On December 11, 1946, just over a year after the end of World War II, the United Nations General Assembly voted to create something the world had never had before - a single organization dedicated only to helping children. They called it the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, or UNICEF for short. Europe was in ruins. Millions of kids had no homes, no schools, no food, and no clean water. UNICEF was supposed to fix that.
The man who led the new agency was a tall, gentle American named Maurice Pate. He insisted that UNICEF help any hungry child, no matter which side their country had been on during the war. Soon, UNICEF was shipping milk powder, blankets, and medicine to kids from Poland to Greece to China. The famous greeting card program started in 1949 when a 7-year-old girl from Czechoslovakia named Jitka painted a thank-you picture of children dancing around a maypole. Selling those cards raised money for even more children.
Today UNICEF works in more than 190 countries, vaccinating babies against measles and polio, building schools, digging wells for clean water, and rushing to help kids caught in earthquakes, floods, and wars. The agency won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965. Audrey Hepburn, David Beckham, and hundreds of other Goodwill Ambassadors have helped spread the word. Every year on UNICEF's birthday, millions of kids still trick-or-treat to raise pennies for other kids - proof that even after a terrible war, the world can decide to take care of its children.
