Universal Children's Day

Happy Belated Universal Children's Day!!

Universal Children's Day was on Thursday 20th November, and nicely coincided with our latest meeting. For anyone that is not a UNICEF on Campus member, we meet every other Thursday to plan events, discuss issues children are facing around the world, and have a general chinwag! This time, we celebrated by learning about Universal Children's Day.

Universal Children's Day marks the day that the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child & the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1959 and 1989 respectively (yes, it is the 25th anniversary for the beady eyed amongst you!). Although this was obviously a great event, it reminds us that there is still so much to be done around the world for children everywhere.

I think it shocked me most to learn that only 3 UN member nations have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child - Somalia, South Sudan and the good ol' United States of America. There are many reasons for this; including the fact that under 18s can currently be jailed for life without parole, that does not fit in with the treaty. Also, apparently it undermines the authority of parents, especially on sexual and religious education, despite one part of the treaty stating that children should 'grown up in the care and under responsibility of their parents'. I'll let you decide what you think about that. This is an interesting article on the subject: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/10/economist-explains-2

At our meeting, we took photos holding up what issues currently affecting children we felt were most important - here are a selection.

 Child Rights

 Education

 Water

Health

As ever - thank you for reading! Also, here is the link to the speech we watched by the inspiring 12 year old Adora Svitak: http://www.ted.com/talks/adora_svitak

Comedy Night!

Oh what a night…on Friday 14^th November UNICEF on Campus and the Birmingham Footnotes Comedy Society held a joint venture that combined both comedy and charity!

Laughs-a-plenty could be heard from the Beorma Bar as 6 comedians entertained a big crowd, all to fundraise for relief efforts against the Ebola outbreak. There will be an upcoming blog post about the current situation on Ebola, so don’t miss it!

Well done to Ludo Cinelli, our charismatic compere, and also to performers Chris Austin, Kola Adegbola, Richard Baker, Sam Arrowsmith, David Ayland, Bobbie-Ann Jones and Benedict Churchus for really tickling us, everyone was genuinely really funny! There’s always that awkward moment when you worry whether comedians are going actually be funny or not, but thankfully you guys made us all snort, a lot.

Ludo, our compere

Kola, one of the fab comedians

Thank yous go out to all the performers mentioned, everyone who bought a ticket, Ruth and Leonie for buying the snacks (a v. important job) and the UNICEF committee for making it all happen!

All together now…FUCK EBOLA!

Emergency Plan

At our last meeting, UNICEF on campus UoB came up with our emergency plan!

When emergencies strike, we desperately need money to get out fast to those in need. Therefore we need to be ready to raise the essential funds as soon as we hear word of a breaking emergency. We plan to ensure that: 
- We have a system in place to spread the word fast to our university community.
- We are the first society on campus visibly fundraising.
- UNICEF is the first charity the public sees and responds to in an emergency.

 And this is what we came up with! 

Timeline	Action	UNICEF to provide
Day 1 – emergency strikes	-          UNICEF on campus society meeting -          Create a # for twitter and Facebook -          Set up a text to give code -          Generate an awareness of the disaster on social media, post in society and fresher’s groups -          Ask redbrick (campus newspaper) to run an article about the emergency and planned fundraising events	Initial statistics and fundraising goal
Day 2	-          Bucket shake on campus -          Bucket shake in the city centre – tell people about the emergency -          Lecture shout outs -          Put posters up around campus	Give us a pdf A3 poster summarising emergency, what UNICEF is doing to help and how people can donate
Day 3	-          Bake cakes (YES MORE CAKES!) -          Bag packing in Harborne – M&S or Sainsbury’s	Pdf of a flyer summarising emergency which we can print off and give out to people
Day 4	-          Bake sale -          Pub quiz -          Create a UNICEF on campus video update -          Ask local press to get involved	Have some pub quiz questions based on the emergency or on UNICEF in general
Day 5	-          Hopefully there will be an online video/celebrity video which we can share to increase social media awareness -          Obstacle course, 3-legged race, kids games on campus. Pay per go.	Email update on which celebrity UNICEF ambassadors are  involved and what the social media plan is
Day 6	-          Flash mob on campus -          Sports tournament: pay per team or per person and have a prize (donated for free) for the winner, with potential to add a charity auction.	Ask any companies that you work with to donate prizes for raffles, tournaments etc.
Day 7	-          Fundraiser event: comedy night, talent show, karaoke night -          UNICEF dinner: members cook a meal for friends who donate money to UNICEF Society dinner to recount how the weeks fundraising has gone	A thank you email summarising what all the UNICEF on campus groups have done and how much UNICEF has raised.

Buzzing for when I can show my inner Beyonce at the karaoke night...

Well done to everyone who attended the meeting and contributed ideas, I think we are well set up to respond effectively to a crisis. Let's just hope we won't need it.

Lets Get Quizzical

On Monday was our first social of the year - and we decided to embark on the great and noble quest that is winning The Soak pub quiz!

About 3 teams pledged their allegiance to the cause of winning the quiz, with their promise of donating the winnings to UNICEF if the quest proved successful. Little did we know how challenging our quest would be...

The quiz was Halloween themed, it being the week leading up to Halloween and all. And oh my god, it was so hard! Unless you had a superior knowledge of horror films and creepy trivia (I am not about that life), it was bloody difficult. Only one team ended up staying til the end (YOU GO QUIZTICAL!) - a valiant effort.

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I hope everyone had fun regardless, and we'll see you at the next social!

#ChildreninSyria - UNICEF campaign

“It's like a terrifying nightmare that just keeps going on and on. You live everyday as if it's your last because you might die any second"

This quote is from a doctor currently living in Damascus. There is a crisis in Syria, there is no denying.

Before writing this blog post, I knew sh** was going down in Syria, but I didn’t know to what extent and didn’t know exactly what had happened and was happening, right now. I can tell you now: it's not good.

Over the past 3 years, over 100,000 Syrians have lost their lives from the conflicts between forces loyal to President Assad and those opposed to his rule. 100,000 deaths. Let that sink in.

9 million people have been forced from their homes from the destruction of entire neighbourhoods. 9 million people affected.

It all started way back in March 2011, when teenagers who painted revolutionary slogans on a wall were shot at by security forces, killing several. This sparked national protests, demanding President Assad to resign. His family has been in power since 1971.

The country eventually descended into civil war as opposition supporters took up arms against government forces. However, the opposition are a divided group suffering from power struggles and limited financial and military assistance.

Both sides have committed atrocious war crimes including torture, hostage-taking, murder and execution. There have been 27 confirmed incidents of mass killings. There have been reports of use of chemical weapons.

UNICEF have realised that there is a risk of losing an entire generation of the children of Syria through these horrific conflicts.

5,090,000 children are currently living in dire situations inside Syria: suffering poverty, displacement and some caught in the lines of fire.

1,654,544 children of Syria now live as refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt and other countries in North Africa.

The youngest children are confused and scared by their experiences, lacking the sense of safety and home they need. The older children are forced to grow up too fast, finding work and taking care of their family in desperate circumstances. Below is Mohammad's story; 12 years old and already working 12 hour days.

Not all hope is lost; UNICEF are working hard on their #ChildrenofSyria campaign. Some of the projects they have done include supporting school clubs, driving polio immunisation, giving psychosocial support as well as providing humanitarian aid where it is needed.

So that is where our £170.81 went to from our bake sale last week! An extremely worthy cause.

If you want to find out any more about the #ChildrenofSyria campaign, look at the microsite on it here: http://childrenofsyria.info/

If you want to send a message to prevent a lost generation, you can do so here: http://childrenofsyria.info/add-your-voice/

And if you want to donate some money towards the campaign, click here: http://www.supportunicef.org/site/c.dvKUI9OWInJ6H/b.8298561/k.555F/Donate_to_help_the_children_of_Syria.htm

UNICEF cake sale!

Hello everyone, my name is Amy and I am the proper offish UNICEF on campus blogger for UoB this year! Nice to meet y’all.

In my humble opinion, cake sales are one of the best things in life. You feel good about yourself because you are giving money to charity, and of course, YOU GET TO STUFF YOURSELF WITH DELICIOUS CAKE! There are literally no drawbacks.

Not entirely based on this thought process, UNICEF on campus hosted a bake sale on Thursday 16^th October in the Guild – their first event of this academic year (exciting stuff). We voted to raise money for the children suffering in the conflicts in Syria, an excellent cause – more on this topic in the next blog post, so stay tuned!

The day before, UNICEF members flocked to various houses around Selly Oak to channel their inner Mary Berry and make an array of fabulous flapjacks, brilliant brownies, marvellous muffins and more. Can we just appreciate my use of great adjectives AND the power of three in one fell swoop there. This blogging malarkey is easy…ANYWAY, all of our cakes were made by ourselves which made them even tastier, obvs. Leonie – that peach muffins recipe to me please, ASAP.

Oh my god, what a babe.

On the day, the cake sale was most definitely a resounding success - £170.81 was made overall which is really good. Thanks to everybody that made the effort to make cakes, buy a cake or 5 (I definitely did not do that), and those who helped run the stall throughout the day – including people that texted and badgered their friends on campus til they came and bought a cake! GREAT EFFORT.

Dem cakes tho.

As I said, next blog post will be on the cause we fundraised for, the UNICEF project working with children in Syria. So please come back and procrastinate from your work on this site again at some point soon :)

Poverty Banquet Was A Resounding Success

The annual Poverty Banquet was an entertaining and informative night for all - music by Little Dynamite (https://www.facebook.com/littledynamiteband) and The Materialists along with Sacha the Magician provided a constant stream of activity, well worth the £5 entry. Guest speaker Maud reminded everyone about the work that UNICEF is doing and how our donations have helped and a talk by UNICEF on campus President and Vice-President Catherine and Paula added to the audience's understanding of the importance of raising money for the Central African Republic emergency fund.

The money raised by just one ticket could feed a child from the Central African Republic for a week, and the event raised a total of £260 meaning that 52 children could be fed for a week each or one child could have enough food for a whole year. This is a truly admirable achievement and one which we hope to exceed next year.

Each group of people was sat on either a low, middle or high income table and this corresponded to the amount of food which they were first give. Low income had a small portion of rice, middle income had more rice and some beans, and high income had large portions of both with some extras thrown in as well. This visual representation of world income disparities resonated with many and made everyone think a bit more about how lucky we are to live in a high income country. As many of the low income country tables were still (unsurprisingly) hungry, the banquet table was then opened to all with food kindly donated by Tiger Bills and also supplied by Selly Sausage and Aldi in Selly Oak.

Overall the event was a resounding success and this wouldn't have been possible without the efforts of the UNICEF on campus committee, the performers who donated their time, the generous food donors and of course the audience for attending. Look out for the next UNICEF on campus event at the University of Birmingham, if the poverty banquet is anything to go by, it will be well worth getting involved in.



The Materialists


Guests enjoying the banquet


Sacha wows the guests


Everyone tucks into the banquet


Little Dynamite


Information about world hunger on each table


UNICEF on campus members with guest speaker Maud

Poverty banquet - Tuesday 11th February, 6pm, Debating Hall (Guild of Students)

UNICEF on campus society will be hosting the poverty banquet, which is an annual fundraising event here at UoB. The aim is to raise money for children in the Central African Republic, which has suffered from outbreaks of violence in the run-up to electing an inter-rim president. Around 2.3 million children have been affected by this conflict and nearly half a million children have been displaced from their homes in the past year. Why not help raise money for this worthwhile cause whilst also enjoying a night of food and entertainment?

Tickets are just £5!

This includes a buffet dinner, entertainment from JabSoc and Acapella Soc who are generously donating their time and a guest speaker to tell you all about UNICEF’s work. It looks to be an amazing night and hopefully there will be lots of people to support this event, so please come and join us.