*
If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much. -- Marian
Wright Edelman
The
legacy I want to leave is a child-care system that says that no kid is going to
be left alone or left unsafe. -- Marian
Wright Edelman
Investing
in [children] is not a national luxury or a national choice. It's a national necessity.
If the foundation of your house is crumbling, you don't say you can't afford to
fix it while you're building astronomically expensive fences to protect it from
outside enemies. The issue is not are we going to pay -- it's are we going to
pay now, up front, or are we going to pay a whole lot more later on. -- Marian
Wright Edelman
"For
most of recorded history, parental violence against children and men's violence
against wives was explicitly or implicitly condoned. Those who had the power to
prevent and/or punish this violence through religion, law, or custom, openly or
tacitly approved it. …..The reason violence against women and children is finally
out in the open is that activists have brought it to global attention." --
Riane Eisler
*Many times,
a child's struggle against hunger begins before he or she is born because the
mother is undernourished. Making sure prenatal care and proper nutrition are available
for expectant mothers in need is a critical part of ending childhood hunger.
-- Hector Elizondo
"No guarantees come
with children's liberation. But neither the promise of great benefits to all nor
the prediction of great difficulties ahead can serve as the reason for granting
or denying rights to children. Rights will be granted because without them children
are incapacitated, oppressed, and abused." -- Richard Farson "Birthrights"
Most of us tend
to view childhood as a time of carefree pleasure. Those of us who have looked
at the real condition of children in America, however, see a very different picture--one
in which children are victims of terrible discrimination, prejudice, and abuse.
They need protection. But the protection they need most is to have the protection
of civil rights, so that they can be regarded as full persons under the law.
-- Richard Farson
*Unicef's
education initiative does not seek to impose, but to initiate and integrate. It
does, however, aim to address the huge bias towards education for boys at the
expense of girls in so many cultures. -- Ralph
Fiennes
*
Unicef wants to encourage a sense of stability for a child. -- Ralph
Fiennes
*
"I
have a voice. It‘s one of my gifts. I intend to use it on behalf of the children
that UNICEF seeks to aid." -- Laurence
Fishburne
"Children
organizing for political rights will probably be treated initially with ridicule
and derision, and then with misunderstanding and perhaps eventually violence if
the experience of the struggle for women's suffrage is any precedent. Undoubtedly
the greatest obstacle to be overcome is the adult refusal to acknowledge that
children suffer political discrimination and exclusion. Adults do not perceive
children as a minority group but as helpless, inexperienced, defenseless young
people who need protection. Adult paternalism seeks to protect and if in this
process it curtails freedom, truncates potential and destroys civil liberties
this is taken to be incidental. The belief in the legitimacy of paternalism justifies
and cements the existing power relationships between adults and young people.
This attitude must be confronted, challenged and refuted if young people are to
secure their political rights..." -- Bob Franklin "The Rights of Children"
*
If we are ever to have real peace in this world we shall have to begin with the
children. -- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
*
If we are ever to have real peace in this world we shall
have to begin with the children.
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
*
It is still just unbelievable to us that diarrhea is one of the leading causes
of child deaths in the world.
-- Melinda Gates
*
“It is the most painful thing to see how young children become collateral damage
of wars, but when peace treaties are signed landmines do not respect any of these
accords. And as long as these silent killers linger after wars, children will
never know peace” -- Danny
Glover
"If
we talk about literacy, we have to talk about how to enhance our children's mastery
over the tools needed to live intelligent, creative, and involved lives."
-- Danny Glover
*
"Children
are a quality of life ... when our children are happy, then we are better as human
beings." -- Whoopi
Goldberg
*
No
one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness and generosity hidden
in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock
that treasure."
Our
society is only as healthy as our most vulnerable citizens. It is unconscionable
that the weakest links in our country are our hungry children. No other Western
industrialized nation has widespread hunger within its borders. We really must
put an end to hunger in the United States if we are to keep our prosperity and
protect the future. -- Linda
Gray
*"...in
the midst of migrants in search of a better life there are people in need of protection:
refugees and asylum-seekers, women and children victims of trafficking...Many
move simply to avoid dying of hunger. When leaving is not an option but a necessity,
this is more than poverty." ~
Antonio Guterres
*“In the
last analysis, human security means a child who did not die, a disease that did
not spread, an ethnic tension that did not explode, a dissident who was not silenced,
a human spirit that was not crushed.”
-- Mahbub ul-Haq
The greatest Glory
of a free-born People, Is to transmit that Freedom to their Children. --
William Havard
*We've
got to work to save our children and do it with full respect for the fact that
if we do not, no one else is going to do it. -- Dorothy
Height
*
Have
we forgotten about the children, and thus forsaken the next generation?"
--
Audrey Hepburn
"I
speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely
nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.” --
Audrey Hepburn
"...perhaps
that is what ultimately unites us as a world: the fact that, no matter how prosperous
a nation, how developed, all share the plight and embarrassment of having so many
suffering children. We are united by our neglect, our abuse, our absence of love.
Have we forgotten about the children, and thus forsaken the next generation?"
-- Audrey Hepburn
"Somebody
said to me the other day, 'You know, it's really senseless, what you're doing.
There's always been suffering, there will always be suffering, and you're just
prolonging the suffering of these children [by rescuing them].' My answer is,
'Okay, then, let's start with your grandchild. Don't buy antibiotics if it gets
pneumonia. Don't take it to the hospital of it has an accident. It's against life-against
humanity-to think that way." --
Audrey Hepburn
"It makes me
self-conscious. It's because I'm known, in the limelight, that it's getting all
the gravy, but if you knew, if you saw some of the people who make it possible
for UNICEF to help these children survive. These are the people who do the jobs-the
unknowns, whose names you will never know…I at least get a dollar a year, but
they don't." --
Audrey Hepburn
*
"Giving kids clothes and food is one thing but it's much more important to teach
them that other people besides themselves are important, and that the best thing
they can do with their lives is to use it in the service of other people."
-- Dolores
Huerta
*It was
once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those
who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life,
the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and
the handicapped.
-- Hubert Humphrey
*"I
was very fortunate to have learned the transforming power of music early in life.
As an adult I want to share that power by inspiring people to care about their
neighbors near and far. Being a UNICEF Ambassador allows me this kind of opportunity." --
India.Arie
