Save the Children was originally founded in 1919 in England by Eglantyne Jeb and her sister Dorothy Buxton. The organization began as an offshoot of the 'fight the famine council', a group created to campaign against the Allied blockade of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Save the Children
After WWI, the Save the Children fund was created to raise money to provide emergency aid to children suffering from shortages of food and supplies across Europe.
By the middle of the 1920's, however they faced a dramatic drop in their funding. Because of this, they started to focus on smaller projects, as well as beginning to focus their work on children's rights. In 1931, Save the Children started to work in Africa, and in 1936, they opened schools in Ethiopia.
When WWII started, they focused their work on the UK and the children there, they also planned how they could help others post war. When the war ended, Save the Children staff were often one of the first people who went into liberated areas, to provide help to refugees and orphaned children. They also helped people who had been displaced during the war as well as helping people who had survived the concentration camps.
Since then they have been active in ongoing crisis's as well as major disasters. In the 50's Save the Children helped children in the Korean war and the Hungarian revolution, as well as starting new work in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In the 60's they were active in Vietnam, as well as the Nigerian-Biafra war, known as the Nigerian civil war. Throughout the 80's they led a major campaign against the use of child soldiers in countries such as Mozambique, and in the 90's they worked rebuilding children's lives after the Yugoslavian war and after the genocide in Rwanda. More recently in 2003, they helped children in Iraq after the Iraq war and in 2004 they helped children after the Asian Tsunami.
Save the Children's vision is: a world which respects and values each child, which listens to children and where children have hope and opportunity.
To support this vision Save the Children's mission is "To inspire breakthroughs in the way the world treats children and to achieve immediate and lasting change in their lives."
Today Save the Children is an international organization with 28 separate national organizations working in over 120 countries with 1,400 staff. The international Save the Children Alliance was founded in 1977 in Geneva, but is now based in London. They work in countries all over the world, but their work is mainly based in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Their work with children is focused on five main areas:
Save the Children also campaign for long-term change from governments, and they do a lot of work with child rights. In fact it was Eglantyne Jeb, one of the founders of Save the Children, who wrote the 'declaration of the rights of the child' in 1923. This was adopted a year later by the League of Nations and was the first important assertion of child rights. This would begin and lead the process to the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, which is now supported by nearly every country worldwide.
Each branch of Save the Children produces their own financial statements, containing information about income and expenditure from that particular country. The international Save the Children Website does however show the information from all the national organizations put together.
The UK Save the Children in 2008 had an income of £216 million, 47% from institutional grants, 26% from donations and gifts, 14% from gifts in kind, 7% from legacies, 4% from retail and the remaining 2% from investments and other. For the same year their expenditure was £208.1 million, 86% was spent on charitable activities, 10% was spent on fundraising, 4% was spent on retail and 0% on governance. Although the percentage for governance was 0% in reality it should be around 0.5% as £1 million was spent on governance.
International Save the Children, which is a combination of all the national branches, had an income of $1,275,999,361 in 2008 of this 45% was from government funding and 31% from voluntary donations. Of this money, 70% was spent on overseas projects, with 41% in Africa, 38%in Asia, 7% in Latin America, 6% in North America and 1% in Oceania. This can be broken down further as they also explain how much is spent on which projects with 27% spent on safeguarding children in emergencies, 23% on health, 19% on education, 11% on child protection, 5% on HIV and AIDS, 5% on freedom from hunger, 4% on alleviating child poverty, 3% on promotion of child rights and 2% on Information, campaigning and raising awareness.
Save the Children have many ways to raise money, from one off donations to monthly donations, fundraising events such as runs, walks, oversea challenges and to people hosting events at home, work or schools. They also receive money from their shops and from legacies. Save the Children also ask people to support their campaigns as well as offering many volunteering jobs.