Global Babies

Wow, Nicole, you're right. This is a great book and another chance to put your bookbuying dollars to good use. Global Babies, published by Global Fund for Children, shows babies from many countries of the world from Spain to Mali doing what babies do, being beautiful. There are two pictures from the U.S., but one is and American Indian baby in her tikinagun.

The photographs are striking and colorful. Some babies are wearing traditional clothing, but not all of them.

The text is sparse, making the book go a bit too quickly when read aloud. So if you have a talker, take time to talk about the children in the pictures. For older kids you can go to the atlas and talk about the countries represented.

The back cover says the proceeds go to the Global Fund for Children. I'm not that familiar with this organization, but please check them out. They have books for older kids as well.

http://www.globalfundforchildren.org/

From their website, it looks as though they are a granting organization which supports small community-based projects. So it's sort of like giving to the United Way. One large organization helps out smaller projects that cannot do their own fund raising effectively. Most groups that do this require the projects to have a certain amount of involvement or leadership by local people, which is a good thing.

Patty and I were able to witness another organization that does wonderful work with children around the world, UNICEF. I think working with children is really the way to go when it comes to development. There are a lot of great projects for adults, but with children the investment has the potential to reach further into the future. You cannot give directly to UNICEF, but you can lend a hand through the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Here is their website:

http://www.unicefusa.org/

So that's enough fund raising for today.