Background
Mission Statement
Global Action for Children is a nonpartisan, results-oriented coalition dedicated to advocating for orphans and highly vulnerable children in the developing world. GAC works to increase funding and ensure it is spent effectively so all children have the health care, education, food, and protection they need to grow up safe and healthy.
Background
Launched in September 2003, Global Action for Children (GAC) is an independent, collaborative campaign of nongovernmental, faith-based, and student organizations dedicated to supporting orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC) and the communities and families that care for them. GAC’s unique strength lies in the diversity of its coalition partners and allies and its ability to mobilize a broad range of constituencies in support of advocacy for OVC.
In order to support vulnerable children effectively, GAC works towards:
- improving policies and expanding investments in proven interventions;
- increasing effectiveness of programs; and
- ensuring efficient spending of taxpayer dollars to serve as many children as possible.
Additionally GAC leads advocacy efforts on:
- issues facing orphans and highly vulnerable children and
- ensuring child survival and development, including access to low-cost, life-saving medicine and interventions.
GAC also works in coalition to support efforts to:
- expand access to basic education;
- end child sexual abuse; and
- assist children in conflict.
The magnitude of the crisis facing children in developing countries is clear. By 2010, the number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS globally is expected to exceed 20 million. Millions more will be made vulnerable through the loss of caregivers, teachers, community leaders, and healthcare workers.
According to UNICEF, one billion children are now living in poverty worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that 11 million children under age five die each year from preventable or treatable diseases such as diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria, and measles. Malnutrition was a factor in more than half of these cases. The International Labor Organization estimates that 211 million children aged 5-14 work, often in situations that are illegal, hazardous, exploitative, or forced.
These statistics remind us that millions of children around the world remain vulnerable to poverty, preventable diseases, physical and sexual abuse, armed conflict, trafficking, and lack of educational opportunities. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is exacerbating the already desperate situation of these children, taking the lives of their parents, teachers, and health workers; destroying the social fabric of communities; destabilizing nations and their economies; and leaving a generation of orphans in its wake.
By advocating on behalf of and for the welfare of children, we are creating the foundations for global improvement. Unless the needs of children, especially those whose rights and survival are in danger, are met, many of the world’s children may be lost. GAC is the voice of those children around the world who have no platform to be heard.
