Maurice Pate
United Nations Children’s Fund
For notable service to the world’s children and especially for skilled development of the United Nations Children’s Fund program for improving maternal and child health.
From his birthplace in Pender, Nebraska, Maurice Pate moved early in life into worldwide activities. Graduation from Princeton University was followed by Army service overseas and then by several years of association with Herbert Hoover in war relief work in Belgium and Poland.
A career in international commerce was followed by again accepting the challenge of intense human need as president of the Commission for Polish Relief in 1939. He continued in similar international service until appointed executive director of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in 1947. Under his administration, this organization has grown steadily in meeting the worldwide health needs of children and mothers and in the development of respect and good will toward all mankind.
Populations everywhere can understand the mission of UNICEF:
(1) supplies and equipment for maternal and child health centers;
(2) nutrition programs including milk distribution, dairy plant construction, school feeding, nutrition education, and improved local food resources; and
(3) direct disease control programs including antimalaria campaigns ($8 million and reaching about 25 million persons annually in this work alone, in 1958–1960), DDT production and distribution, penicillin production and distribution, control measures for leprosy, yaws, tuberculosis and trachoma, and improvements in sanitation.
Now changed in name to United Nation’s Children’s Fund, the steady growth in voluntary financial support of UNICEF and the strength of its long-range program conducted in cooperation with the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization and other agencies reflect both the spirit and the rare administrative ability of the executive director.
