About us
Save the Children China Programme
Save the Children UK made its first donation to China in as early as 1920 in the sum of around ￡250 for famine relief. More aid followed during the 1930s to victims of flood and casualties from the Sino-Japanese War.
By the 1960s Save the Children UK was establishing programmes in Hong Kong. Through partnerships formed with local government, Save the Children UK embarked upon improving social services for children, setting up a daycare centre, nursery, centre for disabled children, shelter for homeless and orphaned children and support programmes for single parent families. Save the Children UK also helped to establish The Hong Kong Committee on Children’s Rights (HKCCR) in 1994, an organisation in which it is still involved today.
Work on the Chinese mainland came towards the end of the 1980s with our community development and education programmes piloted in Yunnan, Anhui and Tibet. In 1995, the Save the Children China Programme office was brought within closer reach of our activities, moving from Hong Kong to Kunming, Yunnan. A programme office also opened in Urumqi, Xinjiang in 2003. To foster stronger ties, dialogue and partnerships with government, the Save the Children China Programme office moved once more, this time to Beijing, in 1999. In 2008, in response to the devastation caused by the Sichuan earthquake, a Chengdu office was set up to carry out front-line emergency relief and rebuilding work. Longer-term programmes in child health, child protection and disaster relief were also established as a means to extend our commitment to rebuilding Sichuan.
As one of the many international children’s organisations engaged in development work in China, Save the Children is directly involved in training, research and advocacy to help children and young people living in remote parts of China. Our primary target is vulnerable children including homeless children, children with disabilities, trafficked children, children from ethnic minority communities, young offenders and migrant children. We work to promote the development of child health, education and welfare, and advocate widely for the protection of child rights.
Save the Children have extensive networks in China - from the many layers of government, to grassroots organisations, non-profits and private industry.
Our fundamental principle is to make children the centre of our work. Children participate in all our programs and the lessons we learn from children are integrated into our planning and policy making. In the course of implementing our programmes we protect child rights and promote best practice in the achievement of child rights. We provide consultancy services and technical support to government, employing sustainable development models to shape government policies relating to children.
The achievements of Save the Children over the past 90 years stem from the ambition, determination and vision of Eglantyne Jebb. Jebb’s Save the Children Fund has grown and strengthened into the global organisation that it is today, with 28 branches in 125 countries. Save the Children is the world’s largest development organisation to be established by a woman, generating close to 1.3 billion US dollars every year.
Save the Children UK
"If we accept our premise that the Save the Children Fund must work for its own extinction, it must seek to abolish, for good and for all, the poverty which makes children suffer and stunts the race of which they are the parents. It must not be content to save children from the hardships of life - it must abolish these hardships; nor think it suffices to save them from immediate menace - it must place in their hands the means of saving themselves and so of saving the world." Eglantyne Jebb
The Save the Children Fund was set up at a public meeting in London's Royal Albert Hall in May 1919. The vision of two sisters, Eglantyne Jebb and Dorothy Buxton, The Save the Children Fund was established to draw attention to and provide relief to children suffering the effects of war.
Eglantyne Jebb wanted to make the rights and welfare of children a major issue around the world. Her 'Declaration of the Rights of the Child', drafted in 1923, was adopted by the League of Nations and inspired the present UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
At the end of the first-world war, children in cities such as Berlin and Vienna were starving. Tuberculosis and rickets were rife. A Fight the Famine campaign raised money to give to organisations working with children in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, the Balkans and Hungary and for Armenian refugees in Turkey.
Save the Children was called on to deal with emergency after emergency as it quickly became known as a highly effective relief agency, able to provide food, clothing and money quickly and inexpensively. For example, during the 1921 famine in Russia, the organisation was able to mount an operation to feed 650,000 people - for a shilling per person per week.
In the 1930’s, the work of Save the Children was extended outside Europe, with a nursery school set up in Addis Ababa in 1936. A Child Protection Committee was also established, lobbying for the rights of children in Africa and Asia.
By the autumn of 1946, Save the Children had 105 staff working with children, displaced people, refugees and concentration camp survivors in devastated areas of France, Yugoslavia, Poland and Greece.
By 1972, Save the Children existed as separated organisations in several countries, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the US. These organisations formed the International Save the Children Alliance after the Nicaraguan earthquake of 1972, working in emergency situations and to improve children's health generally.
Save the Children launched the Stop Polio Campaign in 1979, as part of an attempt to eradicate polio worldwide. Disaster relief dominated work in the 1980’s with the most high-profile emergency being the 1984 famine in Ethiopia.
During the 1990s we continued to work with children affected by war in Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Angola and the Balkans. We campaigned for the rights of child soldiers and for the protection of children forced from their homes by war. We also encouraged young people to speak out about their experiences and fight for positive change.
In 2006, Save the Children launched “Re-writing our Future”, the first global initiative to provide high quality education to children forced out of school due to war or armed attacks.
For more information, pls check our international official website : www.savethechildren.org
