Founding of Save the Children

Save the Children is an international non-profit organization founded to help children in need, and it was set up in London by the sisters Eglantyne Jebb and Dorothy Buxton. They acted in response to the suffering of children in Central Europe, who faced hunger after the First World War, in part as a result of the Allied blockade. Jebb was prosecuted for distributing leaflets that showed starving children, and although she was fined, the judge was sympathetic and the case brought publicity to the cause. She also drafted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the League of Nations in 1924, an early forerunner of later international treaties on children's rights. Today the organization works in many countries on health, education and protection.

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