THE FRIDAY INTERVIEW/Melanie Verwoerd: Given everything she has seen in her life it would be easy for Melanie Verwoerd to be complacent. But of all the adjectives you could use to describe her, that is certainly not one you would choose.

Only weeks into the top job at Unicef Ireland, the lively, enthusiastic South African is already planning working trips to Mozambique, Darfur and Rwanda to assess the need for fundraising campaigns and to see if she can't help the organisation beat the €4.9 million it raised last year. She has definitely hit the ground running.

Having grown up in the university town of Stellenbosch in South Africa in the 1970s, she has a very different picture of poverty than many of us. While her own upbringing in a white middle-class family meant she didn't go without as a child, she was, she says, aware from an early age that there were others that weren't as lucky as she was.

"If there is one thing apartheid was successful at, it was keeping people apart, but I saw how my grandparents treated people who worked on their farm and I didn't like it. It didn't sit right with me."

This sense of injustice, even more striking given that she married the grandson of the man widely regarded as having been the architect of the apartheid, has stayed with her all her life and it's that which now enables her to dismiss critics who say people should be giving their money to causes closer to home rather than sending it to the developing world.

Ireland didn't fare well in a recent survey on the plight of children around the world and there is an argument that funds are needed here too. "There is poverty and there is poverty," she says. In the developing world, you have adult care workers deciding which child is most likely to die that day and letting that child lie on the hospice's only mattress for that day.

"The suffering in the developing world is on a completely different scale," she says, getting quite heated. "This is not okay and it makes me angry."

According to Verwoerd, by giving money to groups such as Unicef we, the general public, allow ourselves to feel more human. Fortunately for her, the Unicef brand has become quite good at raising money.

According to a Gallup survey in 2005, Unicef - formerly the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund - had the strongest awareness level globally of all UN humanitarian organisations at 68 per cent. The same poll also showed that 75 per cent of people who were aware of Unicef had a positive image of the organisation.

Put this together with the fact that Verwoerd believes the Irish are generous people and maybe she hasn't got her work cut out too badly after all. If that is the case however, it will be the first easy job she has had.

After returning to South Africa in the early 1990s from Britain where she met political exiles and became even more convinced of the need for change, she became the youngest woman to be elected to parliament.

As a member of the African National Congress (ANC) under Nelson Mandela, Verwoerd certainly didn't have it easy.

"We told them we would change things for them," she says of the people in the South African townships who helped to get the ANC into government. "So when they came to me and told me their roof was leaking and asked what I was going to do about it, I had to do something. I was the first representation they ever had."

After serving two terms in government, Verwoerd decided it was time to do something else.

"I realised we had done an incredible amount for South Africa and that we had come a very long way, but that we were also very vulnerable to decisions made by western countries, things that were beyond our control. I wanted to be able to understand that."

As a result she asked Mandela if she could join the diplomatic corps. Having been successful in breaking several taboos, firstly by asking to join and secondly by specifying a particular place, she found herself in Ireland in 2001.

"I felt a real pull towards Ireland," she says. "There were a lot of lessons to be learnt around similar issues, such as labour disputes, debt ratios and high interest rates. Ireland had turned it around and that is something South Africa needed to do."

During her time as ambassador, tourism between Ireland and South Africa increased from 17,000 visitors to 40,000, while investment multiplied sixfold. "It wasn't just down to us, but we did help put South Africa on the map."

Back then Verwoerd believed South Africa had a lot to learn from Ireland; in her new job she is confident that Ireland can learn from South Africa. "In terms of multiculturalism, South Africa is way ahead of Ireland," she says. "We have 11 different official languages. Here they panic if someone speaks any language different to their own."

Her experience of different cultures is something she believes stands her in good stead for her latest role. "Because of my background, I speak with my feet in two different worlds. My heart is African but my head is western European and that gives me an advantage over others."

Not only does the new job combine the two things she is most passionate about - the developing world and children - but it also allows her to speak openly about these issues.

While much of her time will be focused on the developing world, there are also issues to be addressed closer to home. As part of its ongoing development, Unicef Ireland, which was established in 1962 and is part of the global Unicef movement, is moving into advocacy.

According to Verwoerd, on average two children a month go missing just days after entering Ireland, most likely as a result of child trafficking. "This is something that is being ignored here and we need to change that."

While this is a new issue for Ireland, she adds, it is something against which Unicef has long been campaigning in other countries.

Verwoerd is also looking to increase corporate giving. As much as €920,000 was raised for Unicef Ireland last year through Aer Lingus's Change for Good campaign, the charity's biggest such campaign and something it would like to replicate with other companies. After all, with the sixth highest per capita contributions to Unicef in the world, there is plenty to take advantage of in Ireland.