'World Food Programme' uses video games to educate Youths about Hunger and Aid Work

Food Force is an educational video game presented by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).The project has been developed specifically to help children learn about the fight against world hunger.

Food Force is available as a free Internet download from its dedicated website www.food-force.com . It is the first humanitarian educational video game on the subject of world hunger and the work that goes into feeding people. The game is designed for children between 8 and 13 years of age.

WFP has teamed up with the “Feeding Minds, Fighting Hunger” website to provide downloadable lesson plans for teachers, available in multiple languages.

The lesson plans contain structured information, developed for different school levels, for teaching children exactly what hunger is, why it exists and how it can be ended.

The game itself consists of six missions. Each mission begins with a briefing by one of the Food Force characters, who explains the challenge ahead.

The player then has to complete the task - in which points are awarded for fast and accurate play and good decision making.

Each mission uses a different style of gameplay to appeal to children of all abilities. Each mission represents a key step of the food delivery process - from emergency response through to building long-term food security for a community.

Following each mission a Food Force character returns to present an educational video showing the reality of WFP’s work in the field. This allows children to learn and understand how WFP responds to actual food emergencies: Where food originates, the nutritional importance of meals, how food is delivered and how food is used to encourage development.

The game is also available in Chinese, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian and Polish.

Related links:

www.food-force.com

www.WFP.org

International Day of Peace - September 21

The International Day of Peace was established in 1981 by the United Nations as an annual observance of global non-violence and ceasefire. Every year, people in all parts of the world honour peace in various ways on 21 September.

This year, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will ring the Peace Bell at United Nations Headquarters in New York in the company of the UN Messengers of Peace. He has called for a 24-hour cessation of hostilities on 21 September, and for a minute of silence to be observed around the world at noon local time.

Related links:

un.org/events/peaceday
peaceoneday.org
cyberschoolbus.un.org/peaceday/2007
www.internationaldayofpeace.org
Japanese Peace Bell

The Fight Against Malaria

Malaria kills a child somewhere in the world every 30 seconds. It infects 350-500 million people each year, killing 1 million, mostly children in Africa. Ninety per cent of malaria deaths occur in Africa, where malaria accounts for about one in five of all childhood deaths. The disease also contributes greatly to anaemia among children — a major cause of poor growth and development. Malaria infection during pregnancy is associated with severe anaemia and other illness in the mother and contributes to low birth weight among newborn infants — one of the leading risk factors for infant mortality and sub-optimal growth and development.

Malaria has serious economic impacts in Africa, slowing economic growth and development and perpetuating the vicious cycle of poverty. Malaria is truly a disease of poverty — afflicting primarily the poor who tend to live in malaria-prone rural areas in poorly-constructed dwellings that offer few, if any, barriers against mosquitoes.

Malaria is both preventable and treatable, and effective preventive and curative tools have been developed.

Sleeping under insecticide treated nets can reduce overall child mortality by 20 per cent. There is evidence that ITNs, when consistently and correctly used, can save six child lives per year for every one thousand children sleeping under them.

Prompt access to effective treatment can further reduce deaths. Intermittent preventive treatment of malaria during pregnancy can significantly reduce the proportion of low birth weight infants and maternal anaemia.

Ensuring children sleep under insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) is the most effective way to prevent malaria. These bed nets have been shown to reduce malaria transmission by up to 50 per cent. As many as 500,000 children could be saved every year if all children under the age of five in Africa slept under treated bed nets. Not only do ITNs provide a physical barrier to prevent mosquitoes from biting children, they can actually kill mosquitoes and other insects. In a Kenyan study, women who slept under ITNs at night gave birth to 25 per cent fewer premature or low birth weight babies than women who did not use ITNs.

To learn more about recent and current efforts to fight malaria, visit:

Malaria No More: Donate Bed Nets
Malaria No More
The President's Malaria Initiative.
UNICEF: Facts for Life - Malaria
CDC: Malaria

Stop Disasters, an on-line game to teach children how to save lives and livelihoods

The secretariat of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) launches an on-line game aimed at teaching children how to build safer villages and cities against disasters. This initiative comes within the 2006-2007 World Disaster Reduction Campaign “Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School”.

To access the game please visit: www.StopDisastersGame.org

Related links:

www.UNISDR.org

2006-2007 World Disaster Reduction Campaign

Young voices crucial to fighting AIDS

Today UNICEF and MTV Networks International’s Staying Alive launched a series of online video blogs, called vlogs, as the first phase of Vlogit, a global video project encouraging young people to share through new media how they experience and perceive HIV and AIDS. Globally, 10 million young people aged 15 to 24 are living with HIV and children and young people account for half of all new HIV infections.

Young voices are a strong force for HIV prevention, fighting stigma and discrimination, and working towards and AIDS-free generation. “Poverty is one of the strongest single factors to explain the epidemic of HIV in the developing world,” says Emishaw Tegegneowrk Yimenu, one ofthe youth winners from Ethiopia, whose vlog details the difficult decisions his family must make that bring HIV and AIDS to his doorstep. Mariel Garcia Montes, a teenager from Mexico, uses her vlog to show how a “non-infected teenager realizes how AIDS affects even people who are not infected.”

By encouraging young people to communicate about HIV and AIDS, Vlogit seeks to show how young people are living with and responding to the epidemic around the world. The Vlogit partnership between MTV Networks International’s Staying Alive and UNICEF is part of Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS, a global campaign to provide children and young people with HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. With the launch of the Vlogit site, young people from around the world are invited to upload their own vlogs. The Vlogit website will remain a new media tool to engage young people in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Staying Alive is a multimedia global HIV and AIDS prevention campaign that challenges stigma and discrimination associated with HIV and AIDS as well as empowers young people to protect themselves from infection. The Emmy award-winning campaign consists of documentaries, public service announcements, youth forums and multi-lingual Web content. Staying Alive provides all of its material rights-free and at no cost to 3rd party broadcasters and content distributors globally to get crucial prevention messages out to the widest possible audience. The Staying Alive campaign is a partnership between MTV Networks International, Family Health International’s YouthNet, the Kaiser Family Foundation, UNAIDS, UNFPA, Sida, and Creative Review. More information about Staying Alive can be found at www.staying-alive.org. MTV Networks International is also an active member of the United Nations-supported Global Media AIDS Initiative (GMAI). Read Full Article...

Related links:

www.UNICEF.org

www.Staying-Alive.org

www.MTV.com

NBA star and Goodwill Ambassador Pau Gasol visits HIV-affected children in Angola

National Basketball Association superstar and UNICEF Spain Goodwill Ambassador Pau Gasol recently visited Angola to see firsthand the country’s fight against HIV/AIDS and UNICEF’s programmes to support children and families affected by the disease.

One of Mr. Gasol’s very first visits was to the Luanda Children's Hospital. Accompanied by hospital staff and the UNICEF Angola team, he met with children and their mothers. Mr. Gasol was saddened to see many children hospitalized with illnesses such as malaria, malnutrition, meningitis and HIV/AIDS.Read Full Article...

UNICEF Indonesia supports community bird flu prevention programme

Hundreds of residents of Curug village were joined by senior officials and UNICEF representatives last week for the provincial launch of the Avian Influenza (AI) Kit, a simple tool that helps empower people in the fight against bird flu.

Curug is one of the thousands of villages across Java and Sulawesi that are holding community meetings to discuss bird flu and, with the AI Kits, demonstrate simple steps that everyone can take to stay safe from infection.

Each kit includes a mask, gloves, soap, educational materials and videos about bird flu prevention – plus a giant banner that each village can put up to remind people to be careful.

The kits, funded by Japan, have been developed by UNICEF in close cooperation with Indonesia’s National Committee for Avian Influenza and Pandemic Preparedness. One hundred thousand AI Kits are being distributed in Java and Sulawesi, and plans are in the works to send more to Sumatra and Bali.

One highlight of the 11 July event in Curug was a declaration from village leaders to continue the fight against bird flu. This commitment includes helping residents keep their poultry in a clean environment, with increased government support for village leaders.

Indonesia now ranks number-one in the world for bird flu cases. To date, 102 people have contracted the virus, and 81 of them have died. The latest fatality, on 8 July, was a six-year-old boy from Cilegon in Banten Province. Initial reports say it is not clear how the child contracted the virus because the family did not keep poultry.Read Full Article...