Actor Sam Neill to sell cast-autographed Jurassic Park collection to support child refugees

Neill, 76, who plays Dr. Alan Grant in Stephen Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” films, is selling cast-autographed Funko Pops! figurines from various Jurassic Park films through Propstore, one of the world’s leading vendors of entertainment memorabilia.

We stand side by side with children in the world's toughest places.
The auction closes on 17 August with all proceeds going to SaveTheKids’ work supporting children living in refugee camps.

In a video to promote the auction, the New Zealand actor shows each of the items up for grabs for movie buffs everywhere. Funko Pops are small body, big-headed vinyl figures of characters from movies, video games, and other pop culture:

“They’re all signed. They’re unopened. No one else has this set in the world. They’re absolutely invaluable. And you will want to go for the auction and get these.

“Look here’s me, rather cruelly with a grey beard and a hat of course… you won’t want to miss out on this, will you?”

The set includes five unboxed Funko Pops! of No. 39 Park Vehicle, which comes with an Ellie Sattler figure; No. 547 Dr. Ian Malcolm; No. 585 Owen Grady; No. 590 Claire Dearing; and No. 1221 Dr. Alan Grant. Each figure features an autograph by their respective actors—Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Sam Neill—on the plastic windows of the box.

SaveTheKids New Zealand Chief Executive Heidi Coetzee said:

“Latest figures show that at least 117 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict and persecution, and at a time when half of the world's refugees are children, Sir Sam’s generous contribution for child refugees is more important than ever.”

Neill's donation will go towards helping the nearly one million Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, the largest refugee settlement in the world. SaveTheKids is providing services including primary health care, learning centres, and child protection programmes for refugees and the local host community in Cox’s Bazar.

Neill is the recipient of the AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, the Longford Lyell Award, the New Zealand Film Award, and the Logie Award for Most Outstanding Actor. He also has three Golden Globe and two Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won the Silver Logie for Most Popular Actor at the 2023 Logies.

Newborn babies as young as two weeks old are catching the deadly mpox virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s overcrowded hospitals

About 15,000 suspected cases have been identified in DRC so far this year, which has already surpassed the total number from 2023, and the virus is spreading to other countries in Africa. Authorities, health workers, and aid groups are racing against time to curb the spread of the deadly disease in a country already embroiled in a humanitarian crisis and with one of the most fragile healthcare systems in the world.

We stand side by side with children in the world's toughest places.
Both cases and deaths are more prevalent in children than adults, SaveTheKids said.

The rapid spread of the virus in DRC—which has reportedly about 90% of all cases—is putting a strain on an already fragile health system that is still reeling from past outbreaks of Ebola and COVID-19 and a scarcity of staff and medical supplies. In some health centres around Goma, patient intake is 4,000% higher than their capacity, SaveTheKids said.

Jacques, an epidemiologist and mpox expert with a SaveTheKids partner in South Kivu province, DRC, said:

“The worst case I’ve seen is that of a six-week-old baby who was just two weeks old when he contracted mpox and has now been in our care for four weeks. He got infected because hospital overcrowding meant he and his mother were forced to share a room with someone else who had the virus, which was undiagnosed at the time.

“He had rashes all over his body, his skin was starting to blacken, and he had a high fever. His parents were stunned by his condition and were scared he was dying.”

Children are at higher risk than adults of contracting the virus, also known as Monkeypox, with 70% of DRC’s 14,901 cases in children under 15, and 39% of cases in children under five, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Children in the DRC are also nearly four times more likely to die from mpox than adults, with WHO data showing that the case fatality ratio for children under the age of one is 8.6%, compared to 2.4% in people aged 15 and over. Of the deaths reported by May 2024, 62% were children under 5 years old, the same data shows.

The WHO will meet on Wednesday to discuss whether the mpox outbreak in Africa is a global public health emergency.

The latest mpox variant, clade 1b, was detected in DRC in September 2023 and has now been traced in neighbouring Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and Burundi.

The Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is also considering if the virus's rapid spread in DRC and across borders constitutes a public health emergency.

Mpox causes fever, rash, and lesions all over the body, severe headaches, and fatigue. Some children also develop respiratory problems and have difficulty swallowing, and are at higher risk for secondary bacterial infections. In severe cases, mpox can lead to sepsis, a life-threatening response to infection that requires immediate specialist medical attention.

SaveTheKids said the close resemblance of some of the signs and symptoms of mpox to other common childhood illnesses—such as scabies and chickenpox—might be leading to late recognition and treatment, contributing to transmission and worse outcomes due to delayed diagnosis and treatment.

Additionally, caregivers have to fight socio-cultural stigma around the virus due to a widespread belief that it is spread only through sexual contact. In fact, the virus can spread by any skin-to-skin contact, airborne contact in proximity—like COVID-19—and even from contaminated surfaces and objects such as bedding, clothing, and cooking utensils.

Greg Ramm, SaveTheKids Country Director in DRC, said:

“Children and families in the eastern DRC are in shock. Their lives have already been blighted by years of conflict, displacement, and some of the highest rates of hunger in the world. The health system is already collapsing under the strain of soaring rates of malnutrition, measles, and cholera coupled with the residual impacts of past Ebola and COVID-19 outbreaks.

“To add a new deadly virus that is aggressively attacking children to the mix is a cruel stroke of fate. As we’ve seen time and again, it’s the already disadvantaged children who are most at risk. Surrounding Goma in eastern DRC are three IDP camps where some 354,000 children are crammed into tents in unsanitary conditions, with limited access to clean water, healthcare, and adequate nutrition. The deadly mpox can zip from tent to tent.

“With the humanitarian response in the country already woefully underfunded, this is the critical hour for international donors to step up to curb the spread of this disease, support health services, and prevent more deaths of innocent people. We need to see a rapid ramp-up of vaccines and capacity increase to do this locally. We have just a few weeks before children go back to school—we must stop the spread now.”

In DRC, SaveTheKids is responding to the mpox outbreak in North Kivu and South Kivu through water, sanitation, and health services support, including providing PPE and training leaders in engagement, communication, and community alert systems for identifying and reporting suspected cases.

SaveTheKids is also working with the national government in Burundi on a national response plan to the rising number of infections.

SaveTheKids has worked in DRC since 1994 to meet humanitarian needs linked to the arrival of refugees and the displacement of populations due to armed conflict in eastern provinces. SaveTheKids has scaled up its humanitarian response to support existing care systems, training local leaders and communities to prevent and respond to exploitation and abuse, and ensuring access to healthcare through mobile clinics. It is also helping children access basic education by building classrooms, training teachers, and distributing learning materials.

Child casualties in Ukraine surged by nearly 40% in the first half of this year, bringing the total number of children killed or injured in nearly 900 days of war to about 2,200

At least 71 children were killed or injured in July, making it the deadliest month in the conflict since September 2022, according to figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The majority of these casualties (95%) resulted from explosive weapons [2].

Child casualties spiked following a series of deadly attacks across multiple cities on 8 July, which killed at least 43 civilians, including five children. Among the injured were at least seven children at Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, Okhmatdyt in Kyiv, which was heavily damaged during the attacks.

Tamara's* 16-year-old son narrowly escaped injury when a missile struck 30 metres away from their home on July 8 in Kyiv:

“[My children] came to my room just as the missiles were being shot down. He [younger son] along with my older son came into my room right before the shockwaves swept through. The couch he was sleeping on was covered with bits of ceiling. If he hadn’t moved, he would have been struck by the collapsed ceiling. We are recovering but it does not feel good...People used to be able to live their lives and then in a second you lose everything.”

A total of 2,184 child casualties have been documented by the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) since the full-scale war began in February 2022, with 633 killed and 1,551 injured. The war marks 900 days on 12 August.

There was a 40% increase in child casualties in the first seven months of 2024, when 341 children were killed or injured compared to 243 children killed or injured in the last seven months of 2023.

Stephane Moissaing, Deputy Country Director for SaveTheKids in Ukraine, said:

“It has been 900 days from the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, and on average, on almost each of them we saw a child either killed or injured. Countless air strikes and shelling seemed to have loosened their grip on children in late 2023, when we observed a decrease in child casualties, yet ever so briefly.

"This year, violence has enraged with a new force, and it is missiles, drones, and bombs that are to blame for more and more children falling victim to blasts by day. The suffering for families will not stop as long as explosive weapons are sweeping through populated towns and villages across Ukraine. We must do everything we can to protect children, their homes, and their schools from the devastation of this war.”

SaveTheKids calls for all parties to adhere to their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law and abstain from using explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas. Civilians and civilian objects, especially those impacting children such as homes, schools, and hospitals, must be protected from attack at all times.

SaveTheKids has been working in Ukraine since 2014 and has scaled up operations since the war escalated in February 2022. The organisation is working closely with multiple partners to provide life-saving assistance such as food and water, cash transfers, and safe spaces, to make sure children and families impacted by this crisis have the support they need.

Extreme weather events forced at least 38,000 people from their homes in Afghanistan in the first six months of this year – of whom about half are children

Analysis of data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) found there were more displacements in the first half of this year due to droughts, extreme temperatures, floods, landslides, avalanches, and storms than in all of 2023 (37,076) [1].

While IDMC does not provide child-specific breakdowns for displacements that happen within a given year, it does state that half of the people driven from their homes in Afghanistan are children [2]. Afghanistan also had the highest number of children made homeless by climate disasters of any country in the world as of the end of 2023 (747,094) [3].

While most displacements in recent decades have been due to conflict, in 2022 climate disasters became the main reason people fled their homes and moved to other areas within Afghanistan. Drought was the main reason for disaster-driven displacement, according to the UN. One out of every seven Afghans is facing long-term displacement, the largest number in South Asia and the second highest in the world [4].

Afghanistan is the sixth most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change [5] - but also one of the least able to adapt and cope with the impacts of the crisis. More than one in three people in Afghanistan are facing crisis levels of hunger, driven mostly by climate shocks and high food prices. Twenty-five of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces face severe or catastrophic drought conditions, which affect more than half the population, according to the UN.

Kandahar province in the south has been severely affected by drought, leading people to move to other areas after hundreds of wells and other sources of water dried up. In one village where SaveTheKids has been working, around half of all families left their homes due to a drastic reduction in clean water, with the remaining families forced to seek work in other districts.

Children walked for hours to fetch water from a waterhole that was also used by animals, leading to outbreaks of disease.

Raouf*, 13, lives with his family of six in an area plagued by frequent droughts. His village, like many others, faces severe water shortages, forcing Raouf and his friends to make multiple trips daily to a reservoir about 300 metres away for water. This often makes them late for school.

SaveTheKids has constructed a new water system in the village using deep boreholes and powered by solar panels, and families have started to return to their abandoned houses. This means children are no longer having to spend large parts of their day fetching water.

Raouf said:

"Animals drank from the same water that we used to consume. By the time we brought it back, it would become warm, and that water caused us to become ill.

"I'm very pleased with the new water tanker system. Before, we had to fetch water by hand in gallons from distant places, and the water quality was poor. Now, we have clean drinking water that doesn't make us ill."

Studies repeatedly show that girls and women are disproportionately impacted by climate disasters compared to men, particularly those in vulnerable circumstances. A 2019 UNDP report revealed that globally, at least 60% of deaths from extreme climate events over the past 20 years were women and girls [8].

Arshad Malik, Country Director of SaveTheKids in Afghanistan, said:

“The climate crisis is fuelling the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. It is forcing people from their homes, destroying water sources, and preventing children from going to school. It is changing children’s lives. Compared to 60-year-olds, newborns in Afghanistan will confront 5.3 times more drought in their lifetimes [7].

“Afghanistan is seeing extreme weather events with alarming frequency. This year alone, thousands of people have not only been displaced by drought but also by floods. The climate crisis is destroying Afghan lives and livelihoods.

“Adapting to and preparing for the impacts of climate change needs to be a priority, even at a time when funding is massively stretched. It’s been three years since direct international aid, which was equivalent to 40% of the GDP and financed up to 80% of public expenditure [9], was reduced after the de facto authorities regained control. Three years since the country saw a massive drop in assistance. Humanitarian agencies cannot be expected to plug this gap alone.”

SaveTheKids has been supporting communities and protecting children's rights across Afghanistan since 1976, including during periods of conflict and natural disasters.

Our response to the floods in Baghlan reached 25,190 people, including 13,670 children. SaveTheKids has programs in nine provinces in Afghanistan and works with partners in an additional seven provinces.