Save the Children, founder of children’s rights, today celebrates 90 years of work achieving change for children around the world.  In 2009, the aid organisation faces challenges of conflict and economic crisis similar to its beginnings in the aftermath of the First World War. It’s a tough start for children born in the poorest parts of the world today.  As the global recession worsens, their families will be hit hardest and the governments in their countries will struggle to provide even the basics such as health care and schools.  The global food crisis has already left 50 million children suffering malnutrition,” said Richard Mawer, Save the Children Country Director in Jordan and Lebanon.

 

"Our founder Eglantnye Jebb said, ‘We can be sure that those whom we help today will help us tomorrow.’  This is even truer now.  To find the solutions to climate change, war and economic crisis we need children to grow up healthy, well educated and free from fear.  The progress we have made for children inspires us to believe in the future.  We have learned that out of the greatest disasters change is possible – but we urgently need more support to help today’s generation of children.”

 

Save the Children’s story is the success story of an ambitious, visionary woman, Eglantyne Jebb.  Today, the organisation she founded has grown into an international alliance of 27 member organisations working in 125 countries.  With a combined income of nearly $1.3 billion, it is larger than any other aid organisation started by a woman.  “We believe that even among private companies, there are only two organisations founded by women that are larger than Save the Children – US cosmetics giant Mary Kay and Chinese company Nine Dragons Paper,” added Mawer.

 

Eglantyne Jebb promoted the idea, revolutionary for her time, that children had rights. In 1923 she wrote the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, subsequently adopted by the League of Nations. This historic document was the foundation for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international treaty now written into law in nearly every country in the world.

 

“Our mission, in Jordan and worldwide, is to guarantee that the rights of every child are met – the right to health care, food, education, and to protection from all forms of abuse, neglect, exploitation and cruelty.  We make sure children have a voice and we involve children in finding real answers to the problems they face.” In more recent times, Save the Children has continued to work with children affected by war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Angola, Rwanda and the Balkans, promoting campaigns for the rights of child soldiers, responding to relief operations in tsunami-ravaged countries and helping displaced families in Darfur. In 2006 Save the Children launched Rewrite the Future, its first global campaign focused on securing quality education for the millions of children out of school due to war and armed conflict.