View previous stories
	In 2013 Save the Children responded to over 120 humanitarian crises around the world by Save the Children International   In any crisis, children are always the most vulnerable. We make sure that children affected by floods, famines, earthquakes and armed conflict get life-saving medical aid, shelter, food and water – fast. We safeguard children and help reunite separated families. And we help children recover from crises by providing emotional support and safe places to learn and play.   We prepare ourselves and at-risk communities, so we can act rapidly and reduce disaster risks for children. After large-scale emergencies such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the Haitian earthquake and Japanese tsunami, we remain on the ground to help children and their families rebuild their lives.   Since fighting first broke out in Syria in March 2011, the crisis has unfolded to become a large-scale civil war, affecting more than 9 million people across the region, including millions of children. So far, the fighting has tragically claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people.   Save the Children is working with Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt, providing families with the basics they need, including food, clothing and shelter for children and families who are facing extremely difficult conditions. We are working to ensure children now living as refugees still have access to school, emotional support and recreational activities.   We have so far reached more than 1 million people, including 710,000 children.   We prepare children and their communities to reduce the impact of extreme weather. And we have relief supplies ready in vulnerable areas. Across South East Asia we are currently responding to 17 emergencies. In Indonesia we have reached over 12,00 people affected by the earthquake in Aceh with hygiene kits and trauma healing activities.   In West and Central Africa we are responding to 10 emergencies in five countries. In the Central African Republic our teams have reached over 56,000 people affected by the conflict including over 46,000 children who have benefitted from our child friendly space activities, youth clubs and psychosocial activities through community groups.   * Save the Children comprises Save the Children International and 30 member organisations working to deliver change for children in 120 countries.   http://www.savethechildren.net/ http://www.savethechildren.net/news http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/start/news http://everyone.savethechildren.net/ http://blogs.savethechildren.org.uk/category/theme/ Visit the related web page
	Nutrition programs are a critical support to ensure children"s daily needs are met by Marian Wright Edelman Children"s Defense Fund USA   Feb. 2014   Congress cuts Food Assistance even as Hunger Plagues more than 1 in 9 Children.   The Children"s Defense Fund strongly opposes the cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and points to its newly released The State of America"s Children 2014 showing more than 1 in 9 children lack access to adequate food - 23 percent higher than before the recession. With millions of poor children and families still struggling, federal nutrition programs continue to be a critical support to ensure children"s daily nutritional needs are met.   SNAP benefits, which serve more than 22 million children — more than 1 in 4 children in America — have been cut in the farm bill by $8.6 billion over 10 years.   An estimated 850,000 households, including 1.7 million people, will see a reduction on average of $90 per month in their food assistance. This cut comes on top of the substantial across-the-board benefit reduction that took effect in November 2013 and affected all SNAP households.   "The cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the farm bill are indefensible. Our latest report shows that SNAP is the only defense against the wolves of hunger for 1.2 million jobless families. With record numbers of children in poverty, Congress should be launching a war on child poverty and strengthening the safety net for children including SNAP. There should be no hungry people—especially children—in rich America.   It is shameful that Congress continues to treat poor Americans like second class citizens by cutting supports they desperately need," said Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children"s Defense Fund, in reaction to the passage of the farm bill.   In addition to the repeated assault on SNAP, Congress has terminated emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed and subjected poor children and families to a series of cascading program cuts due to sequestration and deficit reduction measures. Cuts at the state and local levels have worsened their pain.   Children"s physical health and brain development depend on access to nutritious food, particularly in the earliest years of life. Hunger and malnutrition have devastating consequences for children. Crucial and effective anti-poverty investments like SNAP and the school lunch, breakfast and summer feeding programs help combat child and family hunger. There are hungry children in America right now, who suffer over the weekends when they don"t have access to school breakfast and school lunch. Hunger does not take a summer vacation. Yet findings in CDF"s report show 89 percent of children who relied on free or reduced-price lunch during the school year did not receive meals through the Summer Food Service Program.   Additional key findings on child hunger and nutrition in The State of America"s Children 2014 include:   Three days worth of what the U.S. spends on corporate tax breaks would provide a whole year"s worth of SNAP food assistance for the estimated 737,000 children who don"t have enough food.   Nearly three-quarters of SNAP households are families with children. SNAP food assistance lifted 2.2 million children out of poverty in 2012. Black and Hispanic households with children are more than twice as likely as White households to lack access to adequate food.   The State of American Children 2012   This report is a portrait of where our children are right now and a tool to spur us to set the vision of where we need to go to stop the downward mobility of our children and grandchildren and the diminution of America’s future.   Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” When we look at the state of our union and the state of America’s children in 2012, his words ring very true. It’s impossible to deny that our nation’s economy, professed values of equal opportunity, future, and soul are all in danger right now.   There are 16.4 million poor children in rich America, 7.4 million living in extreme poverty. A majority of public school students and more than three out of four Black and Hispanic children, who will be a majority of our child population by 2019, are unable to read or compute at grade level in the fourth or eighth grade and will be unprepared to succeed in our increasingly competitive global economy.   Nearly eight million children are uninsured. More children were killed by guns in 2008-2009 than U.S. military personnel in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to date. A Black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime; a Latino boy a one in six chance of the same fate.   Millions of children are living hopeless, poverty- and violence-stricken lives in the war zones of our cities; in the educational deserts of our rural areas; in the moral deserts of our corrosive culture that saturates them with violent, materialistic, and individualistic messages; and in the leadership deserts of our political and economic life where greed and self interest trump the common good over and over.   Millions of our children are being left behind without the most basic human supports they need to survive and thrive when parents alone cannot provide for them at a time of deep economic downturn, joblessness, and low wage jobs that place a ceiling on economic mobility for millions as America’s dream dims.   Unemployment, underemployment, and economic inequality are rife and will worsen if massive cascading federal, state, and local budget cuts aimed primarily at the poor and young succeed. Homeless shelters, child hunger, and child suffering have become normalized in the richest nation on earth. It’s time to reset our moral compass and redefine how we measure success.   The Children’s Defense Fund has released The State of America’s Children 2012 Handbook. This report is a portrait of where our children are right now and a tool to spur us to set the vision of where we need to go to stop the downward mobility of our children and grandchildren and the diminution of America’s future.   It provides key national information in a range of areas to help inform and enable anyone who cares about children to effectively stand up for them. State tables show how children are faring state by state and how each state compares to other states in protecting children.   For example, when we looked closely at poor children across the nation, ten states plus the District of Columbia had child poverty rates of 25 percent or higher: Mississippi was the highest at 32.5 percent, followed by D.C., New Mexico, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Only New Hampshire had a child poverty rate of 10 percent or lower.   When it comes to ensuring equal chances for children everywhere in our country we have a long way to go. And when we realize that nationwide a child is born into poverty every 29 seconds it should sound alarms from coast to coast.   I hope this report will be a siren call that wakes up our sleeping, impervious and self-consumed nation to the lurking dangers of epidemic child neglect, illiteracy, poverty and violence. It’s way past time for those of us who call ourselves child advocates to speak and stand up and do whatever is required to close the gaping gulf between word and deed and between what we know children need and what we do for them.   In a year filled with choices for our communities, states, and nation -- from our budgets to our leaders -- please educate yourself and others about the urgent challenges facing our children and insist our nation make better investment choices to ensure their and our futures.   A transforming nonviolent movement is needed to create a just America. It must start in our homes, communities, parent and civic associations, and faith congregations across the nation. It will not come from Washington or state capitols or politicians. Every single person can and must make a difference if our voiceless, voteless children are to be prepared to lead America forward. Now is the time to close our action and courage gaps, reclaim our nation’s ideals of freedom and justice, and ensure every child the chance to survive and thrive.   http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/soac-2012-handbook.pdf   * Marian Wright Edelman is the president of the Children"s Defense Fund. Visit the related web page
	View more stories