Creating Lasting Change: 2024 Annual Report

On Behalf of the World's Children

Twelve-year-old Muntosh lost his older brother in a landslide while the two were working side-by-side in a cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now, after six years in the quarries, Muntosh is back in the classroom, enrolled in one of Save the Children’s Catch-Up Clubs, making progress, regaining confidence and dreaming of becoming an electrician.

Of the estimated 2.4 billion children in the world, far too many, like Muntosh, are facing challenges that threaten their health, their ability to learn – even their survival. In 2024:

• 1 billion children lacked access to basic rights including nutritious food, clean water or quality education.
• 1 billion children were at risk due to extreme climate events.
• Nearly 1 billion children faced violence at home, at school and increasingly online.
• Over 473 million children lived in areas affected by conflict.

Of course, many children endure all of these threats at once. But in these daunting circumstances, Save the Children, our partners and our supporters never wavered in our commitment to children. Last year we:

• Reached more than 113.6 million children in 113 countries.
• Responded to 112 emergencies across 75 countries.
• Delivered early education programming to 7.5 million children.
• Provided 28.9 million children with health and nutrition services.
• Engaged with 250 rural communities across 14 U.S. states.
• Reached over 259, 000 U.S. voters and engaged 130 candidates during election season.
• Helped secure nearly $4 billion in federal funding for international and U.S. nutrition and early education programs through our advocacy efforts.

This work and much more was made possible by more than $987 million in contributions from donors, including government and multilateral agencies, corporate and foundation partners, and caring individuals. In addition, 1.5 million individual supporters played a vital role in advancing our mission for children through financial support and or advocacy.

These statistics may be impressive, but what’s really moving are the personal stories—the words of the children and families whose lives we have impacted. The knowledge that we’ve played a part in helping them build brighter futures. And the opportunities we’ve had to learn from them. We’ll introduce you to a few of those inspiring people in this report. You’ll meet Telya and her 2-year-old daughter, Bella, whose visits from Save the Children’s Mobile Classrooms have helped fill the gap created by a lack of early learning resources in rural South Carolina. You’ll learn the difference a pair of glasses made for 10-year-old Huma, displaced first by violence in Syria, then by earthquakes in Türkiye. You’ll recognize the importance of shelter and cash assistance to Salha, a widow with seven children left without a home as a result of conflict in Sudan. And you’ll hear how 11-year-old twins Charley and Jovana are helping their mom and neighbors in Vanuatu preserve food so they won’t have to worry about hunger the next time a cyclone strikes.

As we celebrate these stories and milestones, it’s important to acknowledge that foreign aid cuts in the United States and around the world have had a significant impact on our ability to deliver on our work for children – and will continue to challenge us in the months and years ahead.

Across our global movement, we’ve focused on identifying our most critical lifesaving interventions, assessing alternative funding opportunities and operational adjustments to continue essential services wherever possible.

This moment of disruption is without question also a moment of opportunity — one we can’t afford to waste. Every crisis forces reinvention. The humanitarian and development sector must seize this moment not just to redesign projects and programs, but to fully reimagine our pathways for delivering impact.

This is a particularly challenging time for the humanitarian community – but it’s also one that inspires all of us, including our partners and supporters, to remember the urgency of this work and the transformative nature of its impact on millions of children around the world.

Thank you for your continued interest in and support of our work. We look forward to working alongside you.