Children's Health Kit ($35)

Health is central to human happiness and well-being — it is the foundation for economic progress. Malnutrition, pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles and HIV put millions of young lives in developing countries at risk. Mercy Corps programs helps families and local health systems start children on a healthy path.

Why Help Is Needed

Nearly 10 million children under the age of five die every year. Most of these deaths are avoidable — the result of preventable diseases such as diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria. About 20 million children under five worldwide are severely malnourished, which leaves them more vulnerable to illness and early death.

Mercy Corps In Action

We’re helping babies arrive safely and children grow up healthy. Our work includes training midwives in Indonesia, teaching nutrition to new mothers in Tajikistan, immunizing kids in Iraq and establishing health posts in rural Guatemala. We strengthen local health systems and give families the tools they need to achieve a key Millennium Development Goal: reducing the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds by 2015.

Weki's Story

One sunny morning inside an elementary-school classroom in West Sumatra's Pariaman district, a few dozen eager-looking students accepted bright yellow cartons handed out to them by their teachers.

Among the quiet bunch was 9-year-old Weki, a little boy wearing a black kopiah, a native Indonesian hat. He's one of 170,000 first, second and third graders who receive fortified soy milk three times a week from Mercy Corps' Sumatra Healthy Schools Program. The soy milk, along with regular de-worming treatments and parental nutrition classes, aims to fight chronic anemia and other diseases related to child malnutrition.

At home, Weki usually eats just rice, sometimes with vegetables. More often, children here are left to eat cheap, non-nutritious snacks sold by ubiquitous roadside vendors. Fortified soy milk is a decidedly healthier alternative.

As Weki shook the flattened carton with his tiny hands to ensure he had finished its content before throwing it away, he looked up and flashed a timid smile. Finishing his fortified soy milk is just a little gesture that symbolized the hope and possibilities for his future.

Children's Health Kit ($35)
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Purchase of a Mercy Kit is a symbolic gift that supports Mercy Corps' worldwide programs to help children and families in need. The Breastfeeding Kit, Climate Change Kit, Fuel-Efficient Stove Kit, Cricket Farm Kit, Send an Orphan to School Kit, Plant a Tree Kit, Play to Heal Kit and Uganda Farm Kit supports those specific project funds. Proceeds from the sale of other Mercy Kits will be used where most needed.