Our Global Programmes for Children

The coronavirus pandemic has affected us all. Yet, the fallouts are particularly acute in the 16 countries where War Child is present. Children have become more exposed to a number of grave threats to their safety - in particular physical violence and COVID-19 transmission. The psychological burden they carry is immense and often overlooked in emergency settings.

Across 2020 we took every action to meet these challenges. We explored safe and innovative ways to provide psychosocial support and individual counselling to children and families living in isolation. And we developed adapted programmes to address these stresses - sharing them with our network of partners.

A fresh focus for War Child - we worked with new and existing partners to protect strained food and sanitation resources and introduce COVID-19 awareness-raising and water, sanitation and hygiene components in line with World Health Organisation guidance. Public information campaigns led these efforts, harnessing everything from WhatsApp to social media to extend a safety net around young people. In hard-to-reach areas, we took our message over the airwaves to reach many more children ^[1] than would have otherwise been possible.

The flexible nature of our education programmes proved vital in our efforts to uphold the fundamental rights of an entire generation of out-of-school children.

Explore our country updates:

• The Middle East

• Africa

• Latin America and South Asia

"We are adapting our activities and working with partners to meet the biggest emergency that children have faced in our 25 year history." - Dr. Unni Krishnan, War Child Humanitarian Director

• 1 Note: The high number of COVID-19 response participants recorded in this chapter can be largely attributed to reach through radio broadcasts