Record numbers of children are in crisis today, and in Bangladesh, the situation is especially dire.
When hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fled genocide in Myanmar for southern Bangladesh in August 2017, the children’s accounts of the horrors they’d seen and experienced focused the world’s attention on the crisis. Despite the strain on its population, Bangladesh welcomed more than 800,000 displaced Rohingya people who joined the 300,000 people who had already taken refuge in Bangladesh from previous waves of displacement. The Rohingya have established new lives as best they can in the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar. But overcrowding and the makeshift huts they call home have left children especially vulnerable to the impacts of COVID-19 and other diseases, fire and increasingly severe monsoon season flooding and landslides.
Why sponsor a child in Bangladesh?
No matter who they are or where they are born, every child has a right to be safe and healthy, educated and nourished with ready access to safe water and emergency relief in times of crisis. UNICEF USA and its supporters and donors uphold those rights by raising funds to support UNICEF programs designed to defend every child’s right to survive and thrive.
Today, in Bangladesh, children need more help than ever:
- Over 62 million children in Bangladesh require humanitarian relief
- The densely populated country has a high child mortality rate of 30.9 deaths per 1,000 children under 5
- Only slightly more than half the population has access to a safe water source
- Bangladesh has the fourth-highest rate of child marriage in the world
- While Bangladesh has made significant progress in eliminating child labor, the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic impacts threaten to reverse this progress
- In Bangladesh, the belief that children with disabilities are cursed impedes their access to adequate care, health, nutrition and education
How to sponsor a child in Bangladesh with UNICEF USA
If you are passionate about supporting every child’s right to safe water, health care, education, protection, nutrition and lifesaving immunizations, UNICEF is the best charity to donate to. UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to serve the most vulnerable communities and children impacted by war, famine, child sex trafficking and natural disasters, including those caused by climate change.
After working for more than 75 years to save and protect children worldwide, UNICEF has found that the most effective way to help one child in a community is through sustainable solutions designed to help them all. That approach has allowed UNICEF to help save more children’s lives than any other humanitarian organization, address inequity at its root, and deliver what every child needs to survive and thrive.
Your donations to UNICEF USA support this critical work to save children’s lives, defend their rights and give them what they need to fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.
There are various pathways to sponsoring a child in Bangladesh. One, and probably the most familiar, is by contributing monthly. By committing to give monthly, donors automatically become UNICEF USA’s Guardian Circle members. This select group provides UNICEF with the steady stream of funding required to respond quickly when an emergency or natural disaster endangers children. Monthly contributions also ensure the funding UNICEF needs to deliver long-term sustainable solutions that change children’s lives.
So, whether you give $10 a month or much more, every gift you make to UNICEF USA counts. Guardian Circle members receive a quarterly newsletter with updates on children their gifts help, access to a user-friendly donor portal, an annual giving statement and monthly statements with giving amounts to date.
Another way to sponsor a child in Bangladesh is by making a one-time donation. If your gift is $1,000 or above, you’ll automatically join the Leadership Circle, which provides members exclusive benefits, including a copy of UNICEF USA’s Annual Report, access to exclusive crowdfunding projects, and personal updates about the children who benefit from your contributions. Most rewarding of all, of course, is knowing that UNICEF will put your gift to maximum use to help children in need.
Less than 3 percent of UNICEF USA’s budget goes to administrative expenses, and UNICEF USA has been awarded GuideStar’s Gold Seal of Transparency for 2020. Give with confidence today.
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