Save the Children

Save the Children (STC) is the leading independent nonprofit organization working for lasting improvements in the lives of children internationally. STC organizations in 27 nations work in more than 100 countries under the umbrella name International Save the Children Alliance. Though known for programs in which westerners can sponsor a specific child, STC provides a “hand up” rather than handout, creating community-based solutions that increase self-sufficiency by providing vital health, education, and support services. Emerging from the British anti-war movement after World War I, STC's nonsectarian internationalist world-view pioneered the concept of children's rights. Unique among relief organizations for applying media savvy to fund-raising, and using research to influence policy, STC continues to innovate cost-effective strategies for long-term programs that institutionalize self-sustainability in local communities.

Raised in a wealthy, socially conscious family committed to public service, Britons Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy Buxton founded the Save the Children Fund in 1919, raising money to send emergency aid to German and Austro-Hungarian children suffering from the Allied blockade that continued after World War I. The fund was an offshoot of Fight the Famine Council (FTFC) that advocated ending the blockade. Jebb was arrested for distributing FTFC pamphlets titled A Starving Baby and Our Blockade Has Caused This, and the British government deemed the organization subversive. STC continued innovating activist uses of media, purchasing full-page newspaper ads, and filming relief efforts to both inform and fund raise. In 1920, STC and the similarly named Swedish organization Rädda Barnen founded the International Save the Children Union to distribute emergency relief to more European nations with need.

Jebb refocused STC to lead a movement formulating and advocating for universal recognition of children's rights. Adopted by the League of Nations in 1924, Jebb's Declaration of the Rights of the Child was the first ever assertion of such rights, leading to the 1989 adoption of the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, now ratified by nearly all countries. STC published Unemployment and the Child, a 1936 study of the Great Depression's effects on children. They continue to undertake socioeconomic research promoting best practices and improving the policies of the United Nations, national governments, and even other relief organizations.

By 1932, STC had programs addressing children's nutrition and literacy needs in Africa and the United States. After World War II, STC provided some of the earliest relief to formerly occupied areas of Europe, and in the 1950s began operating in emergent nations of the Middle East. STC's televising of famine-struck children in 1960s Nigeria was the first such use of television to promote awareness and fund-raising in the West, tactics later used by the 1985 Band Aid/Live Aid and 2005 Live-8 efforts to relieve African poverty. In 2006, STC premiered the use of a web-based post-production platform making their distribution of video to newscasters both customizable and cost effective. Their recent work includes fighting HIV/AIDS, illustrating the harmful effects of “user fees” on community health efforts, campaigning against the use of child soldiers, and microenterprise lending to help women establish businesses.

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