Legacy and Leadership: Visiting Third World Countries

Audrey Hepburn visited many third world countries in order to supply them with basic necessities for life such as food and water. "In these years she had visited 30 countries (including Ethiopia, Vietnam, Turkey, Guatemala, El Salvador, Thailand, and Bangladesh) and made more fundraising tours and given more interviews and press conferences than the UNICEF can count" (Watts) . Hepburn visited other countries to help with relief and hunger. The UNICEF record stated "Around Mekelle, in Tigray province, the activities Miss Hepburn visited included food distribution centre, and orphanage for 500 children and a food -for-work dam building project. From there she went to northern Shoa province where she saw other UNICEF-supported projects, including reforestation, terracing and sheep-breeding; carpet and clothing manufacturing which are being developed, using the wool from the sheep" (UNICEF).

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Source: UNICEF "Hepburn travelled to Viet Nam in 1990, drawing world attention to the needs of the country's children. Here, she visits the children of the Truon Pho Thong school at Phu Minh Commune, in the Tu Liem district near Hanoi".

Source: UNICEF "Children accompany Hepburn on a walk in the hamlet of Phuc Ly, at Phu Minh Commune in the Tu Liem district near Hanoi".

Source: UNICEF "Hepburn walks with children from a hill tribe in the remote northern Vietnamese province of Hoang Lien Son. She is wearing the traditional dress of the region, presented to her on arrival".

Source: UNICEF "In Mogadishu, Audrey Hepburn meets workers resting before continuing to unload famine-relief supplies of sorghum provided by the World Food Programme. The food was later distributed by the international non-governmental organization CARE"

Source: UNICEF "Hepburn greets a contingent of UN peacekeeping troops newly arrived from Pakistan at the airport in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Her 1992 visit helped focus attention on the plight of children and women afflicted by a worsening famine".

Source: UNICEF "At a medical facility in Banissa, a town in northeastern Kenya, Hepburn talks to a severely malnourished child, held by his mother. The man is a nurse from the Dutch branch of the non-governmental organization Médecins Sans Frontières".

The newspaper article was written when Audrey Hepburn died in order to preserve her legacy. Even after being diagnosed with cancer, she continued to travel and advocate human rights. Audrey Hepburn spent more than five years working with UNICEF in order to end famine and disease. "As Goodwill ambassador for UNICEF she traveled extensively in Africa and Latin America. She visited Ethiopia during the drought to call attention to the plight of starving children. In 1991 she described her UNICEF role as "talking my head off," and said, "I just decided to do as much as possible in the time that I'm still up to it" (James 1993).

UNICEF Speeches