Partnership Overview
Save the Children is honored to partner with Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), a premier global media and entertainment company offering audiences the world's most differentiated and complete portfolio of content, brands, and franchises across television, film, streaming and gaming. WBD has provided support to Save the Children U.S. for over 15 years, and launched RISE in early 2020, a global initiative focused on reducing inequality and supporting empowerment – around the world – by addressing social mobility through access to the most basic human needs.
Collaborations around RISE have taken on greater breadth since the partnership launched, much in part due the many issues driving inequality such as racial injustice and COVID-19. Save the Children U.S. and 19 Save the Children offices around the world are collaborating with local WBD offices in support of local programming, with teams actively exploring storytelling, advocacy, employee engagement and business opportunities together.
Studio + Social Impact Partnerships
There’s nothing more powerful than a girl who has the confidence to dream. But many girls develop self-limiting beliefs and stop believing they can be anything. That’s why the movie Barbie and The Barbie Dream Gap Project are joining together with Save the Children to give hundreds of thousands of girls the resources to help make their dreams a reality. Helping them stay in school because education is a ladder out of poverty. Keeping them safe from gender-based violence and child marriage. And advocating for gender equality and girls’ empowerment, globally. All so they can be anything they dream to be.
RISE: Reducing Inequalities and Supporting Empowerment
In 2018, WBD developed their new global social good strategy and selected Save the Children as the signature partner for the launch of their RISE (Reducing Inequalities and Supporting Empowerment) campaign.
In partnership with Save the Children, the four-year RISE campaign will support 10 million people in 22 countries identified as having the most need, bringing scale to the education and social mobility programs to children and families in under-resourced communities. Additionally, RISE is activating at a local level to address inequality and empowerment in communities and drive further impact around the world. RISE represents their most comprehensive commitment to ensuring children around the world survive, are protected and have a chance to learn.
Employee Engagement
WBD employs nearly 38,000 individuals across 53 countries and, through the RISE campaign, employees have been engaged at all levels of leadership, working across business teams, sectors and countries, bringing commitment, creativity and a truly collaborative spirit to support our mission.
Save the Children has been a frequent partner for WBD’s local employee engagement activities. For their global day of employee volunteerism, Impact Day, WBD has hosted a broad range of globally and locally available virtual employee engagement activities such as virtual letter writing and the creation of literacy kits. Around the globe, 16 Save the Children offices were invited to collaborate on country-specific activities for Impact Day 2021. In past years, mentoring programs were initiated, allowing WBD employees to share their skills with Save the Children employees and program participants.
Local Engagement
At a country level, our teams across the globe have worked to find innovative and impactful opportunities to leverage RISE to meet the needs of children while supporting business needs, including creating digital content for WBD platforms and using storytelling to build greater awareness and engagement.
- In Mexico and Colombia, WBD has actively promoted and helped drive visibility for Save the Children initiatives like #SavewithStories, leveraging WBD network talent and gift-in-kind media to significantly increase visibility and brand awareness for Save the Children in those markets.
- In South Africa, WBD has partnered with the accredited Jozi Film Festival and invited up and coming local film-makers to compete for the opportunity to tell the stories of Save the Children’s beneficiaries. The partnership raises awareness for RISE and Save the Children while bringing a charitable element to their award category and compelling content to their channels.
- In Italy, WBD and Save the Children Italy are supporting families most impacted by the coronavirus pandemic through the Not Alone campaign by providing food, access to devices, and educational materials. WBD Italy is also driving awareness through on-air PSAs running across their portfolio of channels.
- In Japan, Save the Children Japan delivered a Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) workshop to their WBD partners to discuss how to incorporate SDGs into their business. During Covid-19, WBD also provided emergency support to 250 after-school programs and to children from single parent families facing financial difficulties.
Advocacy Efforts
Leading up to the 2020 election, WBD and Save the Children implemented a co-branded pledge to “Rise Up for Kids” in collaboration with No Kid Hungry. Co-branded GOTV geo-targeted ads were also put into place with national on-air efforts, encouraging audiences to make a plan to vote. Moving forward, our intention is to use the power of our combined voices to continue to advocate for kids and elevate their voices on issues of social injustice and equality.
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