How often do we see the world through the eyes of a child?

For many children around the world, growing up is full of danger.

To illustrate this reality, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) has created Beattie. Beattie’s story is written as a poem from the perspective of a child with interactive infographics and links to CIFF programs that support vulnerable kids like Beattie survive and thrive.

Day 1: We first meet Beattie at birth. She survives, but as the interactive statistics remind you, 19 out of 1,000 babies born aren’t as lucky.

Image: ciff.org

Next we journey with Beattie through her first supercritical 1,000 days on Earth. If Beattie is breastfed and enjoys a diet rich in vegetables and proteins, her brain and body will receive the proper nutrition to become strong and healthy. But with 159 million children chronically undernourished around the world, will she be that lucky?

Image: ciff.org

As Beattie’s journey through life continues she experiences major hurdles that threaten her survival and health. Will she receive adequate early childhood education? Will she succumb to life-threatening parasitic worms that threaten to overtake her young body? 

Image: ciff.org

Barely out of childhood, Beattie moves on to adolescence. No time for teenage angst, Beattie has to worry about becoming a mother before the age of 18. According to statistics, adolescent girls make up 11% of births but account for over 20% of the mothers who die or become disabled during childbirth.

Image: ciff.org

If she makes it through childbirth, she must still deal with global warming and countless other threats that endanger her own children’s chance of survival.

CIFF’s ingenious depiction of the enormous challenges facing our world’s children makes one thing clear: We can do more. There are enormous opportunities for us as global citizens to make a life-saving impact on Beattie’s life.

Beattie, like every child, deserves to survive and thrive.