About Us

WE CREATE LASTING, POSITIVE CHANGE FOR AND WITH CHILDREN

Save the Children is the world’s first and leading independent children’s organisation – transforming lives and the future we share. We’re proud to work with children, their communities, and our partners worldwide, discovering new solutions to help ensure that the world's most vulnerable children survive, learn and are protected.

Every year, we reach tens of millions of children in more than 110 countries through our life-changing work.

Learn more about what we do for and with children.

Donate now to support our work

We help children stay safe, healthy, and learning, transforming children's futures.

Around the world, too many children start life at a disadvantage simply because of where and when they are born.

Millions of children are dying from preventable causes, and face poverty, violence, disease, and hunger. They are caught up in war zones and disasters they did nothing to create. And they are denied an education and other basic rights owed to them.

All children deserve better.

Together with our many partners and supporters worldwide, we find new solutions for children, grounded in our 100+ years of expertise.

With more than 25,000 dedicated staff across more than 110 countries, we respond rapidly to humanitarian emergencies, deliver innovative development programmes, and ensure children's voices are heard through our advocacy and campaigning to build a better future for and with children.

ACCELERATING PROGRESS FOR CHILDREN

Our ambition for 2030 is to inspire progress and achieve three breakthroughs, creating a world in which all children:

Survive: No child dies from preventable causes before their fifth birthday
Learn: All children learn from a quality basic education
Are Protected: Violence against children is no longer tolerated.

Our bold ambition builds on 100 years' experience of bringing together children, communities, civil society, governments, businesses, and donors to achieve lasting, positive change for children.

Our structure

We are a global membership organisation, made up of Save the Children International and 30 national members.

We share one name, one strategy, and one ambition for all children to survive, learn, and be protected.

For more on our ambition for children, read our global strategy.

A portrait of Maryam, 19, a Save the Children Girl's Champion in Nigeria

Who We Are

Child participates in the Stop the War on Children campaign launch event in The Hague

Campaign with us

Janet, Francisco, and Nina reading a school book

Our Global Strategy

Sandi, Soleman, and Anjar, all 18, demonstrate their team handshake in West Sumba, Indonesia.

Caption

“Since we joined the programme,” says 18-year-old Sandi, “all our dreams that we held in our heart have come true. Now the water is here. Right in the back of our house.”

The programme he’s talking about is called i2Change, and the stories of change that come from it are incredible. Save the Children supports communities involved to uncover problems and develop in-novative solutions by igniting the imaginations of young people, nurturing their talents and building their self-belief.

In 2023, in West Sumba, Indonesia, Sandy joined i2Change and formed a team with two other 18-year-olds: Soleman and Anjar. Through workshops, they considered the challenges people in their community faced and decided to tackle the lack of water in Sandi’s village. Children and adults, in-cluding pregnant women, were getting up at 3am to walk 3km down a steep and dangerous verge to reach a water source, carrying two five litre containers each. Not only was it incredibly risky, it was impacting children’s education and physical development; growing nutritious food was off the table, and children were missing school because of exhaustion or embarrassment at not being able to wash.

The plan: to build a borehole and taps right there in the village.

Over the next few months, Sandi and his crew received specialist training and support – not only in how to design and implement their plan, but also in public speaking, influencing and the kinds of things that grow your confidence and make people others listen to your ideas. The consulted with the community and worked on a blueprint for the water system with support from Save the Chil-dren.

By the time Sandi and his friends chose the team-name Golden Scorpio, they had really started to be-lieve they could make a difference to their community: gold symbolises courage, and a scorpion is a small and unassuming creature that delivers a powerful sting – and can have a big impact. In West Sumba, that impact is being felt in so many ways.

Following the boys’ plan, Save the Children and its partners dug the borehole, installed nine taps, and covered the costs. The community now has regular access to water – but so much more too. Children have more time to study and play. It’s easier for families to irrigate their vegetable gardens. Children can wash twice a day and go to school as a result. They have time and energy to play like children should. No-one is making the difficult journey anymore.

Given what they’ve accomplished and the changemaker Sandy has become, it’s hard to believe he used to keep to himself. Now, he’s an outspoken advocate for issues affecting children and young people and has more big plans for his community. “We can make Indonesia much better,” he says, proud and full of confidence.

100 Years For Children

Caption

Children and families in Lebanon have endured multiple crises in recent years, including an economic collapse and severe depression, political deadlock and rising instability, a massive explosion in Beirut’s port, the COVID-19 pandemic, and most recently a food security crisis compounded by the conflict in Ukraine: all of which have endangered children’s basic rights.

Ghinwa*, and her family fled the war in Syria when she was just five-years-old and settled in a Palestinian camp in Beirut. Since then, life has been extremely hard for all of them. With her father unable to work due to a stroke, and her older brother needing regular medical treatment, Ghinwa* has to try to help bring in money - so she sells water and tissues to drivers at a busy crossroads outside the camp. Aware of the negative impact of this on her wellbeing, she adds: "Working makes me feel that I am very poor and always in need... like I am so different to other people (kids) who don’t work."

She wasn't able to start school until aged 10, and so naturally struggled to keep up with her peers - and when the economic crisis hit bringing electricity cuts and teachers’ strikes, she stopped attending school altogether.

Ghinwa* felt her life had no possibilities: "I couldn't read or write, I had no hope for my future, I had no dreams" she says. But now, not only is she literate, but has self-believe: "If I study and focus hard, I can achieve anything I want."

Ghinwa* attends a Save the Children supported education centre near her home. There, she has learnt to read and write, grown in confidence, made friends, and become informed about her rights, eager to speak up on behalf of all child refugees.

Life is still challenging for this young activist but the difference is she now has education, and therefore a dream: to be a lawyer, defending children's rights. The impact of the education centre on Ghinwa* cannot be underestimated - "It has changed my whole life" she says.

Save the Children places a great importance on encouraging children and young people to speak up about their rights, delivering a message to those who have the power to make change.

Through the Child’s Rights Governance programme, Save the Children aims to amplify children’s voices and make them heard on the national, regional and global level. The programme helps build the capacity of children to become child rights advocates and agents of change.

Accountability