SAVE THE CHILDREN - PART 1 - HISTORY
At the beginning of the 20th century, two sisters from Ellesmere in Shropshire, had a vision to protect children and their rights. After the First World War ended, Britain kept up a blockade that left children in cities like Berlin and Vienna starving. Malnutrition was common and rickets were rife. An eye witness reported that "in hospitals there was nothing but paper bandages.
Save the Children's founders, sisters Eglantyne Jebb and Dorothy Buxton, were part of the Fight the Famine movement, spreading information about what was happening in Europe. In 1919, Jebb was arrested for distributing leaflets in Trafalgar Square. They bore shocking images of children affected by famine in Europe, and the headline: ‘Our Blockade has caused this – millions of children are starving to death'. Jebb was tried for her protest and found guilty. But the prosecuting counsel was so impressed with her that he offered to pay the £5 fine himself. Soon, the sisters decided that campaigning alone would not be enough - direct action was needed. In May 1919, the Save the Children Fund was set up at a packed public meeting in London's Royal Albert Hall.
In 1921 Save the Children raised considerable funds for refugee children in desperate need. Single donations ranged from two shillings to £10,000. It gave the money to organisations working to feed and educate children in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Hungary, the Balkans and for Armenian refugees in Turkey. Later, famine in Russia saw children struggling in dire conditions. To raise money for these children, Jebb and her colleagues used page-length advertisements in national newspapers and footage of famine and disaster work in operation. Films showing the conditions children were facing, screened in cinemas up and down the country, were unlike anything else seen at the time.
With the funds raised, Jebb and her colleagues filled a ship with 600 tons of aid bound for Russia. From winter 1921 through much of 1922, daily meals provided by Save the Children helped keep 300,000 children and more than 350,000 adults alive - for just a shilling per person per week. Save the Children had not been set up as a permanent organisation, but it soon became one after it was called on to deal with emergency after emergency.
As Buxton moved to focus on political campaigning, the charismatic Eglantyne Jebb, as honorary secretary, became a force to be reckoned with. Persuasive and committed, Jebb quickly established Save the Children as a highly effective relief agency, able to provide food, clothing and money quickly and inexpensively.
In the 1940's war forces the organisation to withdraw from projects in occupied Europe, and refocus on the UK. Working in 26 countries, they secure funding for long-term development projects and emergency responses. In the 1970's, Save the Children international is formed, and launch the Stop Polio campaign. By the 1980's the fight for prejudice and misconception around the spread of HIV and AIDs
Eglantyne Jebb wanted to make the rights and welfare of children something that everyone took responsibility for. She said: "I believe we should claim certain rights for the children and labour for their universal recognition, so that everybody - not merely the small number of people who are in a position to contribute to relief funds, but everybody who in any way comes into contact with children, that is to say the vast majority of mankind - may be in a position to help forward the movement."
Jebb's 'Declaration of the Rights of the Child' was adopted by The League of Nations, a forerunner to the UN, and it inspired today's UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In the UK, Save The Children opened a recuperative school at Fairfield House in Kent for children from inner-city areas, and helped young miners' families in poverty-striken parts of Wales and Cornwall. In Hungary, they supported a school based on the principle of cooperation and children having a say in the running of the school.
Eglantyne Jebb died in 1928, leaving behind a powerful vision of ending the cycle of
Eglantyne Jebb's ambition had been to extend the work of Save the Children outside Europe. In the decade after her death, Save the Children went on to establish the Child Protection Committee, which lobbied for the rights of children in Africa and Asia throughout the decade. Save the children, established a nursery school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1936, and we set up nursery schools in several areas in Britain, including the first nursery school in Wales. In 1933, research report, 'Unemployment and the Child: An Enquiry', showed that mass unemployment affects children's nutrition. Save the children campaigned for children's right to adequate nutrition until the Education Act of 1944 provided school meals and milk throughout the UK. They also worked with refugees from the Spanish Civil War. They were part of the Inter Aid committee which organised the rescue mission of predominantly Jewish children from continental Europe to Britain just before the outbreak of the Second World War. During the Second World War they were forced to withdraw from projects in occupied Europe.
About 20 minute drive from where I live in Oswestry, is the small town of Ellesmere. Here a memorial sculpture garden created in tribute to the Ellesmere-born co-founders of the Save the Children charity has been hailed as an international ‘cultural landmark’. The Jebb Garden, overlooking the town’s mere has been developed over the past three years (2022) as part of a community arts project to honour the visionary achievements of social reformer Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy. The campaigning sisters, who were born at The Lyth Country house on the outskirts of Ellesmere.
A 100 years later, Save the Children foundation is still fighting for children - day in, day out. Stay tuned in the next few days for part two and see how you can help in supporting the Save the Children charity foundation.
- Midlife Writer
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