Kareena Kapoor Khan, a leading light in Bollywood and a passionate advocate for social causes, has been appointed as the National Ambassador for UNICEF India. Since 2014, Kareena has collaborated with UNICEF on critical issues including girls’ education, gender equality, and child health.
At the announcement event, Kareena expressed her commitment to children’s rights and development, stating, “Every child deserves a right to safety, a right to gender equality, a right to education, safe environments, health, and nutrition.”
She views her appointment as a pivotal moment in her life, saying, “I’m very honoured and very humbled to take on this position. I’ve worked tirelessly and worked very hard with all my heart. And now, finally, I’m joining them as a national ambassador. But of course, with that comes a huge responsibility which I accept with all my heart to ensure that every child through the corners of India, however vulnerable, wherever he is, whoever she is…I must include when I say every single child, I do not specify gender, I do not want to, voice or no voice, abled or disabled…I specify every single child I will work towards to give them their fundamental right…”
She also emphasized the importance of the early years, noting, “Every child deserves a fair chance to life, the first five years of their life being their foundation. Every child deserves a childhood, the first five years, once again I repeat, being the most important and formative years.”
As a mother of two sons, Taimur and Jeh, Kareena understands the necessity for children to have a voice. “Of course, this role is most important, but the most important role I play in my life is being a mother to my two boys. And I always feel that children need a voice. They like to be heard. Whatever it is, whichever environment they’re in, whether it’s talking to their parents, talking to their peers, or talking to their teachers, they want to be heard. They want to feel like someone’s listening to whatever they’re saying, at whatever age, they just want to be heard.”
Kareena highlighted the crucial role of nurturing confidence in children, “And nurturing their confidence. Because confidence gives them the ability to dream, ability to fly, ability to have ideas, to innovate, which they need because children are, they are the future. They are the future of our nation. So to have that, we must build their confidence.”
She plans to engage children in diverse activities to foster this growth. “And by that, I mean engaging them in sports, drama, painting, arts, reading, things like that, which we plan to do. And that’s what I want. These two things are, I think, the most important thing in the formative years of a child, which I’m quite sure we’re going to do in the coming years.”
