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Jamaican non-profit gets Pate Award

Thursday, 25 May 2000: The United Nations Children's Fund today gave its highest honour to the Rural Family Support Organization (RuFamSo), a Jamaican non-profit that reaches out to children and adolescents in many of the country's poorest communities.

Along with the Maurice Pate Award, RuFamSo also received a $25,000 donation from UNICEF.

RuFamSo works with children and teenagers in 60 of Jamaica's poorest communities, where a high prevalence of female-headed households, teenage pregnancies, inadequate access to early childhood services, and pervasive unemployment hinder the development and well-being of children.

In the face of these challenges, RuFamSo provides educational support and skills training to teenage mothers, offers vocational training to adolescent males, fights illiteracy with an outreach effort called the "Uplifting Adolescents Programme," and supports the health and well-being of very young children with its "Roving Caregivers Programme," which provides child-care education.

The award was announced by the Executive Board of UNICEF on the final day of its spring meeting in New York. Joyce Jarrett, executive director of RuFamSo, accepted the award on behalf of her organization.

The Maurice Pate Award was established in 1965 in memory of the first Executive Director of UNICEF, and the Pate Award fund was created with money UNICEF received when it won the 1965 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Maurice Pate Award is given each year to an institution, organization or individual whose work embodies the spirit of UNICEF's mission of protecting and promoting the health, welfare and general well-being of children. Each year's honouree is selected based on four criteria:

1. extraordinary and exemplary leadership in the advancement of the survival, protection and development of children;
2. innovative and inspirational work;
3. action on a national or regional scale with the potential for emulation; and
4. action that serves to encourage voluntary and grass-roots activities.

Recipients of the award cannot represent any Government or UN agency.

This year, a total of 19 nominations for the Maurice Pate Award were received - four from Africa, five from the Americas and the Caribbean, six from Asia, two from the Middle East and North Africa, and two from Central and Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Baltic States.

Previous winners include The League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (1986); Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, Nigeria (1990); the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, Bangladesh (1992); The People and State of Ceara, Brazil (1993); the All-China Women's Federation, China (1994); and Kuleana, Eastern and Southern Africa (1999).

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