Helping children smile

UN Chronicle, Dec, 1991 by Elsa B. Endrst

'What I really want to do is make children smile", said British actor Roger Moore, best known for his cinematic portrayal of Special Agent 007--James Bond.

And in Mr. Moore's view, children can only smile if their stomachs are full and if they are healthy. "If we have healthy children who are smiling, we might have a smiling world. People who smile don't hit one another and", he added, "wouldn't that be lovely!"

In August, he was appointed United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Special Representative for the Film Arts at a ceremony held at UN Headquarters in New York.

Accompanied by his 18-year old son, Christian, Mr. Moore immediately undertook his first mission for the agency. They visited UNICEF-assisted facilities in Central America, including health and sanitation centres, schools and projects for street children and community development. The countries visited were Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica.

After the trip, Mr. Moore told a press conference in Dallas: "A week ago, I helped introduce running water to a village in Guatemala. I was privileged to turn on the tap which the community had built with UNICEF assistance. It was a most fascinating time. I knew all about the conditions of poverty from reading the official statistics, but I really wanted to put some faced to those statistics."

Mr. Moore's involvement with UNICEF dates back to the early 1980s when he promoted UNICEF greeting cards in radio commercials. He has served as its spokesman at the Zecchino D'Oro song festival in Bologna, Italy, and co-hosted with actress Audrey Hepburn--another UNICEF goodwill ambassador--the Danny Kaye International Children's Award television programmes in 1990 and 1991, beamed from the Netherlands.

In this new role with UNICEF, Mr. Moore joins 10 other internationally-known figures in promoting the cause of children worldwide. Said Richard Jollly, UNICEF Deputy Director: "Double-0-7 is pledging double efforts for the under 7s" and all needy children around the world who need help.