UNICEF'S LARGEST APPEAL – GENTLE GIANTS PROUD SPONSOR FOR YEARS
Gentle Giants has proudly been an active sponsor of UNICEF Children for over 12 years now. These donations are important to us as we believe that social responsibility of businesses is crucial and especially in these times of difficulties that the world is going through.
Recently UNICEF sent out their largest appeal ever to assist more than three hundred million vulnerable children and their families and caregivers around the world in 2021. COVID-19 has made it even more difficult to provide conflict- and disaster-affected children with access to water, sanitation, nutrition, education, health and protection services.
In light of this largest appeal, we decided to interview our local UNICEF representative to get a deeper understanding of the status.
"The year 2020 has been tremendously difficult for children and now when 2021 is just around the corner, it is clear that there is a lot of work ahead taking care of the regular projects as well as responding to effects of the coronavirus", says Steinunn Jakobsdóttir who is in charge of communications and media for UNICEF in Iceland.
She describes that one of the main tasks is to help give children access to education in these times of COVID-19. Before the pandemic, a lot had been achieved but now with the virus many schools have had to close down, are not in the position to offer distance learning and uncertain when they can open again.
On the topic regarding local projects in Iceland, Steinunn explains that "here in Iceland we have especially been drawing attention to the increasing violence towards children since the pandemic started, but reports to child protection services have significantly increased between years".
Finally Steinunn brings up that Christmas is around the corner and UNICEF in Iceland is selling Christmas gifts which are emergency supplies that are bought online; the recipient gets a beautiful gift card and UNICEF sends the gift itself to children in need. These Christmas gifts are becoming more popular each year and for a good cause.
We thank Steinunn for the information, UNICEF for the great work they are doing all around the world and look forward to being a sponsor for years to come.
From a personal perspective, I am grateful for this sponsorship with UNICEF. Having been born on the streets of Kolkata, India, and given the privilege of a better chance in life and adopted to an international family in Húsavík, Iceland, thirty years ago, I feel the importance of supporting such humanitarian organizations to help children in need around the world.
