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Add one more tick to your bucket list and rewrite a child’s future.
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A place where you can capture all your hopes, dreams and your legacy.
Contact Pauline, our Legacy Manager, today about Bucketful of Dreams.
You’ve spent a life giving time, love, effort and dreams.
But some dreams – the most powerful ones – aren’t just about you. They’re about what you leave behind.
Below, I’ve outlined how you can leave a lasting legacy that matters through UNICEF’s Bucketful of Dreams.
But first, I want to tell you something Stephen Rea said to me …
Stephen has been a UNICEF Ambassador for over twenty years. He has seen with his own eyes what UNICEF does in the places where vulnerable children are in need. And recently he did something about it. He decided to leave a gift to UNICEF in his Will.
He calls it, “the most important tick on my bucket list”.
I’ve been thinking about that phrase ever since he said it. Because most of us, when we think about a bucket list, think about the things we want to do, see and experience.
But Stephen is talking about something different. He is talking about the values he lives by and the decision to make sure they outlast him.
This is a different kind of bucket list item. And I think if you’re reading this, you might – like Stephen – add this important tick to your bucket list. Because the people who take the time to read a letter like this tend to be a particular kind of person.
Not passive bystanders, but people who have spent a lifetime acting on what they believe
People for whom the quiet conviction that children deserve a fair start in life – wherever they happen to be born – is not an abstract sentiment, but something they have always been prepared to do something about. If this sounds like you, please read on.
UNICEF Ambassador Stephen Rea said leaving a gift to UNICEF was the most important tick on his bucket list.
The problem no one talks about loudly enough
Every year nearly half of all deaths of children under five are linked to nutrition. 45% of these young lives are claimed by hunger and poor nutrition. Not from war, natural disasters or disease the way most people imagine.
As you can see, this is not a problem from the distant past. It is happening now, today.
And yet – and this matters enormously – the situation is changing. Globally, since 2010 the proportion of children who die under five has halved.
Halved.
UNICEF has been working on this problem for decades. We have the knowledge, the infrastructure and the relationships on the ground to keep working on it.
What UNICEF is building – and why we need you
You can help children like five-year-old Subira for generations to come.
I’ve linked here a short piece about Ethiopia by Stephen Rea. It explains how innovative new solutions are providing nutritious food for children.
This is not a story about a simple fix. It’s the story of how sustained, structural investment helps to reverse the problem of children dying from malnutrition and keeps children in school.
The tick on your bucket list will help UNICEF build something lasting. To continue to be there, preventing children from dying from poor nutrition for the generations who will need help tomorrow.
The people who have made this decision tell me they didn’t agonise over it. They simply decided the values they had lived by deserved to keep going after them – and they did something about it.
Most people never quite get around to it. The ones who do tell me they’d not realised they could help in this way before.
Your Bucketful of Dreams
To help you with your decision, I’d like to send you something. It’s called Bucketful of Dreams, a completely free pack with no obligation of any kind.
Whatever you decide, it is yours to keep, with no obligation to do anything else.
Bucketful of Dreams is built around a simple idea:
Inside you’ll find a beautiful, inspiring, personal journal to help you capture what matters to you and think about the future you’d like to help create …
… a Will Planner that takes the mystery out of the process of making your Will. And gives you the guidance and help you need to get your affairs in order at your own pace …
… and a legacy brochure. This explains clearly and simply, if you choose to add UNICEF to your Will, what your gift could mean for children who need someone in their corner.
People who have asked for their Bucketful of Dreams pack tell us they wish they’d done it sooner. Because it was so helpful in prompting them to figure out what is most important to them. And sitting down with the journal brought them back to the question that matters:
For some people, that question leads straight to UNICEF. For others it takes a little longer.
Either way, it is worth asking.
The journal and Will Planner are useful regardless of any decision about UNICEF. But the central idea – the one Stephen Rea acted on – is this:
The values you have lived by deserve to outlast you. Adding UNICEF to your bucket list is one way to make sure they do.
The children who need our help, will still need help long after we are gone. Your bucket list can be part of the answer.
No pressure or obligation
Stephen Rea has visited UNICEF projects, and met mothers who have already lost children to disease and hunger.
If you’re considering your legacy and thinking you’d like it to include helping children for decades to come …
… Bucketful of Dreams will support you and walk you through the process – whether you already have a Will or not.
Let me stress your pack is free and requesting one does not oblige you to do anything else.
The form above takes just a few minutes to complete.
In fact most tell me the hardest part was deciding to ask. And once they did, everything else followed naturally.
If you’d like to talk it through first, I’d be very happy to help – a phone call, a chat, even a cup of tea if you’d prefer. There are no wrong questions whatsoever.
Start your legacy journey: get in touch with me and join our Bucketful of Dreams community today.
Your next adventure could be the one which changes children’s lives forever.
Thank you for reading.
Warm regards,
PS. You don’t need to have everything figured out. You just need to start.
By joining our Bucketful of Dreams you will be part of a community, and helping fulfil the dreams of children, rewriting their future.
Your simple guide to making your Will
Just three short, simple stress free steps to make your Will.
The impact of legacy giving
Nasim is six years old. She lives in the Central Ethiopia Region and goes to Wente Sositro Primary School. Every day at school she receives a hot meal – rice with vegetables, a serving of haricot beans and one boiled egg.
For Nasim, this nutritious, balanced meal removes the hunger that steals her energy and weakens her immunity and ability to fight disease and illness. That lunchtime meal changes everything.
What’s more, it enables Nasim – and children like her – to sit in a classroom and concentrate. To follow what the teacher is saying, to learn and to begin to imagine a future for themselves.
Nasim’s school runs its own poultry farm. It was built with UNICEF support as part of a programme called Feeding the Future, now running across the Central, Sidama and South Ethiopia regions.
Every day, Nasim’s school collects more than 1,600 eggs. The eggs not used by the school are distributed through a network of hubs across the district, managed by local young people who have been trained by UNICEF and are employed to run the operation.
This is not emergency, short-term aid. This is a community feeding its own children.
The model works because it is designed to outlast the initial investment. UNICEF doesn’t just fund a meal. It builds the knowledge, infrastructure and the local capacity to keep putting food on tables year after year, for the children who come after the children who are there today.
This is what a legacy gift in your Will makes possible.
Request your Bucketful of Dreams pack
Audrey Hepburn’s greatest role was helping children
At the height of her fame, Audrey Hepburn was one of cinema’s brightest lights, gracing red carpets at the world’s most glamorous movie premieres. Yet behind the elegance and acclaim, she carried a lifelong memory of hunger.
As a child in Holland during the Second World War, Audrey experienced severe food shortages, an experience that shaped her compassion and sense of purpose. Those early years inspired her lifelong commitment to helping children in need, and in 1988 she became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
“I can testify what UNICEF means to children,” she said, “because I was among those who received food and medical relief right after World War II.”
From famine-stricken Ethiopia to communities around the world, Audrey used her unmistakable voice and iconic status to make the world listen to children. On a memorable visit to Dublin, where her father had once lived, she told The Late Late Show’s Gay Byrne that when children “see UNICEF, their faces light up.”
In her final years, it was her humanitarian work with UNICEF that she was most proud of, more than any role she played on screen.
Today, you can help carry her dream forward.
Request your Bucketful of Dreams pack