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Child Poverty
Globally, around 600 million children live in extreme poverty. When families don’t have enough money they cannot invest in their children – such as buy food or clothes. Neither can they afford to take their children to see a doctor when they get sick or to keep them in school.
Furthermore, when already poor families are hit by unexpected shocks – such as drought, earthquakes, increased food prices, death of livestock, or conflict – their livelihoods suffer but it is children that suffer most as families are often forced to pull them out of school to work.
Even though it is the children who are suffering most from poverty’s effects, child poverty is often missing from overall national strategies for poverty reduction. Save the Children wants the world to put children and young people at the heart of its action to reduce poverty; to strengthen the low and insecure incomes that prevent children from surviving, learning and being protected; and thereby stop the transmission of poverty to future generations.
In 2018 the Child Poverty global theme launched three organisation wide common approaches driving forward our best work and best thinking to ensure we achieve more for children in more places across the world. Our common understanding is helping to ensure best programming for new born age upwards. We work to provide cash plus for better nutrition of children in the first 1000 days of life; we work to strengthened understanding of family economic situations to determine if households have the food and cash they need to survive and prosper; and we work to ensure young people acquire the core life skills to identify and capitalise on decent life and work opportunities in the future.
Save the Children works with partners and governments and directly with families and children to reduce the numbers of girls and boys in extreme poverty and seeks to increase young people’s hopes and skills for better lives.
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The Difference We Make: Middle East and Eurasia Region Annual Report, 2015
Save the Children works in around 120 countries worldwide to achieve breakthroughs in the way the world treats children. In the Middle East and Eurasia region we work in 20 countries. 2015 saw the expansion of Save the Children’s physical operating enviro
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Mobile Money Empowered Me to Make My Own Decisions for My Family on My Time
In the fall of 2014, Save the Children joined with USAID to implement a new aid programme aimed at relieving food scarcity in the chronically vulnerable districts of Binga and Kariba in Zimbabwe. The resulting mobile cash transfer programme assisted more
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Liberare i Bambini dalla Povertà Educativa: A che punto siamo?
“Freeing Children from Educational Poverty: Where are we?” is a report on educational poverty in Italy. In Italy, more than one million children live in conditions of absolute poverty. They are girls and boys born and raised in contexts of economic and m
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Adapting a Resilience Improvement Programme in Conflict: Experiences from Yemen
When fighting broke out in Yemen’s Dhamar and Sana’a governorates in March 2015, Save the Children quickly had to transform the objectives of their resilience-building programme to meet urgent humanitarian needs through an emergency food-assistance progra
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Economic Playgrounds 2016: Comparing the lives of children in G20 countries
Save the Children’s analysis shows that even among the world’s most developed, powerful and rich economies, there can be vast disparity in how children are treated and how prosperous their futures appear to be. Many states are falling short of their commi
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Putting Child-Sensitive Social Protection Programmes into Practice: Experiences from South Asia
In light of the positive effects that social protection can bring about in addressing deprivation among children, Save the Children developed a South Asia Child Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) Initiative in 2010 in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. The aim
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Living at the Railway Station in Dhaka
The Child Protection sector in Bangladesh works in line with the overall goals of Save the Children – working to strengthen the legal and social mechanisms which protect children from abuse, exploitation, trafficking, child marriage and other forms of vio
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Two Years of Drought Response in Ethiopia
El Nino has caused the third successive rainfall failure in some areas of Ethiopia, and from the middle of 2015 onwards the country has since been in a race against time to meet the resulting food needs of 10.2 million people. This precarious situation ca
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Save the Children’s Youth Employment Programs: Vietnam
In Vietnam, Save the Children is committed to helping improve the prospects for unemployed and under employed youth through its Youth Employment programs. The programs actively engage deprived and at risk low-income youth, unskilled youth laborers, migran
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How can the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme become more sensitive to children’s rights?: Experiences and recommendations from Dungarpur district, Rajasthan
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is one of the largest public works programmes in human history. The overarching aim of MGNREGA is to enhance the livelihood security of the rural poor by providing at least 100 days of g
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Save the Children’s Youth Employment Programs: Philippines
Save the Children’s Youth Employment Program in the Philippines is designed with the growing shift towards urbanization in mind. It addresses the needs of both vulnerable populations and businesses within urban centers. Built on years of expertise gained
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Malnutrition in Zambia: Harnessing social protection for the most vulnerable
Malnutrition prevents millions of Zambia’s children from reaching their potential. The rates of malnutrition – among the highest in the world – are reducing the country’s chances of achieving its aspiration to be a prosperous upper-middle-income country b