UNICEF Knocks on New Doors for Support : Charity: What began as a Halloween tradition to help children in foreign countries tackles same problems at home.

People remember the little orange boxes.

Since the 1950s, American children have carried them door-to-door on Halloween night, collecting donations for UNICEF instead of candy. The box was a bridge, linking children of the world’s most wealthy nation, with needy children in foreign countries.

But these days, the line that separates them from us has blurred, forcing UNICEF’s American supporters--particularly those in Los Angeles--to sharpen their approach to fund-raising and advocacy, aiming their efforts for those at home as well as abroad.

“We can’t just talk about children ‘over there’ because those children live here now,” said Marilyn F. Solomon, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the U.S. Committee for United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund in Los Angeles. “We have the same problems.”

Since becoming executive director in January, Solomon has dedicated much of her time to refining the city’s understanding of the 47-year-old organization.

In communities throughout the city, Solomon is spreading the message: UNICEF is alive and well and concerned with issues facing children in East L.A. as well as those in Rwanda.

“The difference now is that we’re getting on the street and meeting face-to-face with community people,” said Solomon, a longtime community organizer who began her work in the northeast San Fernando Valley. “I think that’s very different.”

Of late, the Los Angeles chapter has been busy forming partnerships with community-based organizations, part of an effort to increase public awareness of UNICEF and to forge the gap between local and international efforts for youth, Solomon said.

This month, the Los Angeles committee is co-sponsoring the Third Annual Pan-African Film Festival, a two-week event that will raise funds for UNICEF’s Africa project and two local, predominantly African American private schools.

“There’s such a relationship between the status of children in our own back yard and children in other places,” Solomon said. “With these partnerships we feel we can make a difference globally and locally.”

The local organization’s new slant coincides with a national movement aimed at broadening the focus of the organization to include children in the U.S.

Armed with the now-famous orange boxes, American children over the years have collected more than $100 million for UNICEF on Oct. 31, National UNICEF Day. The money collected on Halloweens past has been used to buy medicine, supply freshwater and provide primary education to children around the world.

But this year, for the first time in its history, the organization has declared the entire month of October as National UNICEF Month.

Not only will American children collect money for others, now they will have an opportunity to learn about the people who benefit from their efforts.

The organization’s goal is to have trained volunteers and staff members visit schools nationwide during October, sharing their knowledge of other cultures and places with American schoolchildren in hopes of fostering a respect for differences.

“They need help understanding global diversity, which is not across the ocean anymore,” said Gwendolyn Calvert Baker, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF, based in New York. “So much of it is in the classrooms sitting right next to them and on the playground.”

Around the world, conflicts based on cultural, ethnic, religious and political differences cause the death of countless children every year.

“There has to be a way to break that cycle in how we work with children and help them to grow beyond that,” Solomon said.

In multicultural Los Angeles, building that kind of understanding among schoolchildren, and forming alliances with churches, community groups, businesses and schools is critical--and difficult.

Back-to-back disasters in recent years have stretched “our giving capacity,” Solomon said.

A recent report ranked Los Angeles 48th out of 50 large U.S. cities for charitable giving per capita. Add to that, the city’s changing demographics--which translates into a change in giving patterns and habits--and the task of creating an interest in international giving and advocacy is even more daunting.

“One of the challenges . . . is to understand that situation,” Solomon said. “To look at a country like Rwanda and try to find a link between what’s necessary to revitalize our own community and also excite this community to reach beyond itself.”

So Solomon spent a recent weekend visiting churches in the African American community and throughout the city, encouraging ministers to invite their congregations to the two-week film festival.

And there will be other events this month to introduce the community to UNICEF and to raise funds: a concert featuring singer Maxine Weldon at Lunaria Restaurant and Jazz Club, a reception at the Alitash Kebede Art Gallery featuring the work of artist Herbert Gentry.

“We want people to know we’re here and the kinds of projects we’re involved in,” Solomon said.

In addition to the UNICEF donors “who have always been with us,” her multicultural outreach aims to create a new tradition of giving and involvement in other communities as well.

In July, the organization hosted an evening in Los Angeles with Julio Iglesias, a national UNICEF spokesman, and invited members of the Latino community “to get acquainted with Mr. Iglesias and the work of the U.S. committee,” Solomon said.

Ayuko Babu sees a parallel between the goals of the Pan-African Film Festival and those of UNICEF.

“Our mission is to bring an awareness and consciousness about black people around the world,” said Babu, executive director of the festival.

Awareness leads to understanding and concern--which then leads to action--but all too often Americans possess only vague sketches of people in other places, Babu said.

Sketchier still is Americans’ understanding of the relationship between their lives and the lives of people abroad, how the hot cocoa Americans drink to feel cozy on cold winter days comes from Ghana, for example.

“And the people who pick (it) are poor and don’t have enough money” to enjoy it themselves, he said.

The film festival “fits right in with” UNICEF’s and Solomon’s goal of “letting folks have a better sense of what’s happening,” he said.

At The Extraordinary Place, one of the schools that will receive funds from the festival, educators say UNICEF’s involvement in local issues will “contribute to the effort to keep children (in America) on the forefront of people’s minds”--a contribution as valuable as the money.

“It just makes me feel very hopeful because so much of the attention tends to be on the children abroad who are without,” said Ernestine Washington, who is program coordinator of the Crenshaw-area, nonprofit educational cooperative.

“I was very impressed by UNICEF’s outreach to the community. My prayer would be that it continues.”

Whether meeting with heads of corporations spreading the message of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF or with members of the Latino community, Solomon can fall back on the relationships fostered during her nearly 30 years of organizing and community building in Los Angeles.

Beginning in the 1960s, she worked with the Latin American Civic Assn. and started a Head Start Program in the basement of a Pacoima church. While raising six children in the Valley, she taught preschool, worked with the Fair Housing Council, and numerous other organizations. And she currently sits on the board of directors of RLA, the Los Angeles Art Festival and others.

“She’s been a real leader in the black community and the larger Los Angeles community,” said Babu, who has known Solomon for many years.

For nearly 30 years she worked at KCOP-Channel 13, where she was director of corporate relations and executive producer of information programs. Over the years she won five Emmy Awards and numerous others for documentaries and children’s programs, including “Whatever Happened to Childhood?”, a look at the changing lifestyles of American children.

Like the organizers of the film festival, Solomon knows the power of images.

Some of the festival films focus on the lives of children in countries where UNICEF has been a benefactor.

“Man By the Shore” by Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck, is the story of a Haitian child whose life and struggles “become a metaphor for a people,” Babu said.

“These Hands,” by Flora M’mbugu-Schelling tells of the conditions facing women in Tanzania, who, with babies at their sides, make a living crushing rocks used to build beachside tourist hotels.

The films help people draw a connection between real life, Babu said, “and that time you dropped your quarter in that little box for Halloween.”