On top of this, many of them are left with no choice but to drink disease ridden, stagnated water that could kill them in the near future.
The Unicef online charity website is currently running a program called “Global Parent” where supporters are encouraged to donate money that will be used to help support all children in impoverished areas to survive the first 1,000 days of their life. The reasoning is, young people are most likely to perish in poor nations during this period, and so Unicef aim to provide them with enough food, clean water, sanitation and medical care to give them a fighting chance of seeing adulthood.
There are varying amounts you can donate via standard packages, but even if you can only afford a couple of pounds each month, I’m sure the good people who run this charity would be glad to have you get in touch. Starting at around £20 per month, the first package guarantees your money will provide enough products to help at least two malnourished children back to health. At the top end of the scale is a package that costs around £60 per month, and this guarantees you’ll provide needy people with a minimum of 88 sachets of therapeutic milk containing vitamins and carbohydrates.
So, do me a big favour and have a read through the details of this scheme yourself. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that committing some of your spare cash to people doing good work like this is definitely worthwhile.
Have a heart guys.
See you soon!
