(1876 - 1928)
Save the Children is one of the most prominent children’s charities operating in the world today, working to ensure children worldwide receive healthcare, food, education and protection. Their work reached over 7 million children last year.
The foundations for all this wonderful work were laid in 1919, when Eglantine Jebb founded the charity to raise funds for children in Germany and Austria who were suffering as a result of the First World War, and were continuing to starve as a result of the trade blockade imposed on these countries after armistice.
Eglantine was born in 1876 in Ellesmere, Shropshire and grew up on her family estate. The Jebbs were a wealthy family with a strong social conscience and a commitment to public service.
After studying history at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford, she moved to Cambridge to look after her sick mother and became involved in various charitable organisations carrying out research projects on social conditions.
At the end of the First World War, Eglantine became a prominent campaigner against the trade blockade imposed on Germany and Austria, which she believed was causing unjust suffering and starvation for children in the countries that had lost the war. She was involved in a number of campaigning activities and was even arrested for distributing leaflets that criticised the blockade in Parliament Square. In 1919, she founded Save the Children to focus on relief for children and was successful in raising a large number of donations from the British public for children in Germany and Austria.
As well as her fundraising and campaigning activities, through her work with Save the Children, Eglantine contributed much to the modernisation of charitable organisations. She advocated a planned, research-based response to crises, and under her supervision, Save the Children became the professional and efficient way it was managed, as well as its innovative approach to fundraising. Save the Children was the first charity to take out advertisements in newspapers – a tactic that proved both controversial and very effective.
Eglantine continued to campaign for the rights of children, and was involved in the drafting of the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the League of Nations in 1924. Following ill health, Eglantine died in 1928, but is remembered today as an inspirational champion of children everywhere.
