VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Sofia Carson On Being A Unicef Ambassador, Covid-19 Vaccinations For Teens

Sofia Carson calls her Unicef ambassadorship the “greatest role of my life and the greatest honor of my life” in her new uInterview with the president of Unicef USA Michael Nyenhuis.

“My job as ambassador is to lift up the voices of children that Unicef relentlessly serves and the lives they have changed over 75 years and to advocate for real and tangible change,” Carson said, “and it truly is the most important thing that I will do especially now in this moment where we are facing a crisis in the world.”

“Unicef is the world’s biggest platform to reach children in need around the globe,” Nyenhuis explained. “We have programs in 190 countries and territories we’re working with children in health and education and protection and refugee and migrant situations and nutrition, clean water, all of those things that kids need who are in vulnerable situations all around the world. And we’re supported by donors, corporations, foundations and lots of individuals who recognize the importance of Unicef’s work and contribute to it.”

“One of the things we need from an ambassador like Sofia is to spread the word for us,” he said. “And she’s been in the field, she’s seen the programs directly, she understands the work that we’re doing and she’s got a very big heart for kids in the world. And so when she combines that passion for helping kids with her real understanding of Unicef’s work, she becomes a powerful voice to draw people to us.”

The 28-year-old actress said educating the world’s children is one of the most important causes in Unicef’s work.

“I was lucky enough to travel with my Unicef family to Recife, Brazil in 2019, right before the pandemic, and I got to meet and hug and hold these extraordinary young women who told me first hand that their lives were not only changed by an education, but quite literally saved,” she said. “And when you meet those women, you get to hold them and hug them, you are forever changed.”

Nyhenhuis said that Unicef is also working to get Covid vaccines delivered to other countries.

“All of the regular programs we do for kids, whether it’s the education programs that Sofia has seen, our work in nutrition, our work in health, all those things need to continue,” he said. “But on top of that we’ve been called on by the world to use our expertise in vaccine delivery, which is a core part of our work delivering basic childhood vaccines to about 45% of the world’s kids, to use that same expertise to deliver Covid vaccines around the world for healthcare workers for adults first and then later for youth. And we’re doing that. We’ve delivered about 600 million doses of Covid vaccine to about 140 countries and that’s ramping up pretty quickly now as we need to get those out.”