A part of the United Nations that works for children all over the world — especially children caught in war, disaster, poverty, hunger, or disease. It pays for vaccines, clean water, food for very hungry babies, and schooling, and it speaks up for children's rights. You see its name on aid boxes in news pictures, and you may have met it through school fundraising or those collection boxes at Halloween in some countries. It is said as a word, not letter by letter: YOU-ni-sef. It is written in capitals because it began as a set of initials. In sentences it behaves like a single organisation, so it takes a singular verb: "UNICEF says…", "UNICEF has warned…" One nice piece of history hides in the name: the C and E stand for Children's Emergency, and the whole thing was set up in 1946 for children in Europe after the Second World War. The 'emergency' part of the job was later dropped — the official name is now the United Nations Children's Fund — but everyone had grown used to saying UNICEF, so the old letters stayed.