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Every Halloween the Allison children would dress up in their scariest costumes and head out for a spirited evening of trick-and-treating in the neighborhoods around their Hatboro, Pennsylvania home outside of Philadelphia. At the end of the evening they would pour their bags of goodies into ever-burgeoning piles in the center of the living room. One Halloween, Mary Emma wondered aloud if there wasn't some way to turn this bounty into something beneficial.
Mary Emma's husband Clyde, a Philadelphia minister, thought he knew how to do just that. He wrote an article for the Junior High Kit, a Presbyterian youth magazine and recommended that children put away their cowboy and monster costumes and dress instead as people from other countries. And instead of foregoing tricks for candy, Reverend Allison suggested that children trick-or-treat for donations to UNICEF, the Children's Fund of the newly formed United Nations.
The article was published in 1950 and that October 31 in Philadelphia the first trick-or-treaters for UNICEF went door-to-door armed with decorated milk cartons. That night the children collected $17. In the year 2000, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the UNICEF trick-or-treat campaign more than $100 million dollars has been collected in the familiar orange boxes. Each year some 5 million UNICEF boxes are distributed across the country.
The first money raised was used to buy powdered milk for children in China and Europe who were subsisting in World War II-ravaged poverty. Today, UNICEF money is ticketed for children in 160 countries and territories around the world. While trick-or-treating for UNICEF raises more than $3 million each year it is a fraction of UNICEF's overall $1.1 billion budget. The bulk of that money comes from affluent governments around the world.
An estimated seven million children are saved in developing countries each year through UNICEF efforts. Money goes for everything from school supplies (two-thirds of the world's children now complete primary school) to medicine (80% of the world's children are now immunized against the top six killer diseases).
It does not take much money to make a difference in a child's life in the world's poor nations. According to official data, $2.46 can buy a complete set of school supplies for one child; 30 cents can fund five days of antibiotics for a child suffering from pneumonia; $2 can buy a pound of seed to stock an entire community vegetable garden; $10 can purify 52 gallons of contaminated drinking water; and $17 can pay for enough vaccine to immunize a child against six potentially fatal childhood diseases.
In 1967, October 31 was proclaimed National UNICEF Day and in the 1990s the entire month of October became 'Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF.' Thousands of costumed fundraisers still go door-to-door but countless others are involved in fundraising activities like dances, bake sales and car washes.
As important as the money raised is, as valuable are UNICEF-sponsored educational programs that teach American children about the perils facing poor children around the world and the merits in helping others. With that foundation, it can be hoped that the tradition of giving will be permanently ingrained when trick-and-treating days are long forgotten.
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