Save the Children NZ - Wellington Central

The legacy she left

Eglantyne’s passion that day led to her being arrested, and she was found guilty and fined £5 for her protest. But the public prosecutor at her trial was so impressed with her commitment to children that he paid her fine. His £5 became the first donation to Save the Children. More followed at a public meeting at the Royal Albert Hall on 19 May 1919, where Eglantyne’s and Dorothy’s impassioned pleas for the starving children of Europe were met with a huge response. Large amounts of money were raised and the Save the Children Fund was launched.

Two years later, Save the Children was making a difference to the lives of children beyond war-torn Europe. Russia was experiencing famine following the devastation of war, revolution and civil war and a drought that had brought crop failure. Millions of children were dying. Save the Children joined the International Committee for Russian Relief and Eglantyne began fundraising in Britain with full-page newspaper advertisements and a fundraising film shot in the famine area. In September 1921 a cargo ship was chartered to carry 600 tons of lifesaving food and medical supplies to Russia. Save the Children set up feeding stations and provided daily meals to more than 300,000 children and 375,000 adults, an impressive feat of international negotiations and logistics that informed Save the Children’s future international aid work.

Eglantyne left another enduring legacy to the world’s children. In 1923, in Geneva, she drafted her Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which was adopted a year later by the League of Nations as the Geneva Declaration. This ground-breaking document affirmed that children had rights and spelled out the responsibility that all nations have to protect their children. Eglantyne’s Declaration inspired the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, today’s most universally accepted human rights treaty.

Eglantyne suffered from ill-health for many years and died in Geneva in 1928, aged 52. Today, Save the Children works in more than 120 countries, including New Zealand, to realise her vision of a world where every child receives a healthy start, a chance to learn and protection from harm.