I recently returned from my three-day visit to Haiti, where I went to visit several
children’s programs, schools and homes, including those of past World of Children
Award Winners Dr. Jane Aronson and Susie Krabacher.

Throughout Haiti and Port-au-Prince, the conditions I saw were jarring. Prior to the
earthquake the predicament was poor, but now Haiti has been practically pushed
to the brink of the Stone Age. Piles of rubble are everywhere, serving as constant
reminders of what took place nearly a year ago. Roads, pocked with crevices and
holes that will jar your teeth, are barely passable. Sanitation is fundamentally
absent, with rubbish strewn everywhere and animals of all sorts and sizes feeding
on the garbage.

Conditions for the children of Haiti are particularly challenging. I visited several schools
which have, for the most part, reopened. Children who attend school often walk
an hour or more to attend classes. The children with families supporting them
seem to be somewhat safe, albeit undernourished. The number of orphaned and
abandoned children spiked after the quake, and there are unfortunately not enough
quality facilities to care for them. Then, of course, there is the Haitian version of
child slavery, known as restavek, which has always existed but is now a plague in
the island nation. Children are either sold or stolen, then sadly put into forced labor
in domestic situations where sexual and physical abuse is the standard order of the
day. This horrible fate, which primarily affects girls 9 years old and younger, leaves
children diseased, disfigured pariahs of their society.

During my visit, I spent the bulk of my time visiting orphan programs and schools.
Contrasts between programs were, quite frankly, stark. Visiting the Branchizio
school run by 2006 World of Children Award Winner Susie Krabacher was the
most positive experience of the trip. Well over 500 children, mostly orphans from
the slums of Port Au Prince, were dressed in neat uniforms and studying in real
classrooms with books. The children were well behaved and eager to learn, the
teachers attentive and caring. The kitchen was clean and well staffed.

At the other end of the spectrum, I visited a program, whose name I won't mention
but which would be well known to all readers, where the children were terribly
unkempt. There were not enough adults to control the children and where the
children acted in a “mob mentality”. The scene was chaos and very, very sad.

I also visited two programs run by Kathi Juntunen, who is partnering with World
of Children Honoree Dr. Jane Aronson. Both of these programs sustained total
devastation during the quake, yet they have managed to recover and there is now
proper adult supervision and the children were well behaved. Construction here
was moving along nicely on a new school and orphanage, which could be completed
in a few short months.

After completing the visit and taking inventory of my experiences I have come to
these conclusions. First, all Americans who donate to Haitian relief for children
MUST ask for accountability. My sense is that a great deal of funding is not reaching
the children and there is not a great deal of oversight where many Americans
have placed their trust. As noted above the programs of Susie Krabacher, a World
of Children Award Winner, and of Kathi Juntunen in cooperation with World of
Children Award Winner Dr. Jane Aronson were clearly safe, effective and efficient.
Others that I did visit would make their American donors cry.

Second, aside from a safe environment, food is a major problem. Most children get
barely enough food for sustainability. Third, there are many children with very
treatable diseases such as ringworm, malnutrition and infections, but there was no
medication available on site to treat them.

Finally, from speaking with local Haitians, I concluded that this is a country without
a functional government and the recent elections did not help. Until there is a
respectable and functioning government (and that could take a decade to establish)
the children will be dependent on non-governmental organizations for support.

If you would like to support heroes doing reputable work for children, please click
here to donate to effective programs run by World of Children Award Winners.

We recently lost one of our own when Sargent Shriver passed away after losing a battle with Alzheimer’s. In 2000, Sargent Shriver and his wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, were Honored at The World of Children Awards for their creativity, leadership and commitment to children with disabilities through their founding and endowment of The Special Olympics.

Sargent Shriver was a dreamer who knew how to turn his dreams in to lasting social change. He envisioned and founded the Peace Corps, the Job Corps and Project Head Start, three admirable programs that survive his death. However, one dream-turned-reality that held special meaning for Sargent Shriver was The Special Olympics, the project we Honored him for 2000. When I had the chance to meet him he told me, "The smiles of these children, who had been relegated to second class citizens, gives me the power to go on."

Shriver strived to be available for "his children," as he called them, and to make a lasting difference in their lives. For his vision, resilience and courage, these children – as well as all of us at World of Children – will forever be grateful for his time on this earth. I believe that there has been no better example of a "privileged person" giving himself up for the world’s most vulnerable children than Sargent Shriver. May he rest in peace.

Harry Leibowitz

Co-Founder/Chairman

World of Children Awards

Earlier this week, I was walking in Manhattan. It is the height of the holiday shopping season, and masses of people were out smiling and carrying bags of purchases large and small. It was only 24 degrees in New York on this day, and the bitter cold weather inspired me to seek shelter. As I turned down 44^th Street to head for my hotel, I noticed a very young woman carrying barely-clothed child close to her. She was not panhandling or digging around in the garbage. I went over and asked her if I could help her out. “No thank you,” she said shyly. “But your child will freeze in this weather without clothing,” I replied.  Her poignant response stirred me: “We survived last winter and we will survive this one, together.”

I was overwhelmed with emotion and concern. I realized that this woman probably had only one thing left in life - her dignity - and she was not about to give that up by accepting a handout from a stranger. And yet her precious child said nothing, reminding me of a phrase I often say: Children are the largest voiceless minority.

While I was proud of this young mother’s courage and resolve, this exchange redoubled my will to help children like this woman’s child. World of Children is dedicated to improving the quality of children’s lives because children don’t get to choose the situation they are born in to; they just are. Regardless of the circumstance, it is our responsibility to reach out and help children who are hungry, poor, sick or abandoned.

As we all experience holiday frenzy - shopping, the tree, house decorating parties and the football bowl game excitement - it would be good if we paused and remembered the real, universal meaning of the holiday season: ”Good will towards others.”

You can bring a smile to the face of a child who is struggling against the odds by making a simple pledge at www.worldofchildren.org. Then, put a smile on your face and go forth through the holidays enjoying family and friends knowing that out there, somewhere, is a human being like you who is saying “THANK YOU” and blessing you for your small gift.

At this time of year it is appropriate for us to recall how fortunate we really are. My grandparents, escaping Tsarist pogroms of the early 20th century, walked over 1,300 miles with barely the clothes on their backs to get from Russia to the coast of France so they could come to America. Their struggle for freedom was just one in a tableau of 19th and 20th Century struggles to achieve the freedoms we take so much for granted.

As we sit down this Thanksgiving with family and friends and partake of the incredible bounty before us, I urge each of you to stop for a minute to think about all those here in the USA and around the world who will have no dinner, who may be languishing in makeshift refugee camps... especially the children whose die is cast for them not by them. As "good" people we have been given the opportunity to take action... to commit ourselves to making the world a better place, day by day and child by child.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by bad people but the silence over that by the good people.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

As Founder, I am often asked when I became interested in philanthropy. The answer is, quite simply, that I was contributing to others long before I can remember. Growing up, my family was very poor. My five family members, spanning three generations, lived in a three room bungalow where 10 families shared a single bathroom.  Yet despite these tough conditions, my family was very focused on the needs of others.

Through my entire childhood, there was always a blue tine donation box on the counter. Every day, we had to put a single penny in the box for those less fortunate than we were. There was no escaping the box; every night before bed my family and I would gather ceremoniously around the little blue box and drop our pennies in. This simple tradition is what first taught me the importance of giving back. Much later in life I learned that this money went to help victims of the holocaust in Europe.

We are all, in some ways, products of our upbringing. Today, even though my mom, dad, grandmother and sister are all deceased, the lessons that they taught me and their spirit of philanthropy lives on. I still feel that inevitable pull every evening to make sure there is something going into that "box".