Right now, children across the world are facing a perfect storm of crises. Conflict, climate change and economic instability are jeopardizing families' access to nutritious food and threatening the lives of 153 million children.
Hunger knows no borders, no boundaries and no limits. It's a force that drains a child's energy, silences their play, and turns their dreams to dust. They should be exploring with their friends or expanding their minds in class. Instead, too many are worrying about when their next meal will be.
With our expertise and their resilience, we can beat hunger together. Let’s break the cycle and feed children’s futures.
More than 2 million children live in the arid and semi-arid regions of northern and eastern Kenya.
A severe drought crippling northeastern Kenya drove the number of children facing acute malnutrition up by 25% last year to nearly 1 million.
An estimated 942,000 children aged under 5 like baby Aisha* are acutely malnourished and in need of treatment.
When the severe drought struck, Saadia*, from a remote village in North-West Kenya, faced a harsh reality. Her livestock died, and her two-year-old daughter, Aisha, fell ill due to malnutrition.
"In the middle of the night, I was scared. At night, I held her hand," Saadia* recalled. "When my daughter was sick, I thought she would die. I was terrified to see her in such a situation."
Saadia* embarked on a day long journey to the Save the Children-supported Hospital. Once admitted, Aisha* received vital medical attention and nutritious food paste.
Aisha's health improved dramatically. She gained weight, became more energetic, and even took her very first steps in the hospital!
"She was sick before I brought her here, but she's now in good health. The medical supplies she got were effective, and she feels good."
With Aisha now recovered, Saadia* said, "She is happy and healthy! If she is healthy, I can be happy."
Your support helps to keep provide essential care to children in need, bringing smiles and brighter futures to families in some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.
Save the Children works in 116 countries. This means with the help of local partners; we can deliver lifesaving nutrition programming and long-term livelihood support on a truly global scale.
These are the 4 steps Save the Children takes to prevent, treat and recover from hunger:
Step 1: Save the Children completes a food security analysis to forecast food availability and predict the impact of climate, economic or conflict shocks like El Niño or the conflict in Ukraine.
Step 2: Anticipatory Action means we work with local communities to identify risks and then mitigate them. This reduces the impact, reduces the cost and most importantly, saves lives.
Step 3: When hunger strikes, we are there to screen children for malnutrition, treat them with therapeutic nut pastes, provide medicines and medical care when cases have become complex, complete follow-up assessments for six months, give families food kits and provide families with cash so they can access food and other essential items.
Step 4: Then we go beyond food. We believe in long-term, sustainable solutions to food insecurity. To do this we combine local knowledge of pastoralism, agriculture and the local economy, with our expertise in health, nutrition, forecasting and anticipatory action to provide sustainable solutions to food security and hunger.
All the time: We are working with local communities, international, national and local organisations and governments to stamp out inequality and food insecurity through our policy and advocacy work.
Last year alone we reached over 70 million people with hunger-related interventions, including 37 million children thanks to your support.
