The Save the Children Fund,[2] commonly known as Save the Children, is an international non-governmental organization. It was founded in the UK in 1919, the goal being to improve the lives of children worldwide.
The organization raises money to improve children's lives by creating better educational opportunities, better health care, and improved economic opportunities. It achieves this through several methods, including health, education, and protection programs.
At the end of World WarI, images of malnourished and sick children ran throughout Europe. The Fight the Famine Council was initially started earlier in 1919 to put political pressure on the British government to end the blockade, the first meeting having been held at the home of Catherine Courtney, at 15 Cheyne Walk. On 15 April 1919, the sisters separated from the council and created the "Save the Children Fund".[3]
In May 1919, the Fund was publicly established at a meeting in London's Royal Albert Hall to "provide relief to children suffering the effects of war" and raise money for emergency aid to children suffering from wartime shortages of food and supplies.[4][5]
Jebb and her sister, Buxton, worked to gain exposure to elicit aid.[6] In December 1919, Pope Benedict XV publicly announced his support for Save the Children and declared 28 December 'Innocents Day' to collect donations.[7]
The first branch was opened in Fife, Scotland in 1919.[when?] A counterpart, Rädda Barnen (which means "Save the Children"), was founded later that year (on 19 November 1919) in Sweden with Anna Kleman on the board.[8] Along with many other organizations, they founded the International Save the Children Union in Geneva on 6 January 1920. Jebb built relationships with other Geneva-based organizations, including the Red Cross, who supported Save's International Foundation.[3]
Jebb used fund-raising techniques to gain exposure, for example, making Save the Children the first charity in the United Kingdom to use page-length advertisements in newspapers. Jebb contracted doctors, lawyers, and other professionals to devise mass advertisement campaigns. In 1920, Save the Children started individual child sponsorship to engage more donors. By the end of the year, Save the Children raised the equivalent of about £8,000,000 in today's money.[7]
Russian famine
By August 1921, the UK Save the Children had raised over £1,000,000, and conditions for children in Central Europe were improving due to their efforts. However, the Russian famine of 1921 made Jebb realize that Save the Children must be a permanent organization and that children's rights constantly need to be protected.[9] Their mission was thus changed to "an international effort to preserve child life wherever it is menaced by conditions of economic hardship and distress".[7]
From 1921 to 1923, Save the Children created press campaigns, propaganda movies, and feeding centers in Russia and Turkey to accommodate and educate thousands of refugees. They began to work with several other organizations such as the Russian Famine Relief Fund and Nansen which resulted in recognition by the League of Nations. Although Russia was largely closed off to international relief and aid, Save the Children persuaded Soviet authorities to let them have a ground presence.[3]
At home, the Daily Express criticized the Fund's work, denying the severity of the situation and arguing they should be helping their people before helping Russia. The charity responded with increased publicity about the famine, showing images of starving children and mass graves. The campaign gained national appeal, eventually allowing the organization to charter the SS Torcello to Russia with 600 tons of relief supplies. Over 157 million rations were given out, saving nearly 300,000 children. Improved conditions meant Save the Children's Russian feeding program was able to be closed in the summer of 1923, after having won international acclaim.[3][10]
Second World War
Save the Children staff were among the first into the liberated areas after World War II, working with refugee children and displaced persons in former occupied Europe, including Nazi concentration camps survivors. During this same time, work in the United Kingdom focused on improving conditions for children growing up in cities devastated by bombing and facing huge disruptions in family life.[7]
Continuing crises
The 1950s saw a continuation of this type of crisis-driven work, with additional demands for help following the Korean War and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and the opening of new work in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in response to the decline of the British empire.[7]
Like other aid agencies, Save the Children was active in the major disasters of the era—especially the Vietnam War and the Biafra secession in Nigeria. The latter brought shocking images of child starvation onto the television screens of the West for the first time in a major way. The sort of mass-marketing campaigns first used by Save the Children in the 1920s was repeated, with great success in fundraising.
Disasters in Ethiopia, Sudan, and many other world hotspots led to appeals that brought public donations on a huge scale, and a consequent expansion of the organization's work. However, the children's rights-based approach to development originated by Jebb continues to be an important factor. It was used in a major campaign in the late 1990s against the use of child soldiers in Africa.[7]
During the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, new cases outnumbered the available hospital beds in the country. Save the Children worked with the UK government's Department for International Development and Ministry of Defence to build and run a 100-bed treatment center in Sierra Leone, as well as support an Interim Care Center in Kailahun for children who had lost their families to Ebola.[11]
Structure and accountability
Save the Children is an international umbrella organization, with 30 national member organizations serving over 120 countries.[12] Members lead on activities within their home territory and work with donors to develop programs abroad, which are coordinated and delivered by a central body – Save the Children International – via teams on the ground in each country. Save the Children International also oversees humanitarian responses.
All members of the association are bound by the International to Save the Children Alliance Bylaws which include The Child Protection Protocol and Code of Conduct. These set a standard for common values, principles, and beliefs.[13]
In 1969, Save the Children UK commissioned film director Ken Loach and producer Tony Garnett to make The Save the Children Fund Film. The resulting film was unacceptable to the organization because they felt it presented their work in an unfavorable light.[14] Eventually a legal agreement arrived at which involved the material being deposited in the National Film Archive.[14][15] In 2011, roughly 42 years later, it was shown to the public for the first time.[14][16]
In July 2011, the Guardian uncovered a fake vaccination program by the CIA.[17] It then emerged that Dr. Shakil Afridi, the person organizing the CIA's "vaccinations", had claimed that he was a Save the Children employee. In May 2012, Save the Children's country director for Pakistan, David Wright, revealed that the organization's work had been badly disrupted ever since Afridi had made his claim, with medicines held up for long periods at airports, staff unable to get visas, and so forth. Wright also charged that the CIA had breached international humanitarian law and risked the safety of aid groups worldwide.[18] "It was a setback, no doubt," said Dr. Elias Durry, the World Health Organization's polio coordinator for Pakistan, a few months later.[19] Later that year, in September, it was reported that the Pakistani government had requested Save the Children's foreign staff to leave the country,[20]In January 2013, the Deans of twelve top US schools of public health sent a letter to President Obama protesting against the entanglement of intelligence operations in public health campaigns. The letter describes the negative and lasting impacts of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) use of a fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan during the hunt for Osama bin Laden in 2011, which exacerbated the already persistent public mistrust of vaccines in the country.[21]
The CIA's "vaccination program" sparked a series of deadly attacks in Pakistan against dozens of aid and health workers associated with various aid and health campaigns, with the UN-backed polio-vaccination drive repeatedly halted as a result.[22][23][24] Up to eight polio vaccination workers were assassinated in the country during this backlash.[25] In May 2014, the Obama administration announced that they would no longer use vaccination programs as a cover for CIA activities.[24]
Pakistani investigators said in a July 2012 report that Shakil Afridi met 25 times with "foreign secret agents, received instructions and provided sensitive information to them."[26] According to an early draft of a Pakistan Government report, which has not been publicly released, Afridi told investigators that the charity Save the Children helped facilitate his meeting with US intelligence agents although the charity denies the charge. The report alleges that Save the Children's Pakistan director at the time of the incident introduced Afridi to a Western woman in Islamabad and that Afridi and the woman met regularly afterward.[27][28]
On 11 June 2015, Pakistani authorities ordered all Save the Children workers to leave Pakistan within 15 days, and the organisation's office in Islamabad was closed and padlocked.[29] This saga has led to a high degree of distrust and scepticism against the validity of COVID-19 vaccines in Pakistan.[30]
Complaints of inappropriate behaviour
The chief strategist of Save the Children UK Brendan Cox resigned in September 2015 over allegations of "inappropriate behaviour". The charity, Oxfam, temporarily suspended bids for government funds due to the scandal.[31] Cox had previously denied any wrongdoing but finally admitted to inappropriate behaviour on 18 February 2018 and quit working for his two other charities.[32][33]
On 5 March 2020, the Charity Commission published an investigation report that found there had been serious weaknesses in Save the Children's workplace culture, following a probe into the charity's response to allegations of misconduct and harassment against staff between 2012 and 2015. There were five complaints of sexual harassment and thirteen of bullying between 2016 and June 2018. Save the Children UK chief executive Justin Forsyth had three complaints of misconduct directed towards him by female staff, while Brendan Cox was publicly accused of sexual assault. The charity trustees had not been sent copies of an external report on corporate culture. Since then the charity has strengthened reporting and whistle-blowing policies that now permit anonymous staff complaints.[31][34]
On 22 February 2018 Forsyth resigned from UNICEF to avoid damage to the charities.[35]
On 11 September 2020, it was announced the charity could resume bids for government funding.[36]
Logo font by Eric Gill
Save the Children's logo before the 2022 change
On 15 January 2022, it was announced that Save the Children would change the typeface in its logo, Gill Sans, due to its authorship in the 1920s by British artist Eric Gill, who was posthumously revealed to have documented the sexual abuse of his young daughters, an incestuous relationship with his sister and sexual experiments with his dog. An anonymous source told The Times that the organization had been previously warned of the typeface's origin before its adoption, and that the decision to change it was made one year prior. The organization effectively changed its logo that same year.[37][38][39]
Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 75% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe symptoms develop such as headache, neck stiffness, and paresthesia. These symptoms usually pass within one or two weeks. A less common symptom is permanent paralysis, and possible death in extreme cases. Years after recovery, post-polio syndrome may occur, with a slow development of muscle weakness similar to what the person had during the initial infection.
Polio vaccines are vaccines used to prevent poliomyelitis (polio). Two types are used: an inactivated poliovirus given by injection (IPV) and a weakened poliovirus given by mouth (OPV). The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends all children be fully vaccinated against polio. The two vaccines have eliminated polio from most of the world, and reduced the number of cases reported each year from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to 33 in 2018.
Save the Children International, formerly known as the International Save The Children Alliance, is a worldwide non-profit organization that aims to improve the living of children. There are 30 Save the Children member organizations around the world.
Save the Children Australia is an aid and development agency dedicated to helping children in Australia and overseas. It is an independent, not-for-profit and secular organisation.
Eglantyne Jebb was a British social reformer who founded the Save the Children organisation at the end of World War I to relieve the effects of famine in Austria-Hungary and Germany. She drafted the document that became the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
Eglantyne Louisa Jebb was an Anglo-Irish social reformer. A keen supporter of the Arts and Crafts movement, in 1884 she founded the Home Arts and Industries Association as a way of reviving country crafts and overcoming rural poverty.
Vaccination and religion have interrelations of varying kinds. No major religion prohibits vaccinations, and some consider it an obligation because of the potential to save lives. However, some people cite religious adherence as a basis for opting to forego vaccinating themselves or their children. Many such objections are pretextual: in Australia, anti-vaccinationists founded the Church of Conscious Living, a "fake church", leading to religious exemptions being removed in that country, and one US pastor was reported to offer vaccine exemptions in exchange for online membership of his church.
Charles Roden Buxton was an English philanthropist and radical British Liberal Party politician who later joined the Labour Party. He survived an assassination attempt during a mission to the Balkans in 1914.
Polio eradication, the goal of permanent global cessation of circulation of the poliovirus and hence elimination of the poliomyelitis (polio) it causes, is the aim of a multinational public health effort begun in 1988, led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Rotary Foundation. These organizations, along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and The Gates Foundation, have spearheaded the campaign through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). Successful eradication of infectious diseases has been achieved twice before, with smallpox in humans and rinderpest in ruminants.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency deals with activities related to human survival issues, emphasizing disease and basic needs such as water and agriculture as a part of its function across the world.
This is a list of activities ostensibly carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) within Pakistan. It has been alleged by such authors as Ahmed Rashid that the CIA and ISI have been waging a clandestine war. The Afghan Taliban—with whom the United States was officially in conflict—was headquartered in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas during the war and according to some reports is largely funded by the ISI. The Pakistani government denies this.
Clare Margaret Mulley is an English biographer of notable women. Her subjects have included Eglantyne Jebb; Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville; Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg; and Elżbieta Zawacka.
Shakil Afridi, or Shakeel Afridi, is a Pakistani physician who allegedly helped the CIA run a fake hepatitis vaccine program in Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, in order to confirm Osama bin Laden's presence in the city by obtaining DNA samples. Details of his activities emerged during the Pakistani investigation of the deadly raid on bin Laden's residence. This account is disputed in a recent account of events which implies Afridi was implicated as a cover for the real CIA operative. Afridi was arrested at the Torkham while trying to flee the country days after the raid. On 23 May 2012, he was sentenced to 33 years' imprisonment for treason, initially believed to be in connection with the bin Laden raid, but later revealed to be due to alleged ties with a local Islamist warlord Mangal Bagh. Lawyers appealed against the verdict on 1 June 2012. On 29 August 2013, his sentence was overturned and a retrial ordered.
Dorothy Frances Buxton was an English humanitarian, social activist and commentator on Germany.
Geraldine Emma May Jebb CBE, known as Gem Jebb, was the daughter of Heneage Horsley Jebb and Geraldine Croker Russell. The Jebbs were a distinguished Irish family, prominent in both the Church of Ireland and the legal profession: her paternal grandparents were Robert Jebb QC and Harriet Horsley, a descendant of Bishop Samuel Horsley. Her mother was a daughter of John Russell, Archdeacon of Clogher and his wife Frances Story. She was the Principal of Bedford College, University of London, from 1930 to 1951, the first higher education women's college in the United Kingdom. She was unmarried.
Pakistan is one of the two remaining countries in the world where poliomyelitis (polio) is still categorized as an endemic viral infection, the other one being Afghanistan. While it has yet to fully eradicate Polio, there has been a major downwards trend in the number of reported cases per year; the total count of wild poliovirus cases in Pakistan in 2019 was down to 147, compared to 84 in 2020, 1 in 2021, 20 in 2022, 6 in 2023 and 41 as of October 2024.
Bal Raksha Bharat, commonly known as Save the Children India, is a non-profit organization working to improve the lives of marginalized children in India since 2008. Headquartered in Gurugram, and registered as Bal Raksha Bharat in India, the organization is a member of Save the Children International
The World Health Organization (WHO) created the Global Commission for the Certification of the Eradication of Poliomyelitis in 1995 to independently verify the eradication of wild poliovirus. The GCC certified the worldwide eradication of indigenous wild poliovirus type 2 on 20 September 2015, and wild poliovirus type 3 on 17 October 2019. In addition, five of the six World Health Organization Regions certified their status as free of indigenous transmission of all three serotypes of wild poliovirus :
Lewis Bernard Golden was a British charity administrator and first general secretary of Save the Children Fund from 1920 to 1937.
During the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, the CIA ran a covert operation utilizing a fake hepatitis vaccine program in Pakistan to illicitly collect blood samples to confirm the presence of bin Laden or his family. The CIA did not administer hepatitis vaccines, and instead planned to compare DNA samples collected from the program with the DNA of bin Laden's sister, who died in Boston in 2010.
Clare Mulley, The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, Founder of Save the Children (Oneworld Publications, 2009). ISBN9781851686575.
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