Save the Children UK launches campaign on child survival

I wanted to get in touch to let you know about the new campaign we're launching this morning at Save the Children UK. It's our biggest campaign ever and I hope that pretty soon, you won't be able to avoid it. If we succeed, you'll be reading about it on the way to work, seeing it on TV and hearing about it from friends you never knew cared. More importantly, we'll be channelling all that new energy and momentum towards one simple ambition: saving children's lives.
The campaign starts with an injustice and an opportunity. The injustice is this: nearly ten million children die each year before the age of five - and most of those deaths are avoidable.

That's intolerable and has to change. Any organisation with our name, our history of change and our ambition for the future cannot allow that outrage to stand. 
The opportunity is that the world knows how to save these children's lives. The solutions are simple - and some countries are saving lives right now. We know what needs to be done. We just need to do it. And what's more, the world's politicians have already promised they will.

When they signed up to the Millennium Development Goals they committed to cutting by two-thirds the number of children who die each year. But even though the solutions are there and the promise has been made, we know it will take unprecedented determination and creativity to make that vision a reality.
And that's where we come in. At Save the Children we have agreed that there is nothing more important in the next few years than this campaign. It is not all of what we do - but it is the heart of what we do. So we are throwing more energy than ever before behind the challenge of saving children's lives. Our goal is to ensure that by the end of 2010, the world is on track to achieve that two-thirds reduction in child deaths by 2015 - and that the poorest and most marginalised children are not left behind. Of course we will not achieve this on our own. It will take the efforts of other charities, governments, communities, businesses and many others. But we do believe that without us playing our full part, the goal will not be reached. 
So today we launch a call for ten million people to take action for those ten million children, by the end of 2010. People will take action in a whole range of ways.

Some will act by urging politicians to do more, through email campaigns or by attending events. Others will act with their time or their money. And here we will be innovative: from this morning you can send a text message from your mobile and directly help save a child's life. For example, by texting "NET" to 81819 you can give £5 to Save the Children and enable us to deliver a bed net to protect a child at risk of malaria. By connecting UK families with these simple solutions, we will not only save children's lives right away but will also begin to overcome a critical obstacle to building increased support for Save the Children's cause. We know that millions of families in the UK share our values and want to help - but they are not sure their contribution can make a difference. We will show them they can. 
As the campaign builds over the coming months you will see more and more aspects coming to life:

- One of the most creative and innovative parts of the campaign is our web project, This is Kroo Bay, which allows people to connect directly with a slum in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The community in Kroo Bay - where one in four children die before the age of five - have come together behind the project and are telling their own stories, in ways that are often uplifting, sometimes hard-hitting, occasionally funny and always real. The site gives people the chance to ask questions, offer their support, and come back to find out how Kroo Bay families are doing. We're enormously proud of this project and can't wait to see the difference it makes. Take a look.

- Our TV advert in the UK has just started running and you can view it here. We'll be supporting that with other advertising to get the message across to UK families - in train stations and motorway service stops, across the internet and through people's letterboxes.

- We're launching a new policy report, Saving Children's Lives, which makes a passionate case for much greater efforts to cut the numbers of children who die under the age of five. It carries a tough message for governments around the world - challenging those in rich countries to keep the promises they have made, and highlighting the responsibility of governments in developing countries to focus all their efforts on the poorest and most marginalised children. The report's ground-breaking new indicator of country performance, the Wealth and Survival Index, demonstrates that some countries are saving many more lives with fewer resources than others. Read the report on our website to find out more.

- As the campaign builds, many aspects of Save the Children's work will be aligned with it - much of our work in schools, with major donors, in our shops, with celebrities and across the organisation will take on the theme of saving children's lives.

- We're also working within the Save the Children Alliance on this campaign. Save the Children US has prioritised this focus for their work and has built a powerful lobbying drive in Washington as the first stage in its development, and we're talking with other Save the Children organisations in key countries. We're also working with other organisations on this issue, especially as part of the Global Movement for Children.

So we're proud of the fresh and innovative ideas we've come up with as we build an unstoppable movement to save children's lives. But while we're doing a lot that is new, the story we are telling is old. It's one that began nearly ninety years ago when a group of young women saw a deep injustice against children. Pretty quickly they stopped asking "who will do something about this?" and answered their own question: "We Save the Children." Now it's up to us. This campaign is our generation's contribution to that long story. We hope you'll help us write it.
Yours
Adrian Lovett

For further information, visit Save the Children UK web site: 
www.savethechildren.org.uk