UNICEF club sets out to help children

Juniors+Lily+Shan+and+Kelly+Ann+Cooper+discuss+poster+ideas.

Juniors Lily Shan and Kelly Ann Cooper discuss poster ideas.

Varshini Ramanathan, Staff Writer

Starting in September of this year, the UNICEF (United Nations’ Children’s Fund) club has been pursuing its goal to aid children worldwide. Originally a part of the volunteer club WA Pride, UNICEF broke off into a separate club at the start of the 2015-2016 school year.

UNICEF is an organization dedicated to helping underprivileged children all around the world, and the thousands of high school clubs committed to the same cause are primarily focused on providing funding for UNICEF projects. Officially, all school organizations working for UNICEF are part of the US Fund for UNICEF.

WA’s UNICEF club is led by juniors Sindhu Kosuru and Mona Polavarupu, who decided to head the club over the past summer. The UNICEF branch in WA Pride had been inactive for years, and the girls felt that it was an important enough issue to warrant a club of its own.

“WA Pride consists of so many organizations, there’s so much that it encompasses, and it wouldn’t do the organization justice if people focused so little on it,” said Kosuru.

UNICEF’s general goal is to educate students about the problems that impoverished children face every day, advocate the cause to help these children, and to raise funds for the projects that will actually change their lives. In order to do this, there are several fundraisers scheduled throughout the year that all high school clubs for UNICEF are able to participate in.

US Fund for UNICEF requires 250 dollars from each high school club for every fundraiser, all of which contributes to the organization’s large-scale projects. For the first fundraiser, Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF, the club had to work around the fact that many high schoolers do not trick-or-treat. They managed to raise more than $250 by splitting the fundraiser into a bake sale at Stony Brook Middle School and another at the Holiday Bazaar.

“To be able to make a difference, if they’re going to refugees or [other people in need], we need that 250 dollars from fundraisers,” said Polavarupu.

In WA specifically, UNICEF Club puts the highest priority with raising awareness; most of UNICEF’s efforts so far have been dedicated to creating posters, making videos for the morning announcements, and other such activities. Kosuru and Polavarupu attribute this to the nature of the community.

“Especially in a town like Westford, a lot of people know about these issues but they don’t exactly understand how it affects the lives of a lot of people. We’re just beginning to understand and so I think it’s important that we spread a lot of these messages to the school and the community so they can give back and support UNICEF,” said Kosuru.

However, the club does have plans for not just advocacy projects but fundraisers in the future. The US Fund for UNICEF has released a calendar of events that the high school clubs can raise money for, such as the Tap Water Project in spring. This fundraiser entails students putting down their phones for a specific amount of time, and every hour of screen-free time raises money to provide clean water for children in third-world countries.

“Things we take for granted, even things like clean water and being able to go to the doctor are things that a lot of people, especially children in third-world countries don’t have. And I feel like a lot of people might know about this but might not really know how it makes an impact,” said Polavarupu.

The UNICEF club at WA also hopes to scale back a little from the global scale and do some focus on Westford. They plan to do some local volunteering and work around the town in addition to their worldwide aid goals as part of the US Fund for UNICEF.

“We’re hoping to do some community service and give back to the local community as well,” said Kosuru.

The UNICEF Club meets every other Thursday in room 117. The next meeting is January 14, 2016.