Tag Archives: Wellington

Making a difference – UNICEF NZ

In the tradition of other great, long distance motorcycle travellers, we decided to add a cause to our journey. So in addition to experiencing a new country, a new culture, meeting people and seeing places, we want to be able to give something back. For this reason, we will try to raise money and have a fundraiser going for each country that we will travel through. This is our contribution to the decrease of world suck. 🙂 DFTBA!

Nina visiting UNICEF NZ

Visiting UNICEF NZ

We will break it up into parts for each country or section to be able to help diverse charities, make it interesting for you, the lovely people who donate, and to keep having a fundraising goal within a month or two rather than half a year away. The money will go to big, established charities rather than to small local ones; as much as we want to support small ones, it seems unrealistic to believe we can discover a small charity for every country, that is also legit and vouchered for, without constant access to the internet or putting hours of work into it.

Givealittle campaign image

Givealittle campaign image

For the start of our journey, we will explore more of New Zealand. We haven’t been to the East coast or Northland yet! Thus, we will also fundraise for a New Zealand charity. We have decided that the money of our first fundraiser will go to UNICEF New Zealand. To get a better feel for and connection to UNICEF, I met up with the lovely staff of the Wellington Office today. To be honest, I was quite overwhelmed that three people took the time to see me and were interested in what Flo and I are trying to do.

UNICEF New Zealand is helping many Pacific islands that we will not come through on this journey. However, they also have projects in Nepal and Laos, two countries that we WILL come through. Giving money to UNICEF NZ allows them to allocate it to where it is most urgently needed.

Both projects, in Nepal and Laos, aim to better the educational situation for children. To be able to go to a school has a lot of prerequisites that need to be fulfilled first. Access to clean water, medical treatment and general hygiene are a priority. As is getting children who work full-time into a better position.

Nepal, which was hit so hard by the earthquake, now faces a different problem: Child trafficking. Exploiting the poverty after the disaster, children are bought from their families with the promise of sending them to school and then sold into slavery of one form or another.

If you are interested in specific regions or projects, please read up on it on www.unicef.co.nz

So to help children in these countries and around the world: Please consider donating for our fundraiser. We added an extra page labeled ‘Making a difference’ for all our current and future efforts.