We Have Come a Long Way

This week, your XUNICEF blog will cross another benchmark. 300,000 articles  have been viewed by our readers since the blog was established in early 2018. 

Also this week, we welcome our 1000th member to the XUNICEF community. Our members live all over the world. The map below indicates the countries, from where our readers have visited the XUNICEF blog, since 7 January 2023. We so far have collected 113 flags, including from far flung places such as Tonga, Lesotho and Burkina Faso. Our readers are also in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, the Ukraine, Belarus, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Georgia (the one in the Caucasus!).

Our flag counter only identifies the country from where a visitor reads our blog. The identity of our readers remains unknown. You can zoom into the map, by clicking here.

About one third of all page-views is from the USA, which  is a favorite retirement location for former staff . UN retirees have called in from 41 states of the USA. Also staff members still employed by UNICEF in New York may visit our blog from time to time, in part accounting for the high number of virtual visits from UN headquarters.

Here is map of the 4,319 cities or 'hubs' in 188 countries, from where our members have clicked the XUNICEF blog since its start in 2018. All is says that you are part of an active global community that has members in every corner of world.

We have come a long way

No doubt, our blog has become more popular over the years. The graph below tracks the  monthly visitors to our site. With some inevitable ups and downs, the number has been increasing steadily. January 2023 was a record month, with more than 13,500 site visits.

It all started in early 2018, with the first issue of News and Views.

At the time, it was a 'newsletter' as was customary. Now, we have evolved into what we hope is an engaging platform, where members can air their views, share their experiences or hobbies, revive old contacts or find new friends with similar backgrounds. Send in your own articles or contributions to xunicef.news.views@gmail.com, and don't be shy to comment on each other's contribution. 

Importantly, comments left by you tend to generate even more interest and encourage others to add comments of their own. Remember, any discussion may create friction, and friction creates heat, which in turn creates uplift!

You can always see the latest 6 comments in the right margin of our blog.  If you view the blog on your smartphone or tablet, and you do not see any comments in the right margin, click the three horizontal bars (called the 'hamburger') in the upper right corner, and the comments will appear.

We also recommend that you sign up for the daily updates. A server will send you a daily email with just the titles and the first words of any new articles that have been posted on our blog. This way, you always remain up-to-date on what's going on. 

Some of us have created a shortcut to the XUNICEF Blog on their smartphone. With this, we are only one click away! If you wish to know how to do this, write to xunicef.news.views@gmail.com.

6400 Articles

Believe it or not: since our start in 2018, we have published more than 6400 articles in XUNICEF News and Views. And all of them are still available. You can search for all of them in the 'search field' on top of the screen. If you remember the approximate date, try out the archives - they can be found in the right margin, at the bottom.

If you haven't done so, you may wish to look at the 'most read articles of 2022'. to give you an idea of the bandwidth of topics that we are trying to cover - of course being dependent on what we receive as contributions from you, the readers.

We, the editors, try to make the blog as interesting as possible. Of course, we always depend on your contributions. Over time, we have introduced different topics or series - such as: 

• the history series led and often researched and authored by Tom; 
• the photo features created and managed by Gianni; 
• the artists and music features managed by Doreen;
• the stamp soliloquy by Fouad, 
• theme based Quarterlies, especially the four substantive quarterlies in 2021 commemorating 75th anniversary of UNICEF; 
• our opinion columns by Ken, Detlef, Nuzhat and Ramesh; 
• the Laughter Section by Fouad/Doreen, 
• the 10 Questions profiles collected by Detlef, and 
• the Quiz and Quick Chats by Sree
• the Book reviews managed by the editors.

Painting by one of our members - Franziska van Vietinghoff

We hope that our menu of articles  offers something for everyone. If you feel something is missing, or need to be talked about, send us your ideas! 

The main purpose of our blog and our community is to strengthen the network between our members; to have something meaningful to discuss and to reach out to others. The XUNICEF blog/website is your platform, to do exactly this.