Club Spotlight: UNICEF Club
A little about the president of the popular new UNICEF club: Aino Alkio. Aino is a Junior from Finland, who’s passionate about helping children in need. As an accomplished tennis player training in Spain, Aino is often traveling to compete internationally.
Pixel Journal: Can you give me a little background about UNICEF?
Of course! UNICEF stands for The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, and was founded in 1946 to help the children affected by World War II. UNICEF works in many different areas, from protecting children’s rights to helping children during emergencies. In all of their work, UNICEF’s goal is to protect and help children around the world, without discrimination. UNICEF is the world’s leading advocate for children’s rights, and works across 190 countries and territories to make children’s lives better.
PJ: Why were you inspired to start the UNICEF club?
Ever since I learned about UNICEF as a young girl, I’ve been interested in and inspired by their work. Day by day I have come to better understand how important the organization is, and appreciate how many children’s lives they have saved and improved during the past 71 years. However, there is still a lot of work to do, and I believe that it is extremely important to get more people informed and involved in these issues. I started looking for a way to volunteer for UNICEF, and found out that I could start a UNICEF Club at OHS. I was extremely excited about the idea of working together with fellow OHSers on these issues to educate and advocate on behalf of UNICEF.
PJ: Are there any challenges you faced starting the UNICEF club?
Most UNICEF high school clubs not only educate and advocate, but also fundraise to support UNICEF more “directly”. As I was starting the club I learned that unfortunately we are not allowed to help UNICEF by fundraising as a school, and was worried that it might prevent me from founding the club. However, thankfully UNICEF was very flexible about this and allows us to help them by advocating and educating only. While I originally saw this as a challenge, I have come to realize that the most important thing as a UNICEF Club is to learn more about these issues and spread awareness, and there are other ways besides fundraising to support UNICEF. The first step is to get more people passionate about and involved in our work.
PJ: What is the purpose of the club? Why should people join?
As mentioned before, we are focused on learning more about children’s issues and spreading awareness to the whole OHS community (and beyond) to help people find ways in which they can themselves make children’s lives better all over the world. If people are not informed about the conditions that some children are forced to live in, they will not be able to help. We work to inform people about the important issues, and then provide information about how they can take action to make the world a better place. Anyone interested in volunteering, learning more about children’s issues and helping UNICEF educate and advocate on behalf of children around the world, should consider joining our OHS UNICEF Club. It is a great way to learn more and get involved.
PJ: What do you do during club meetings?
We have meetings on most Fridays, and depending on the week, we do very different things in different meetings. Each month we have a specific topic to focus on (for example, November’s theme was Children’s Rights and December’s theme was HIV/AIDS), and the first meeting of the month is usually a more informative meeting about the month’s specific topic. The other meetings go into more detail about the topic, and/or are focused on related projects that we are working on. That being said, while the meetings are very important, we also do a lot outside of the those Friday meetings. A big part of the club is our collaboration with the Pixel Journal, where we have our own column. In PJ our members write articles about the topics that we have talked about in meetings, while also doing additional research. This is all so that we can educate the OHS community (and others) about children’s issues. We are also planning on hosting school-wide events, interviews and doing many other projects to further educate and advocate on behalf of UNICEF.
PJ: Where do you see the club by the end of the year? What about in 10 years? What is your goal/vision for the club?
While I founded the club only recently, we already have over 30 members that are very enthusiastic about our work with UNICEF. I believe we can do a lot during the spring semester to keep educating the community and beyond, and I am very much looking forward to all of our new articles and projects. We will still keep recruiting new members, and I hope we can get even more people involved. The goal is to write more and more articles about the monthly topics (or members’ own topics of interest) and I also want to focus on thinking of other creative and fun ways to educate and advocate for UNICEF. We will hopefully have a few school-wide events during the year, one of them featuring an exciting guest (keep your eye out for this one!). Overall I hope to make the rest of this year useful and enjoyable for the members. It has been great to see how excited the members are about the club, and I look forward to another semester of exciting and fun meetings, as well as projects.
Focusing on the club’s long term future is actually something that UNICEF emphasizes a lot, and I’ve been thinking about this more and more recently. I would say that the key thing I want to focus on is strengthening the core mission of the club and ensuring that the younger members are also able to take on leadership positions, so that they can learn more about the other aspect of the club. I hope to have more people involved in the organizational part of the club, like for example, planning meetings and doing research, planning new projects and/or working with communications. I find that having members more and more involved in and excited about the club is the best way to ensure that it’ll keep improving and growing in the future. I hope that more and more OHSers can continue to be excited about the club, and would love to see the articles and other projects reach a wider audience, maybe even beyond our OHS community. Most importantly, I hope that in 10 years the OHS Unicef Club will continue to inspire students to get involved in these incredibly important, urgent and worldwide issues.
PJ: Are there any requirements to join the club? Is everyone welcome?
To become a member of the OHS Unicef Club all you need is excitement about the club and the work that we do. And, even if you’re not 100% sure that helping UNICEF is for you, feel free to try it out. There are a lot of different things that you can focus on within the club, and I’m here to help you find the thing(s) you’d most like to focus on. We are so excited for all of our new members, and love having people from different backgrounds. The diversity of the OHS student body, and thus of our members, is what I find makes the OHS Unicef Club so unique. (Let me know if you’d be interested in joining by skype: anskua00 or email: aino.alkio@hotmail.com)
PJ: And, finally, what is the main message you hope to spread to the OHS community by starting this club?
Due to constant traveling, I personally struggled to find a way to volunteer and help organizations like UNICEF make the world a better place. I didn’t know how I could learn about the important issues and advocate on their behalf because I am constantly on the move. By starting the club, I hope to create a place for all students to get informed about and involved in the important issues. It is not enough to simply acknowledge these issues exist. It is everyone’s responsibility to take action, and educate those who do not yet know about the injustices that happen all over the world. I hope that the OHS Unicef Club can be a platform for students to educate each other, the rest of the OHS community, and beyond. I want to show people that these issues are indeed real and that we are all responsible for helping children around the world live a happier life. As Emma Watson once said when speaking to the UN, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” I hope that we can get more and more people helping children around the world. :)
You can check out our articles here: http://www.pixeljournal.org/?category=UNICEF+Club, and follow our new instagram @ohsunicefclub for updates. Be sure to let me know if you are interested in joining by skype: anskua00 or email: aino.alkio@hotmail.com :)