Click here to read on-going columns, addresses and articles authored by IPM's Executive Director, Joseph F. Cistone.

Across the world, millions of children face a life of absolute poverty, lacking adequate food and water supplies, educational resources, and health care.  Simply surviving from birth until age five is a difficult struggle for children of the developing world, compared with children of industrialized nations.  Every 30 seconds a child under age 5 dies of malaria or another poverty-related cause.  The infant mortality rate for children of “least developed” countries is 98 deaths per 1,000 births – almost double the world average of 54.  The situation does not improve for a child’s first five years of life, as the mortality rate for children until age five is 155 per 1,000 live births for least developed countries, compared to a world average of 79.  Disease pandemics such as HIV/AIDS also disproportionately affect children, as 15 million children across the world have lost at least one parent to the disease.  Of these, 12.1 million live in sub-Saharan Africa alone.

The lack of educational resources for the world’s children is as dismal as the lack of health care.  103 million school-aged children across the globe are currently not enrolled in school, and more than half of these are girls.  Development scholars agree that gender gaps in school enrollment and attendance widen in low-income countries.  According to The State of the World’s Children, “Households that shoulder significant financial burdens tend to keep girls at home because they require not only the extra money that is saved on school fees but also the additional help with household chores that girls traditionally provide” (2006).  

The Millennium Development Goals, developed by the United Nations, list four goals for improving the lives of children, including promoting healthy lives, providing quality education, combating HIV/AIDS, and protecting children against conflict, abuse, exploitation and violence.

Source: UNICEF (2006).  The State of the World’s Children, 2006.  New York: UNICEF.

IPM’s Children category of Projects focuses on one or all of the following initiatives:
• Child nutrition & health
• Child education

Some of IPM’s most successful Children’s Projects include:
• Project Peanut Butter, Blantyre, MALAWI
• Escuela Lidia Coggiola, Zaragoza, EL SALVADOR
• Niños Trabajadores, Ibague, COLOMBIA
• Unyolo Village Project, Unyolo, KENYA
• Interfaith Hospitality Network, Cleveland, OH, USA