Pacific Project Champions

About this appeal

Thousands of children across the Pacific Islands and Timor-Leste don’t have a fair chance of achieving a bright future.

For many children, this means not having clean water to drink, not having access to basic healthcare and not being able to go to school and receive a quality education.

Donate now and help change a child’s future.

Your life-changing donations will enable kids to go to school and help build safe drinking water facilities, toilets, hand-washing stations.

You’ll transform the lives of some of the most disadvantaged children in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Timor-Leste.

Please donate now.

How will you help

While we are incredibly grateful for every gift, monthly donations are vital for our on-going development work across the Pacific and Timor-Leste.

Please consider making just a small monthly donation to help send kids to school, keep them healthy and build urgently needed water and sanitation facilities. You'll truly be helping to set a child up with a brighter future.

Your life-changing donations will fund the following programmes for children:

VANUATU

A 2017 assessment (UNICEF Penama, ECCE Baseline Study) in one province found that only 53% of kindergartens had a reliable water source.

While there is no school specific data on drinking water quality, throughout Vanuatu, water is frequently contaminated. The current government database shows that 64% of collected samples tested positive for coliforms (Department of Water Resources - Vanuatu, 2020). Because of the lack of safe water, kids are getting sick, missing out on class and falling behind or dropping out all together.

Your donation will help ensure that every school in Penama has clean water, toilets and hand-washing facilities. That's 10,000 children's lives being changed!

KIRIBATI

According to Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, over 80% of a child’s brain development occurs by age 3. That’s why it’s so devastating that for many children in Kiribati, they are regularly missing out on pre-school. Meanwhile, children that do attend school are at risk of getting sick - with very few schools having access to basic sanitation and safe drinking water.

Your donation will provide children with quality pre-schooling at home or in designated community centres. This is a crucial step in preparing kids to go to school when they hit five. You'll also bring clean drinking water, toilets and hand-washing facilities to children of all ages across many schools in Kiribati.

SOLOMON ISLANDS

Only 66% of schools in the Solomon Islands have toilets, and even less have safe drinking water (SIEMIS, 2015). It’s having a massive impact on the health and education of a child - and in turn, damaging their chances for a brighter future.

Donate now to help provide safe drinking water, toilets and hand-washing facilities to children in numerous schools across the Solomon Islands and help these children get back on track.

TIMOR-LESTE

According to UNICEF Timor-Leste, only 20% of preschool-aged kids are enrolled in a school in Timor-Leste. And it's children living in isolated communities who are missing out the most.

Your donation will help children in even the most remote villages receive quality pre-schooling, so they can learn, play and go on to live brighter futures.

Appeal updates

Giving the children of Timor-Leste the opportunity of a better future.

Published on Thu Jan 16 2020

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With children making up half of Timor-Leste’s population, early childhood education is an essential building block for the future of these children and their nation.

Thanks to UNICEF Pacific Champions, fewer children in the Solomon Islands are missing school from sickness.

Published on Thu Jan 16 2020

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Now that donations have enabled for more hand washing facilities to be built in schools in the Solomon Islands, staff are reporting higher attendance rates, and healthier students.

Children are bringing these practices home, and creating healthier families and villages. Small things can make a big difference!