Save the Children
Save the Children is a leading international organisation helping children in need around the world. First established in the United Kingdom in 1919, separate national organisations have been set up in more than twenty-eight countries, sharing the aim of improving the lives of children through education, health care and economic opportunities, as well as emergency aid in cases of natural disasters, war and conflict.
Today, twenty-eight national Save the Children organisations participate in the International Save the Children Alliance--a global network of nonprofit organisations working in over 120 countries around the world. Founded in Geneva in 1977, the Alliance relocated to London in 1997.
In addition to promoting greater public awareness of the needs and rights of children worldwide, Alliance members coordinate emergency relief efforts, helping to protect children from the effects of disasters, both natural and manmade.
Most recently, members of the Alliance launched Rewrite the Future, a programme to bring quality education to 8 million children living in countries affected by conflict. Together, they are working in sixteen countries to try to ensure access to education for 3 million children and improve the quality of education for 5 million more, to make schools safe and protect children from exploitation and abuse, and to influence national governments and international institutions to make quality education a priority for conflict-affected children.
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History
The Save the Children Fund was founded in London, England in 1919 by Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy Buxton. Their goal then was to create 'a powerful international organisation, which would extend its ramifications to the remotest corner of the globe'.
Originally an offshoot of the Fight The Famine Council, a group set up to campaign against the Allied blockade of Germany and Austria-Hungary after the First World War, the Save the Children Fund was created to raise money to send emergency aid to children suffering as a consequences of the wartime shortages of food and supplies, which were continuing partly as a result of the blockade. A counterpart, Rädda Barnen (which means "Save the Children"), was founded later that year in Sweden, and together with a number of other organisations working for children--some using the Save the Children name or a local variant--they founded the International Save the Children Union in Geneva in 1920. Under the banner of this organisation, emergency relief was distributed to children in several countries.
The Fund was innovative in its use of fundraising techniques, and was the first charity in the United Kingdom to use page-length advertisements in newspapers. The movement was not intended to last long, and as conditions in Western Europe improved, there were expectations that it would be wound down. However, conflict continued, and emergency funds continued to be raised following the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and the Russian famine of 1921.
By the middle of the 1920s the organisation began to face what wo