A child’s life is made up of many firsts, like a first smile, first steps or the first day of school. Whether you are a mom here in the United States, or a mom somewhere around the globe, you love to celebrate these important milestones.

Unfortunately, all parents don’t get to celebrate these special moments. Did you know that every 20 seconds, a child around the world dies from a vaccine-preventable disease?

To change this, the UN Foundation has launched Shot@Life, a campaign aimed at providing all children with life-saving vaccines. Shot@Life educates, connects and empowers Americans to champion vaccines as the most cost-effective way to safeguard the lives of children in developing countries. The campaign provides children around the world with vaccines that prevent polio, diarrhea, measles and pneumonia. Together with its partners – the American Academy of Pediatrics, the GAVI Alliance and UNICEF—Shot@Life has mobilized a grassroots movement of moms to advocate for immunizations among their own communities.

To help spread the word, the campaign has created innovative tools to make it easy for parents like you to engage with the campaign. Recently, Shot@Life launched its new mobile app that allows parents to capture and share childhood milestones with photos on Facebook, Twitter or through email. The app also has a fantastic feature that allows parents to track developmental and health-related milestones that occur in a child’s life from ages 0 to 5.

Shot@Life is constantly thinking of new ways for parents to engage with the campaign. Right now, the campaign is asking supporters to advocate for global funding for vaccines – specifically around the fight against polio. With World Polio Day coming up on October 24, world leaders are gathering for UN General Assembly meetings in New York City this week to discuss the gap in funding needed to eliminate polio from the globe for good.

Think being an advocate for global childhood vaccines is too hard? Think again. The campaign even teaches mothers how they can get involved on their own time, even in small ways, such as creating a blog, sending a tweet or sharing information with a friend. One of Shot@Life’s “champions” recently blogged about how easy advocacy can be, especially when supporting a global cause that has a direct impact on her own children’s health and well-being, as well as those in developing countries.

 “Our entire campaign is about connecting with moms in the U.S. and showing them that children in developing countries aren’t so very different from our own children,” says Devi Thomas, director of the Shot@Life campaign. “Through campaign tools like the mobile app, parents are able to easily share how important Shot@Life is in making a difference in children’s lives throughout the world.”

Check out the Shot@Life website to learn more about how to advocate for global childhood immunizations with your own Member of Congress and hear more campaign updates on the Facebook page. The Shot@Life app is available for download on iPhone and Android mobile devices.

The post Shot@Life: Moms Fighting for Global Vaccines (and having fun while doing it!) appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.

Audrey’s greatest fear is to be pregnant or see her friends and loved ones pregnant. She almost died with one of her deliveries. She still shivers when she thinks about that time. The odds are against mothers in her country. An estimated 13,000 women die from pregnancy and delivery related complications each year, most from a lack of proper obstetric care.* Tanzania has the 21^st highest rate of maternal death in Africa. Audrey also worries about children’s health, about babies dying before their time — many from vaccine preventable diseases.

I wish we could all jump on a plane together and visit with Audrey and her friends in Tanzania. However, there is so much we can do from here. From sharing issues on our blogs and via social media, donating as much as we can afford and a bit more, writing letters to influencers and policy makers.

You can join us in taking the Million Moms challenge, a coalition of global health partners for mothers and babies founded by the United Nations Foundation and ABC News. Take action for moms and babies everywhere! There are many things you can do right now. Our donations page takes you to a variety of on-the-ground maternal and child health projects you can support immediately.

This week is World Immunization Week, and our partners at the UN Foundation are launching a powerful campaign called Shot@Life, to help make sure every child gets the vaccines they need to have a shot at a healthy life. Here’s how you can help.

Audrey and her friends are fighting this battle every day. Let’s take a few minutes today to join them.

*Source: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/tanzania_statistics.html

*Photo courtesy of Bonbon mini

The post On the Path of Pregnancy and Birth Together appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.