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Resilience
Children are living today in a more complex world and fast changing environment. While access to health and education has improved and poverty reduced in the last 15 years, inequalities are on the rise, more than 50% of the world’s population live in fast growing cities and the world is increasingly threatened by conflicts, climate change and environmental degradation.
To adapt to such disruptive environment, the concept of resilience has emerged in the last decade and Save the Children has identified “resilience” as one of its 3 main cross-cutting topics for its 2030 global strategy. Resilience is commonly defined as a complex multi-dimensional and dynamic ability embedded in individual or complex system that emerges at time of shocks, stresses and trauma. For Save the Children, resilience is the ability of children, families and systems to protect and safeguard all children against shocks and stresses in order to ensure the realisation of their rights to survival, development, education and protection.
The resilience of a child, family or a community with respect to potential hazard events and threats is determined by the degree to which they have the necessary resources (physical, social, financial, human, natural) to maintain their development and keep planning for their future projects and plans despite shocks, stresses and adversities.
Our DRR and CCA work are important factors of building resilience, but ensuring also that basic needs are met and that children have access to education, health services and opportunities for play and social interaction is critical. Efforts to strengthen families is a priority, as it is widely acknowledged that a loving and caring family is one of the key protective factors which can strengthen a child’s resilience and support their healthy development in spite of a crisis.
Effective resilience supposes a transformation, putting issues of people, power and politics at the centre of the change process. Because vulnerabilities and risk are rooted in deprivation, inequalities and human rights violation, resilience is thereby built by influencing policies that relate to power imbalances in society that encourage, create and sustain vulnerabilities.
For example, Save the Children’s Child Rights Governance work contributes to resilience of institutions by institutionalizing children’s rights in governance systems and mechanisms enabling the fulfilment of children’s rights in all contexts. Moreover, improved transparency, participation and accountability and fair (re)distribution of resources is supporting a healthy social contract between citizens and government and can prevent conflict.
Photo: Hedinn Halldorsson/Save the Children
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Facets: Real stories of resilience
These case stories are translated narratives of children who underwent training to be part of their "school watching team". In this program, they learned about disaster risk reduction management (DRRM) and climate change.
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Child Participation in Resilience Building: Case study
This case study shares the experiences of Franchesca, a 10 year old from the Philippines, whose city was completely destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. As a member of a "school watching team" she shares her experience with the program, learning about dis
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Nuotare Contro Corrente: Povertà educativa e resilienza in Italia
The report “Swimming Against the Tide: Educational poverty and resilience in Italy” sheds light on educational poverty in Italy and on the factors that stimulate resilience in children and adolescents living in the most disadvantaged contexts. In Italy m
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L’Impatto degli Eventi Sismici in Italia Centrale sui Diritti dei Bambini e degli Adolescenti
This research aims to provide a picture of the impact of recent seismic events that hit Central Italy on the rights of children and adolescents. Children involved in so-called "natural disasters" may have to deal with various elements of sudden deprivatio
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Vulnerability- and Resilience-based Approaches in Response to the Syrian Crisis: Implications for women, children and youth with disabilities
Vulnerability criteria, particularly in the earlier years of the Syrian-crisis response, received a lot of focus and attention by humanitarian actors as a method of targeting assistance. Persons with disabilities, an estimated 20 percent of the refugee po
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The Youth Resilience Programme: Psychosocial support in and out of school
The Youth Resilience Programme: Psychosocial support in and out of school has been developed by Save the Children as an independent continuation of the Children’s Resilience Programme. The programme is a nonclinical psychosocial and protection methodolo
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Key Messages for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience in Fiji: A guide for public education & awareness
This DRR guide for public education provides simple and accurate advice on what to do in case of various emergencies (hazards: drought, earthquake, floods, pandemic, tropical cyclone, wildfires, infestation, landslide & debris flow, tsunami, storm surge &
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Children and Resilience: A collection of success stories from the humanitarian sector, Bangladesh
Disaster preparedness and risk reduction play a major role in preventing the loss of lives and livelihoods during disasters. Directly and with partners, Save the Children has been preparing vulnerable communities for natural disasters and works with the g
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Economic Strengthening, Resilient Livelihoods Approaches and Child Well-being: Evidence and knowledge gaps
World Vision and VisionFund International commissioned this external review of published research on economic strengthening in order to document what outcomes have arisen for children, exploring child well-being outcomes from the various approaches that c
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Child Centred Community Resilience: Final evaluation of the Bangladesh Child Resilience Project
Save the Children International (SCI) has been working in Bangladesh over the past three years, supporting girls and boys, their families, schools and local communities in 36 rural and urban communities to build their capabilities to adapt, prepare, and r
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Children, Young People and Flooding: Recovery and resilience
Children are known to be acutely affected during and after floods, losing their homes, friendship networks and familiar surroundings. They also see adults under great strain and witness the exceptional and long-term tensions that flooding brings about. Re
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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