A message from Kenya's children

Young Rupal Shah, Peter Ongeri, Imrana Quereshi, Janet Austin, and more than 20 of their Nairobi schoolmates are not waiting for Halloween to ring our dorrbells and wring our hearts for the world's starving children who need the aid of UNICEF. It is not for themselves that the children in Kenya "ASK FOR HELP" in capital letters and sign their names laboriously up and down the page. They write because they saw a newspaper article about the plight of their counterparts in strife-torn Uganda and were "very shocked" that children like themselves "could be in such a state of starvation."

They decided to hold a jumble sale and other fund-raising events in their own schools: "We should ALL feel guilty if we sit and do nothing." But they wanted to share their concern with a wider world, whose resources could help more than their own.

Is that world listening? For us this year the UNICEF call to conscience will bear not only the imprint of the United Nations and the neighborhood hobgoblins with their collection boxes -- but the signatures of Rupal, Peter, Imrana, and Jamet, not to mention Saidi Saad, Henry Tindyebwa, Sanjee Ratnatunga, Eric Gayawira, Jesper L. Degu, Faryal Dhobar. . . .