The united nations cyber magazine.

The UN Works Web Site, launched in March 2001, features interesting short stories that are easy enough for children to read and understand about real people around the world whose lives have benefited from United Nations work in ways never imagined.

Current stories include those of Mrs. Dang of Hoa Phong Village in Viet Nam, who buys and sells areca nuts in the market. When her community received a grant from a programme--sponsored by the Vietnamese Government, the UN Capital Development Fund, the UN Development Programme and the Australian Development Agency--it was used to improve a local road and upgrade the market, which resulted in increased sales that enabled her to make a decent living.

Salomon Fofanah and his family fled from Liberia to Senegal when war broke out. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, together with Microsoft and its corporate partners, designed and deployed a refugee registration system that issues identification cards, and the Fofanahs are more secure now because they have proof of identity.

Dr. Sadvokasova is a physician at the Central Regional Hospital in Aralsk, Kazakhstan--a sparsely populated region since the Aral Sea dried up and created an environmental disaster. The hospital lacked the resources and expertise to deal with the increase in respiratory illness and cancers, and patients were advised to go to Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, but many could not afford it.

A project coordinated by UNESCO allows Dr. Sadvokasova to get a second medical opinion from specialists by using a newly developed portable ultrasound device that transmits and receives three-dimensional images to hospitals anywhere around the world.

Eight-year-old Gabriel was forcibly recruited as a soldier into the rebel group, the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA). He was able to reclaim his childhood after he was evacuated out of the military camp by the United Nations Children's Fund aboard a relief flight run by the World Food Programme. Adrian is a six-year-old boy from Turrialba, Costa Rica who works long hours with his parents on coffee plantations to earn money and cannot attend school regularly. His safety and health are at risk from injuries, toxic chemicals, pesticides and insects. The ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) is working with coffee growers' associations and non-governmental organizations to phase out child labour on the plantations.

Readers of the Web site are invited to share their stories, particularly if they, their families or communities have benefited in some way because of the UN work (www.un.org/works).