2025 Report

Children have a right to grow up strong and healthy. A right to go to school. A right to shape the future. When the decisions or actions of adults undermine those rights, we defend them.

We joined partners to condemn cuts to the UK aid budget and worked to raise public awareness, helping secure significant media coverage. As part of a broader collective effort, this also helped us protect children from some of their worst impacts – by inspiring extra funding on vaccines and persuading the government to maintain spending on gender equality.

We stepped up the pressure on the UK government to fulfil its manifesto promise to tackle unsustainable debt. 

We called on ministers and senior officials to stand up against the global backlash against gender equality, and the impact of UK aid cuts on women and girls. 

Read more about how we defend children’s rights

From mass-vaccination programmes to training health workers to helping secure billions of dollars for new health and nutrition drives, our work is making sure children in some of the world’s toughest places get a healthy start in life.

Our flagship GSK-funded BOOST programme has continued to increase immunisation coverage in Ethiopia and Nigeria, where more than 3 million ‘zero-dose’ children are completely unvaccinated. To date, we’ve reached over 92,000 children in Nigeria with critical vaccinations, and more than 57,000 in Ethiopia, including 33,597 zero-dose children.

In 2025, Save the Children worked to ensure donors including in the UK, Australia, Germany, Norway, the US and among EU institutions made ambitious pledges to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

At the 2025 Nutrition for Growth Summit, Save the Children played a key role in persuading the international community to commit more than US$27 billion (£20 billion) to tackle malnutrition.

Read more about our work on health

Education is a critical part of every childhood. It can mean friendships, healthy routines, the joy of learning. Amid conflict and crises, it can keep children safe and provide them with a sense of normality. It’s the best chance they have of building the future they deserve. But poverty, disasters and discrimination mean that, right now, millions of children are missing out on their chance of an education. From programmes to get more girls, refugees and disabled children into school to training and empowering teachers, in 2025 we worked to give every child the chance to learn.

In Nigeria, we’re running an ambitious four-year programme to improve access to a good-quality education for 200,000 marginalised children aged 6–13, particularly girls and children with disabilities, and those who are out of school.

By the end of 2025, our advocacy had seen 85 governments endorse the Comprehensive School Safety Framework (CSSF) - a highly effective approach to protecting children’s education. 

In 2025, we’ve been supporting teachers – amplifying their voice and helping them participate meaningfully in decision-making at school and within education systems.

Read more about or work on education
 

Every day, millions of children across the world face horrific violence. They’re subjected to physical, psychological and sexual abuse. They’re at risk of gender-based violations such as child marriage and female genital mutilation. And they’re exposed to harmful online content. In 2025, we worked to make sure children can enjoy childhoods free from violence.

In Somalia, Save the Children is working with the International Rescue Committee, Care International and frontline Somali women’s rights organisations to support survivors of gender-based violence.

Alongside major private-sector businesses the Magnum Ice Cream Company and Symrise, we’re helping 69 vanilla-farming communities in Madagascar’s Sava Region with interventions like our Safe Families approach to prevent violence at home and in the community.

Through our partnership with Vodafone Foundation, we established the Children’s Digital Advocacy Network, bringing together young representatives from Greece and Spain to discuss their positive and negative online experiences. These insights will help inform decision‑makers about what safer digital spaces should look like for children.

Read more about how we protect a childhood free from violence

A worsening climate crisis. Escalating conflicts. Political and economic turmoil. 2025 was another devastating year for children. Around the world, they faced more extreme weather – from floods and landslides to droughts and heatwaves. In Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and beyond, conflict uprooted families from their homes and destroyed the schools and hospitals children rely on. At the same time, surging prices have created a cost-of-living crisis across the world, pushing nutritious food beyond the reach of many families.

In Malawi, our Maziko project has reached 57,000 households in two of the districts hardest hit by malnutrition. It has provided a package of interventions – from cash transfers to increased access to nutritious food to measures to reduce gender inequality – to tackle the main causes of malnutrition and poor child development.

As our global climate crisis threatened lives and livelihoods across the world in 2025, we worked to protect children against its risks – campaigning for greater funding for climate adaptation and mitigation, pushing for child-led change at the highest levels of political decision-making, and supporting locally-led programmes to help communities hit by extreme weather find sustainable ways to make a living.

In 2025, we worked closely with partners to highlight how it’s children who are worst hit by the climate crisis – and argue that it’s children who should have a key say, even at the highest levels of decision-making, in how we respond.

Read more about our work to strengthen resilience in tough times
 

Poverty is relentless. It affects every aspect of a child’s life. Rising food and energy costs leave parents struggling to pay the bills, buy the shopping or cover outings. As household budgets are stretched to breaking point, many families are pushed into cycles of unmanageable debt. The stress on parents makes life at home tough for children. A start like this doesn’t just affect someone’s childhood – it can shape their entire life. And in the UK, in 2025, 4 million children were growing up in poverty. Last year, we worked with more than 478 organisations, families and children on the goal we all share: ending child poverty in the UK.

In December, after years of collective campaigning with other child rights organisations such as the End Child Poverty Coalition and the Resolution Foundation, we secured a landmark breakthrough for children: the abolition of the two-child limit. This reform is expected to lift 450,000 children out of poverty, and will improve the lives of an estimated 1.6 million. For the first time in a generation, child poverty is projected to fall rather than rise.

In Northern Ireland, the Listen to Learn project engaged 80 children across six primary schools in North Belfast, using creative, arts-based workshops grounded in a child rights-based approach. Children shared their experiences of what helps them learn and grow, with insights presented directly to decision-makers.

In Wales, the Save the Children-supported Camau Bach project in Llangatwg engaged families, schools and partners in changing their communities – through workshops, surveys and large-scale voting. This led to tangible initiatives, including the Valleys Voices parent group and coordinated holiday activities.

In Scotland, we launched our Better for Babies campaign to make the case for targeted income increases for families with a baby under one, alongside access to whole-family support services. Through focused conversations with politicians, the campaign has built support we hope to convert into commitment to action in the next Scottish government budget.

Read more about our work in the UK