Home furnishings giant IKEA raises money for UNICEF

More than 500,000 children, mainly in Africa, are expected to benefit from home furnishing and accessories firm IKEA’s Holiday season fundraising campaign, which will donate one euro for every soft toy sold to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the non-governmental organization (NGO) Save the Children.

“In UNICEF we know that there is no better investment than that in the education of children,” Philip O’Brien, Director of the agency’s Private Fundraising and Partnerships division, said today of the “1 euro is a fortune... a smile is worth so much” Soft Toys Campaign.

“IKEA’s wonderful Soft Toy Initiative takes this message to hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide and gives them the opportunity to personally contribute to ensuring that millions of children in Africa have a quality education and a better future.”

Now in its fifth year, the campaign has raised over $25 million for both organizations. The fundraising drive started on 1 November and will stretch to 24 December.

The donations from this year’s sales go from the IKEA Social Initiative to UNICEF in support of "Schools for Africa" with a focus on Child Friendly Schools in six countries – Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Ethiopia, South Africa, Madagascar – as well as education and protection projects in China and Russia.

The IKEA funding will help UNICEF mainstream the comprehensive Child-Friendly Schools (CFS) approach to ensure a quality education for all children.

In Ethiopia, for example, 350,000 children in 300 primary schools stand to benefit from improved quality education through a combination of innovative approaches like school cluster based educational interventions, teacher training, furnishing of educational materials, equipped classrooms, libraries and the provision of sanitation facilities such as separate latrines, hand-washing facilities and potable drinking water.

Since the campaign started in 2003, UNICEF has received almost $12 million, benefiting education projects for 7 million school age children in more than 20 countries.

IKEA has launched a fun website called Soft Toys AID, supporting UNICEF and Save the Children's education programmes. On the site, the IKEA Soft Toys get together to sing for a better world and visitors are invited to join them in an attempt to create the world’s biggest choir.

“We believe children to be the most important people in the world, and supporting projects that give children access to quality education is an important and rewarding task of IKEA Social Initiative,” Marianne Barner, head of the Initiative, said.