David Beckham Is 'Very Proud' to Be UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador
— -- David Beckham said he is “very proud” to be a UNICEF goodwill ambassador as he visits New York City to celebrate the 70th year of the fundraiser for the organization that works to support and protect the world's most vulnerable children.
“It was founded 70 years ago to the day, just after World War II as the biggest child’s organization in the world,” Beckham said on “Good Morning America” today. “It’s something that I’m extremely focused on; it’s something that is very important to me and the family.”
UNICEF aims for no child to die from preventable causes, a mission the soccer star feels strongly about.
"It’s incredible that we still live in an age where children are dying every five minutes from violence around the world,” Beckham said. “It’s an incredible statistic, and as great as the work has been done over the years, there’s still so much more to be done."
“It doesn’t matter what your politics are, everyone in this room, everyone watching, everyone who has sat here -- no child should be affected by violence in the way they are,” said Beckham, 41, who created a moving PSA where his many tattoos come to life to highlight how violence in the world hurts children.
“I think it was just a very strong, powerful way to get across how so many children around the world are affected by violence,” he said of the new PSA from UNICEF UK. “It’s got a lot of hits, a lot of attention, and that’s what we wanted to achieve with this. Of course it’s about raising funds for children in situations around the world, but it’s about shining a light and things like this are so important for us.”
Beckham isn’t the only member of his family working on a charitable cause. His 11-year-old son, Cruz, recently released his debut single, a holiday-themed pop track titled "If Every Day Was Christmas." Proceeds from the sale of the single will go to a charity for disadvantaged children.
Cruz has been signed by "Scooter" Braun, who is known for managing clients like Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen.
“The amazing thing about this is we only realized that Cruz has a cute little voice about nine months ago,” said the proud father. “And Scoots has been a family friend for a while now, so he said ‘Bring him in, we’ll see if he enjoys it.’ And for us, we always hope our children are listening to us, and paying attention to us as parents. And we do a lot of work for charity. Me for UNICEF, and my wife [Victoria Beckham} does for the UN, and Cruz came to us very recently and he said, ‘How about I do a Christmas song for charity and all the proceeds go to charity?’"
“There’s nothing more to this than that at the moment,” Beckham continued. “He’s 11 years old. He’s still at school. He’s concentrating at school. That’s the most important thing. But he wanted to give back and he’s done this amazing little Christmas song which has gotten a lot of attention, and we’re very proud of him because he came to us with the idea. It’s kind of cool.”
