MAKING AN IMPACT FOR CHILDREN
2024 HIGHLIGHTS
"HUMANITY OWES THE CHILD THE BEST IT HAS TO GIVE."
– Eglantyne Jebb, Founder Save the Children
Education in Emergencies
A LIFELINE TO CHILDREN IN CRISIS
For kids like Maryna*, education provides safety and a foundation for resilience and hope.
With over half of all educational facilities in the city of Kharkiv damaged or destroyed since the escalation of conflict in 2022, Save the Children is supporting efforts to create safe spaces to learn underground. We’ve helped equip one such space in a local metro station, and the city government has launched an effort to open a separate underground school to serve more students.
We make sure these subterranean learning spaces have the materials needed to help students succeed. By equipping classrooms with tablets and headphones, we help bring the world to Ukraine’s children as they shelter from harm.
Meanwhile, more than a million students in Ukraine must resort solely to online classes due to safety concerns. Save the Children is the main organization running Digital Learning Centers across Ukraine, providing children with essential access to learning, play and in-person support.
“Children tell us what they want most when in a crisis: ‘to go back to school.’ Education – together with play – fuels curiosity, sparks creativity and helps their development.”
– Janti Soeripto, President & CEO
WHY LEARNING IS LIFESAVING
Millions of children are being robbed of their education because of conflict and emergencies. Nearly 15 million refugee children have had their learning interrupted after being forced to flee their homes. In the first phase of an emergency, education can protect children and save lives. It provides a sense of stability, a chance to regain essential cognitive skills, and lessons on how to stay safe from unexploded bombs or how to prevent the spread of disease.
Last year, your support helped us reach over 1.7 million children in humanitarian contexts with our education programming.
A Healthy Start
NOURISHING THE YOUNGEST
Sabaad understands the worry and pain that malnutrition can cause. Years ago, when severe droughts made it difficult for her to feed her family in Somaliland, her son developed malnutrition.
She fled her village in search of a better life, and thankfully her son recovered. When Sabaad returned home, she was determined to use her experience to help others. She joined Save the Children and trained to become a community health worker.
Families she supports face a cruel combination of recurring droughts, a worsening climate crisis and limited health care. Malnutrition rates in children under age 5 are among the highest in the world. Malnutrition can leave a devastating and permanent impact on children’s physical and cognitive development – and puts them at greater risk of dying from common infections and diseases such as diarrhea.
When Aisha’s* baby son, Hassan*, developed malnutrition shortly after birth, Sabaad was there to guide his care and treatment with a therapeutic feeding regimen – allaying Aisha’s fears and offering hope for a healthy future.
“Every mother cares for her child, but the special knowledge and training given to me by Save the Children helps me recognize diseases.”
– Sabaad
TACKLING GLOBAL HUNGER
Wasting, or acute malnutrition, affects 45 million children globally. Yet 80% of these children don’t receive proven treatments, including ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTF), that can bring them back from the brink. Research we’re conducting with partners in Kenya and Somalia indicates that treatment delivered by community health workers can be as, or more, effective as care delivered in health facilities. This builds on a growing body of evidence showing the potential to scale up training for community health workers to treat acute malnutrition, as they currently treat common diseases such as pneumonia, malaria and diarrhea.
Worldwide, your support helped 386,000 children recover from acute malnutrition in 2023.
Innovation
BUILDING CLIMATE RESILIENCE
By 2040, it’s estimated that one in four children will be living in areas with extreme water shortages, which have a huge impact on farming families. In West Sumba, children and adults alike were waking up at 3 in the morning to walk nearly two miles across steep and dangerous terrain just to reach a water source and haul back a few gallons at a time.
Without water in the village, growing crops was out of the question, putting children’s nutritional needs in jeopardy. And kids were missing out on education because they were exhausted from hauling water or too embarrassed to attend school without the ability to wash regularly.
Then Sandi, Soleman and Anjar stepped in. Determined to make a difference, the three teens devised a plan for a village water system. They worked with Save the Children to implement the plan, providing their village with easy access to clean water.
YOUTH-DRIVEN INGENUITY
Team Golden Scorpio – as the boys call themselves – received specialized training to realize their vision through our Inclusive Incubator for Young Changemakers (i2Change) Program. The program, which supports children aged 13-17 to address social or environmental problems, also taught them invaluable lessons in public speaking and influencing.
Using their plan, Save the Children drilled boreholes, installed nine taps and covered the costs. Now people can irrigate gardens and wash regularly, and children have more time to play and learn.
With your partnership, we’re implementing climate programs in over 50 countries – including working with children and communities to adapt to current impacts like water shortages.
U.S. Programs
RAISING READERS IN RURAL AMERICA
Deep in the Mississippi Delta, literacy is a struggle. Many children in grades 3-8 are reading below grade level – and parents themselves may not have the reading and vocabulary skills to help their children. That’s why Save the Children has teamed up with AmeriCorps, a federal agency, to help kids through the Mississippi River Delta Foster Grandparent Program.
AmeriCorps seniors volunteer with Save the Children, standing in as a “grandparent” and reading together with children – before and after school. Quiet and shy, 9-year-old Jaxson was having a hard time keeping up with his classmates. Save the Children Literacy Coordinator Felecia paired Jaxson with a foster grandmother, “Grandma Heard.” Throughout the program, overseen by our staff, children take tests to measure their skills and advance to the next level.
Jaxson and Grandma Heard have been making progress together since Jaxson was in kindergarten, and now he’s reading at grade level going into fourth grade. Not only has the experience boosted his literacy skills and vocabulary, but it helped him gain confidence and come out of his shell.
“I just love when a child lights up when they are reading a book, they understand what they read, and being able to share my love of reading with the children”
– Grandma Heard
LADDER TO LITERACY
The foster grandparent partnership is just one example of how our early learning programs support children’s literacy in underserved rural communities across 15 states. Our school-age programs support children in kindergarten through fifth grade by providing the training, tools and guidance needed to accelerate growth and reach grade-level proficiency – a key predictor for academic success.
Last year, with your support, 75% of students in our Developing Reader literacy component showed significant reading progress at the end of the school year.
Livelihoods
INVESTING IN ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT
Silvia, a widowed mother of five, is a natural entrepreneur and master multitasker. She runs a knitting business that’s not just about creating beautiful clothing. It’s about weaving a better future for her children.
She’s overcome numerous obstacles along the way. Lack of rain and freezing temperatures made Silvia’s subsistence
farming lifestyle extremely precarious. In fact, when our staff met her, she was due to run out of potatoes five days later – nine months before the next harvest.
After we provided support and training in the use of WhatsApp for managing product orders, Silvia now knits several sweaters for sale per week. With money she was able to save, she invested in the small shop she now runs and purchased an oven with match funding from Save the Children. She even participated in two pastry courses to expand her cooking and pastry-making capabilities, and she now sells homemade empanadas at her shop.
Silvia uses her earnings to pay for her children's education materials. To combat the cold, she knits them beautiful, thick sweaters.
WOMEN LEADING THE WAY
When we support women entrepreneurs, we transform families and communities. In places like Silvia’s community in Bolivia where poverty rates are high, we focus on women heads of household. This helps improve cash flow within the family, contributes to improving economic opportunities, and increases access to health, education and food for their children.
Partners like you helped us invest in the livelihoods of 8.2 million people in 2023 by providing cash assistance, support for sustainable farming practices and more.
AN ORGANIZATION YOU CAN TRUST
THANK YOU FOR PARTNERING WITH US TO CREATE A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR CHILDREN!
Photos by Save the Children | *Name changed for protection