SAVE THE CHILDREN AUSTRALIA
Save the Children is the world’s leading independent organisation supporting children, young people, and their families to thrive in the most marginalised and hardest to reach communities.
Established in 1919, they work with communities in more than 200 locations across remote, regional and metropolitan Australia, ensuring that children and young people are healthy, safe, on track with their education, connected to community and culture, and supported in realising their future aspirations, wherever they are and whatever their circumstances.
We’ll never stop fighting for children – for their right to a heathy and safe future, and for their right to be heard.
Our programs improve the health of children, so they survive the critical early years of life to grow up healthy and strong. We believe the best path out of poverty starts in the classroom, so we have programs that create greater access to quality education for all boys and girls. We work to prevent children from being exposed to abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence. And when disaster strikes, we give children the care and support they need, so they can continue to learn and maintain a normal life, while their communities rebuild.
But we can’t do it without you. When you give to Save the Children, you’re investing in a future for every last child. Children like Juliette who’s getting ready to start school. With at-home activities supplied by Save the Children, mum Sue-ellen says she’s learning in leaps and bounds. “The program has allowed me to spend time with my youngest daughter to support her learning. She can now confidently hold a pencil, write letters, use scissors, and identify colours and shapes. It’s a happy connected time we both look forward to.”
It’s because of generous supporters like you that we can help Juliette and Sue-ellen. There’s many more like Juliette. And we can only reach them with your help.
The Jones Family
Most nights, the Jones* family slept on the riverbank. Their four children - aged between 4 and 17 were often seen roaming the streets late at night, begging for food. They weren't attending school and there were significant health concerns for the two youngest children.
Complex family issues, including substance abuse by their parents, a significant history of domestic and family violence, and the family's ineligibility for housing in the Northern Territory, left the children homeless and vulnerable.
Save the Children worked consistently over a few months to gain the trust of the family and were able to help the family become eligible for housing, and soon the children had a home to go to and connect the children to ongoing healthcare. The three eldest children are now back in school and both parents are now working towards address their substance abuse.
Life-saving help in an emergency
When the rescue helicopter spotted twin orphan babies Luisa and Franque, they were being held above rising floodwater by their desperate aunt and grandmother. Their village in Mozambique had been hit by a devastating cyclone, which forced the family onto their roof to avoid drowning. From there, six-month-old Luisa and Franque, aunt Regina and grandmother Maria were taken to a Save the Children emergency response centre in a nearby school where they were given food and a safe, dry place to sleep. Our infant feeding specialists diagnosed the twins with moderate acute malnutrition and gave them high-energy peanut paste before referring them to a local hospital for further care. Because of generous supporters like you, Save the Children was able to save the lives of these precious twins at one of the most devastating times in their young life.
Helping children grow healthy and strong
For a loving mother like Rumana, there’s nothing more important in life than helping her children grow up healthy and happy. But raising them in one of the poorest parts of Bangladesh, with the country’s highest rates of stunting is more demanding than most of us can imagine – especially when you’re seven months pregnant. Save the Children supports mums like Rumana during their children’s most crucial stage of development – from conception to age two. She’s getting the advice and support to feed her other three children a nutritious diet, and seeing the results. Now the doting mum doesn’t worry about their health – just the mischief they get up to. “My children climb trees, play marbles and cricket, chase each other, play peekaboo, wander off – only when they’re at home and sleeping, do I stop worrying about them!”
