By Bonnie Klap, Editor in Chief
For the last couple of weeks the news in The Hague was justly and understandably dominated by the NSS, the Nuclear Security Summit, and consequently the large influx of world leaders into the City of Peace and Justice, amongst whom US President Obama. Needless to say these two days created a lot of excitement among the press and general public.
With this important and successful summit behind us, allow me to share with you another topic related to The Hague, which is perhaps not equally important, but certainly deserves its fair share of attention as well. Probably unknown to most of you the city of The Hague has chosen the organization ‘Save the Children’ as its Charity of the year 2014.Why am I telling you this? There are two reasons for me to do so. First and foremost I truly believe that our children are the future and that they deserve to be protected. The independent international organization ‘Save the children,’ which was founded in 1919 and has 14,000 professionals working in 120 different countries worldwide, does exactly that. It strives to protect all children in the ages from 0 to 18 years, regardless of the child’s religion, gender, race, skin color, nationality or political preference.
Save the children goes about this by providing medical care, quality education and better living conditions. The second reason why I am mentioning this The Hague charity is because I recently had a most inspiring conversation with a lady called Wendy Kweens, who is a Project Manager for Save the children in The Netherlands. Ms. Kweens is also eager to bring The Hague’s 2014 charity to the attention of the diplomatic and international community in The Hague. As she tells me their motto is: ‘do or donate something,’ encouraging people to start their own fundraiser with the children as the beneficiaries.
Perhaps we can all think of a way to contribute in a small ( or big) way. After all, the NSS was meant to make the world a safer and better place. Don’t children, wherever they live, deserve the best possible living conditions as well?
