UNICEF's Kid Power Curriculum: The Facade of Outrunning Global Capitalism

• In Event: Revolutionizing Curricula Through Collective Consciousness

Abstract

This paper considers the UNICEF-sponsored curriculum accompanying their Kid Power program initiated in 2015 aimed at reducing childhood obesity and childhood malnourishment. In collaboration with primarily low-income public schools, the program issued activity monitors to students in the United States and tasked them with increasing their movement to earn points “exchanged” for food pouches for malnourished children living in countries experiencing high poverty. Critical discourse and critical visual analysis of the curriculum as depicted by videos posted on UNICEF USA’s YouTube channel between 2015 and 2018 considered the ideological messages conveyed by the program to students, teachers, and families participating. Findings discuss how the curriculum used emotional appeals to reinforce diet culture, racialized poverty narratives, US exceptionalism, and neoliberal ordering.

Author

• Anne E. Martin, Georgia State University
  Presenting Author