Here in Australia, the rights and wellbeing of children and young people are being impacted by climate-driven disasters, mental health, unemployment, and for some, lack of access to quality education and health care.
Across the rest of the world, millions of girls and women are facing discrimination and obstacles that impact their futures. Every child has the right to safety, education, bodily autonomy, and the freedom to make decisions about their future. Gender equality ensures everyone can enjoy the same rights, resources, opportunities and protections, regardless of their gender. Through partnerships, advocacy and ensuring the voices of young people are heard, UNICEF Australia is striving for a better future for every child.
This summer UNICEF Australia and Cricket Australia are coming together with their Appeal Appeal initiative to appeal for more than just wickets. The organisations are teaming up to turn every appeal during the CommBank Women’s Ashes Test into an appeal for global gender equality, until every girl can play.
Breaking down gender equality barriers
UNICEF works with families, communities and local organisations to better the lives of children and young in more than 190 countries. As part of this, they are working to advance gender equality by integrating gender-responsive strategies and programs across education, health, protection, and sanitation, to ensure that every child has equal opportunities from the start, laying the foundation for a more equitable future.
Gender equality is essential to ensure that every child – girls and boys in all their diversity – has a fair chance in life.

Global initiatives
Around the world, a staggering 119 million girls are out of school. The barriers they face vary among countries and communities; child marriage, pregnancy, schools may not meet the safety, hygiene or sanitation needs of girls, or families living in poverty tend to favour boys when investing in education.
UNICEF believes that investing in girls’ education can help communities and countries to be more equal, value more diversity and be more peaceful. In countries like Sri Lanka, UNICEF is challenging gender norms and roles in a training package for health workers to promote caregivers’ mental health and emotional wellbeing. Mothers, and especially teenage mothers, often eat last and least. The project supports female caregivers’ emotional and psychosocial needs and focuses on improving mothers’ nutrition and fathers’ involvement in caregiving to shift stereotypical gender roles in a household.
With Oky, the world’s first open-source mobile phone period tracker and menstruation education app in developing countries, UNICEF is helping to break down inequalities, stigma and taboos and empower girls, so they can make informed decisions about their health.

How the partnership is helping
The Aussie Women’s cricket team have achieved some incredible things, both on and off the pitch. And now, they want to help the millions of girls around the world who face discrimination and obstacles that impact their futures.
Even before a girl is born, gender inequalities shape their lives, becoming even more pronounced in the teenage years, where many girls are barred from completing secondary school due to societal attitudes, child and early marriage, pregnancy, unpaid domestic work, and lack of access to safety.
That’s why this summer UNICEF is turning every appeal during the CommBank Women’s Ashes Test into an appeal for gender equality. By donating to UNICEF Australia and supporting the Appeal Appeal you’re supporting girls around the world with a chance to play, learn and lead with confidence and without limits.
How you can get involved
Team up with Cricket Australia and UNICEF Australia and support the Appeal Appeal. You can donate and help girls to build a brighter, more equitable future:
$10 could contribute to education programs supporting girls in building skills for the 21st century.
$24 could provide a girl with an empowerment pack that contains five reusable pads, one packet of paracetamol, seven exercise books and a school bag.
$59 could help reach 100 girls with gender transformative programs, including challenging harmful norms and stereotypes, and services for her own health so that she can stay in school.