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Urbanisation
Save the Children’s vision is safe, sustainable and resilient cities where children survive, learn and are safe, and the organisation is committed to reaching the excluded and deprived children in cities. Save the Children believe that progressive cities can harness human capital, technology and effective governance to play a central role in reducing urban poverty and achieving child rights. However, cities also pose a unique set of challenges for children that can undermine the realisation of their rights.
Through Save the Children’s child rights approach the organisation seeks to empower the most deprived children and their families to claim their rights, for example, by supporting children's engagement with local authorities and by investing in strategic partnerships with municipal governments, the private sector and civil society. The goal is to work with our thematic leaders to ensure that what we know works for children is applied to both urban and rural areas. We hope to achieve this by making small bets on targeted research, driving city-to-city learning, and ensuring that local governments and their partners focus on children’s needs. Save the Children also works with urban communities to prepare for and respond to complex urban disasters, taking a risk reduction approach in our longer-term urban programs.
Photo: Ahmad Baroudi/Save the Children
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RecommendedState of the World's Mothers 2015: The urban disadvantage
In commemoration of Mother’s Day, Save the Children is publishing its 16th annual State of the World’s Mothers report with a special focus on our rapidly urbanizing world and the poorest mothers and children who must struggle to survive despite overall ur
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RecommendedVoices from urban Africa: The impact of urban growth on children
200 million poor children in African cities at increasing risk of exploitation, abuse and disease. Social and economic development policies and programs are not reflecting the demographic realities of an increasing number of children living in poverty in
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RecommendedJozi Lights: How to protect children engaging in rural to urban migration
By the late 2030s, Africa is set to become a continent with more of its population living in urban than rural areas. Not only do population growth trends in Africa suggest that the sizes of those urban populations will be substantial (by 2100, almost half
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Recommended100 Resilient Cities
100 Resilient Cities (100RC) in partnership with Save the Children, will offer critical resilience building support to 100RC’s member cities initially in Asia. Through the partnership, Save the Children will work on an individual basis with 100RC member c
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Cities for Children: An overview of relevant issues
Child poverty and the violation of children’s rights are increasingly urban phenomena. An estimated billion people live in overcrowded, inadequate housing without basic services or secure tenure. More than a third are children and adolescents, living in c
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Urban Children and Malnutrition
Child malnutrition is the result of poor health, inadequate diets, suboptimal caregiving practices and unsanitary environments. While on average urban children are less likely to suffer from malnutrition than rural children, data shows that the opposite i
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The Hidden Impact of Covid-19 on Children: A Global Research Series
“The Hidden Impact of COVID-19 on children- A global research series” by Save the Children is the largest and most comprehensive study on the impact of COVID-19 on children. Some 13.5 thousand children and 31.5 thousand caregivers from 46 countries shared
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Urban Situation Analysis: Guide and Toolkit
The 2015 Urban Program Learning Group meeting in Delhi, India, highlighted the need for an Urban Situation Analysis Guide to help development practitioners around the world navigate the urban context; a need that was reiterated by Save the Children countr
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Forgotten Voices: The world of urban children in India
This report discusses how the major urban development schemes in India do not adequately take into account issues related to children’s health, education, growth, safety and participation. The rising urbanisation in India presents an opportunity to design
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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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Making Sense of the City: Developing evidence through action research and learning
In 2008, recognising an organisational need to respond and adapt to the growing trend of urbanisation, and its negative impact on the most vulnerable groups, especially children, World Vision launched an action-research and learning approach to investigat
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"We are not safe..." Children's experiences and voices in urban poor settings: What this means for Save the Children
Why involve children in urban planning? One billion children live in urban areas. In efforts to address priority concerns affecting children and families in urban settings, to reduce vulnerability and to increase resilience, it is imperative that children