EMERGENCY ALERT
Deadly landslides in the southern Indian state of Kerela have killed more than 150 people, with hundreds still missing, including children.
This year, India has already seen more erratic and extreme weather due to the climate crisis, including one of its worst heatwaves on record. Save the Children (known as Bal Raksha Bharat in India) has been using a drone in hard-to-reach communities in Himachal Pradesh, still reeling from last year's floods and landslides, which affected around 125,000 people, including over 36,000 children, and resulted in more than 400 deaths.
Help Children in India
Home to some of the most ancient surviving civilizations, today’s India is the world’s largest democracy and a rising economic powerhouse. But it is tackling major social, economic and environmental issues, including a huge gap between the wealthy and those living in poverty.
Save the Children has worked in India since the 1940s, setting up its first Delhi office in the early 1970s. It has been a registered Indian entity, Bal Raksha Bharat, since 2008. Together, we are dedicated to improving the lives of children through education, healthcare and protection. With a focus on ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive, we work tirelessly to support children and address the root causes of child poverty and vulnerability.
As the country grapples with increasingly severe heatwaves, the nation's most vulnerable population, its children, face significant health and developmental risks, including dehydration, heat exhaustion and heatstroke.
Our Work for Children in India
For over 50 years, we’ve worked relentlessly throughout India to secure children’s survival and better health, their access to education, their protection from harm and their rights to development and participation.
We provide robust health and nutrition benefits to children from the most marginalized and disadvantaged communities. We help India’s children start and stay in school. When children are forced into child labor, are abused or trafficked, we work to protect them and keep them free from violence.
In disaster-prone India, our trained teams mobilize when children and their families are affected by storms, floods and other catastrophic events, providing the support they need to quickly recover and re-establish their lives, dignity and livelihoods.
When Cyclone Fani made landfall in 2019, it was one of the strongest cyclones to batter India in decades, causing widespread damage in some of India’s poorest and most remote communities in Odisha State. Save the Children responded with prepositioned supplies and rapid relief, as well as a long-term recovery and resilience-building.
In the aftermath of flooding in 2023, Save the Children renovated 10 health facilities, providing toilets and making electrical and structural repairs to ensure they could continue to provide medical services. We also also carried out extensive awareness campaigns, equipping communities and health facility workers with disaster preparedness skills such as first aid and evacuation procedures.
In a first for the child right's organization, Save the Children (known as Bal Raksha Bharat in India) began testing a drone in the Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh as part of our flood response and found it would be an effective way to deliver much-needed supplies to remote communities. The state-of-the-art drone has now been handed over to the State's Disaster Management Authority (SDMA), who will use it to continue to deliver lifesaving supplies to communities affected by disasters.
Sources: Facts and statistics have been sourced from Save the Children’s monitoring and evaluation experts, as well as our thought leadership publications, including our Global Childhood Report 2020 and Stop the War on Children 2020 report. Other sources include CIA World Factbook and BBC Country Profiles.
Photos: Rajan Zaveri / Save the Children.