UNICEF at FIU seeks to make its mark

By: Aura Altamiranda/Contributing Writer

United Nations Children’s Fund, better known as UNICEF, works to better the lives of disadvantaged children in over 150 countries through donations and volunteer work.

Through its many partnerships nationwide, it gathers support and has its partners advocate their goals in order to rally further support in more communities.

UNICEF@FIU is in its third year working with the national headquarters, promoting campaigns on campus and raising funds for UNICEF’s purposes.

As college students partnered with a much larger humanitarian organization, they are limited in what projects they can engage themselves in. While they cannot venture out and participate in fieldwork that requires travel, they offer their services through projects within their reach.

Yasmin Zakkout serves as the UNICEF@FIU representative in the Council for Student Organizations. CSO is responsible for the funding the group received to attend the Campus Initiative Leadership Summit in October. Attendees traveled to New York from Oct. 8 through Oct. 10, networked with organizations from other universities and returned to their respective groups with ideas to apply to their operations.

They were also exposed to lectures by UNICEF employees about their experiences and the protocol for situations they have confronted, such as natural disaster relief. Other sessions promoted teamwork and offered ideas on increasing membership nationally beginning with increasing membership locally.

The members’ greatest struggle is attaining and maintaining membership from the University community.

“Our organization is very young at FIU and the workshops taught us teamwork, how to get our members more motivated and how to get us more motivated,” said Nasreen El-Masri, activities coordinator. As a result, UNICEF was able to retain over half of its members.

On the last day of the trip, the Global Poverty Project was discussed. Initiated by humanitarians Hugh Evans and Simon Moss, the project’s main focus is for its participants to attempt five days of little spending to highlight the difficulty of living in impoverished countries.

UNICEF@FIU’s activities have included bake sales, the Halloween Week Fashion Show, trick-or-treat boxes used to collect donations and selling water bottles to support the Believe in Zero campaign.

Approximately 50 years running nationally, the Believe in Zero campaign’s goal is to stomp out the child mortality rate from preventable illnesses and lack of resources. It is the organization’s main focus. A year-round project, Believe in Zero is making leeway by the thousands annually with the University making its own contributions. “As small as we are, every dollar counts. Twenty-five cents can provide clean water for a child in a poor country,” said Loan Van, president.

Promotion plans for the University include creating flyers and pamphlets, visiting classrooms and broadcasting a public service announcement on the Discovery Channel, which is one of their key tools in reaching out to the community.

Their Orgsync page is updated periodically to keep students updated on their activities.

“UNICEF has not only gone to FIU Panthers but to communities in Miami, in public areas. There were people who didn’t even know what UNICEF was,” said Zakkout.

In spring 2012, UNICEF@FIU intends to further promote the educational aspect of their program, continuing to use every month to focus on a certain area of the world and demonstrate what UNICEF is about.