If you are familiar with the work of World of Children, you already know that we scour the globe for those doing the highest quality of life-changing work for children. We then use a set of rigorous criteria to determine the best of the best. Finally, we give grants and Awards to our Winners at our annual Award Ceremony in New York City.

 

However, another huge thing we do is help our winners position their Award so that they can gain media exposure and forge relationships with other partners and supporters. This last piece is what truly helps those we honor advance their work, which in turn will allow them to improve the lives of more children.

Below is an update sent to us by Danielle Gram, our 2010 Youth Award Winner and founder of Kids for Peace. This update highlights the connections Kids for Peace has been able to make in the wake of winning a World of Children Award last November.

 

“The World of Children Award has been an instrumental catalyst for elevating Kids for Peace's work and improving the organization's capacity to serve those in need. In just two months, Kids for Peace was featured in several news and print media sources, including Teen Vogue, The Christian Science Monitor, Girl's Life, and Youth Radio. As a result of the elevated media attention, I have had the opportunity to connect with individuals interested in Kids for Peace from all over the world, from Australia to Zimbabwe.

 

“The grant has enabled us to create an impact evaluation geared toward our most vulnerable chapters. We look forward to launching the project this coming month and learning about how we can better meet the needs of children in high-risk areas. We are also very excited to have launched our Sister Chapter Program as a result of the World of Children Award. This will enable us to provide the basic materials for setting up and maintaining a chapter in the most resource-poor regions of the world.  Thank you World of Children for elevating the cause of peace to a new level, and for believing that children can lead the way to a better future!”

 

If you know of a bold hero who has made a significant difference in the lives of children, nominate them for a 2011 World of Children Award! Nominations will be accepted online in a few short weeks. In the mean time, receive a Nominations reminder email by clicking here.

We recently received some photos from Susie Krabacher, our 2006 Humanitarian
Award Honoree, who founded The Mercy and Sharing Foundation in Haiti. Before
the earthquake, Susie had a feeding program that was serving over 800,000 meals a
year. Much of this was destroyed by the quake, but the organization is now back up
and running in two locations.

This program provides thousands of children with a daily meal. The programs run
in rural areas where food and jobs are scarce. The plates typically consist of rice and
beans and meat. The children are always served first, and then whatever remains is
set aside for the elderly and the infirm.

Many children who come to these feeding centers are not in school. Those who are
lucky enough to afford a school uniform and go to class are given a recess to visit the
feeding center and receive what is often their only meal of the day. The scene at the
feeding centers is often a crowded one; since the number of children who come to
eat is greater than the number of benches available, many sit on the ground. After
the meal, the children return home or return to school.



We were so excited to get this photo update, and we are equally excited to share
this wonderful work with all of our wonderful supporters. To see more photos from
Susie, click here to view our gallery.

For the rest of the week, our 2008 Founder’s Youth Honoree and the Founder of RandomKid, Talia Leman, will be participating at Techonomy. The word “Techonomy” is a neologism (a combination of the words technology and economy). Techonomy’s participants are many of the world’s brightest minds from a variety of fields, including the world’s former richest man, founder of Microsoft and famed philanthropist Bill Gates. The intent of Techonomy is to use technology to revamp the world’s economic structure and to meet certain global challenges that humanity currently faces.

 

When you check out Techonomy, search for Talia and her organization RandomKid.  Talia was selected to participate because she has used technology to organize millions of youth to create an economy of change.   Talia and RandomKid have already linked together 12 million youth from 20 countries to bring aid on four continents.

 

At Techonomy, she is slated to unveil RandomKid’s new website.  I personally cannot wait to see this new site and what technological innovations it capitalizes on.  I am sure that the site will allow Talia and the rest of the RandomKid team to even more effectually organize youth with the intent of making a real, lasting change.

 

All of us at the World of Children are very proud of Talia and the impact she has already had in her young life.  To learn more about Techonomy, click here.  Also, look out for RandomKid’s website, which should be launched some time this week!

 

I will ashamedly admit that I have a penchant for bad television, and not long ago I was watching re-runs of “My Super Sweet 16,” a reality program on MTV that documents the birthdays of affluent teenagers (generally a sixteenth birthday, but sometimes a quinceañera or other coming-of-age celebration).  These parties often run upwards of $100,000 and are thrown in the honor of (clearly spoiled) adolescents who will demand anything from performances by Kanye West to helicopter rides to faux volcanoes to cars with six-figure price tags. The show is dripping with drama (one girl had a complete meltdown when her mother selected the wrong moment to give her a Lexus) and clearly aims to find the most excessive examples of, well, excess.

 

The absurdity of shows like “My Super Sweet 16” is self-evident, and most people likely have a sense of how shameless these parties are. However, the tragedy of extreme self-fulfillment is more easily missed, but can be brought in to focus when one considers how “the other half” lives. And I literally mean half; 50% of the world’s population lives below the internationally defined poverty line, meaning they live on less than $2.50 per day. Even worse, UNICEF states that 24,000 children die DAILY because of poverty. In light of those statistics, let’s revisit a $100,000 super sweet sixteen: the money spent on a single party for a single spoiled teenager could easily feed, house, clothe and educate more than 100 children for an ENTIRE YEAR.

 

Most of us will never spend $100,000 on a birthday party, but the truth is that the socioeconomic status of the average American is still much higher than that of the average person. I look at things I received on my own birthday last year (a coffee grinder, an ice cream cake, a check from my grandma) and if I were to add it up, it may not qualify as a super-sweet anything, but it would certainly be enough to make a real, lasting difference to a single child.

 

That is why World of Children created the Give Up Your Birthday website - to allow those of us who have had many luxuries in our lives to donate our birthdays to children who have had few luxuries and even insufficient necessities. If you would like to give your birthday to the world’s children who are in the most need, please visit http://www.giveupyourbirthday.org and sign up for a page. 100% of donations that come in through this website will go directly to trustworthy programs that dramatically improve the quality of life for children.  To learn more about Give Up Your Birthday and what we are doing, please visit this website.

In youth-centric Hollywood, birthdays are sometimes met with mixed emotions. But I've found the best way that anyone can embrace any birthday is to remember how fortunate they are to be growing another year older and use it as an opportunity to give back.

That's why this year I'm Giving Up My Birthday - happily and readily - for children in need by supporting the nonprofit World of Children Awards in their tireless efforts to improve the lives of children worldwide.

Around the globe, a staggering number of children have precious few birthdays at all.  The numbers are truly heartbreaking - each year more than ten million children won't even reach their fifth birthday because they will die from preventable causes like treatable illnesses or a lack of clean water.

That's why the World of Children Awards' work is so extraordinary, and so needed.  Dubbed by the media as the "Nobel Prize© for Child Advocacy," the World of Children Awards searches the globe for extraordinary individuals who are spearheading organizations that dramatically improve childrens' lives and amplifies their efforts by providing vital funding and recognition to expand their impact.

Among the changemakers for children honored by the World of Children Awards are:

• Ryan Hreljac, who at age 12 led a successful campaign to bring fresh water to rural Africa;


• Dr. Mark J. Manary, MD, whose "Project Peanut Butter" initiative is preventing African children from dying of starvation through the creation and dissemination of nutritious, easy to access peanut butter;


• Inderjit Khurana, whose pop-up schools that sit directly on India's railway platforms and provide India's poorest street children with access to education;


• Talia Lehman, whose RandomKid.org is empowering kids to accomplish incredible projects to benefit children worldwide; and


• Jessica Markowitz, who founded Richard's Rwanda to ensure Rwandan girls receive the education they deserve in a safe and nurturing environment.

These remarkable individuals and others like them are the reason I've chosen to serve as an Ambassador for the World of Children Awards and they need support for their remarkable work far more than I need birthday gifts. In a world of gift bags and star treatment there is not one more thing I need or want. I am the luckiest girl in the world and I would like to celebrate the good fortune I have in growing another year older by giving back.

So with my birthday fast approaching, I'm asking friends and family to give a gift to World of Children instead of to me. Each of us can and should give back in this world when we can and birthdays are an opportune time to experience how giving to others can be a tremendous gift to ourselves.

To share a birthday donation in my name, please visit my birthday page, click on my name and offer a donation when you click on the brown button.  Together, let's make a real difference for vulnerable children.