Save the Children

Carolyn Miles. Carolyn S. Miles is President & Chief Executive Officer for Save the Children, the leading independent organization creating lasting change in the lives of more than 70 million children in need in the United States and 120 countries around the world. Carolyn became the first woman to head Save the Children in September 2011, after joining the organization in 1998… See full bio.

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Story: Save the Children has worked since Pakistan's epic 2005 earthquake to help children recover. One of the projects completed in 2009 — funded by Western Union — is providing over 3,300 girls and boys at 18 primary schools with clean water for drinking and washing hands and for latrines. Save the Children installed wells and taps at the schools, recruited 10 students at each school to serve as health and nutrition volunteers, and trained adults to maintain the facilities. For girls and boys in one village who drank untreated water from a stream — and for all children reached by this project — clean water means a reduced risk of illnesses and less time away from school. In the village of Iqbal Abad, the school Parent-Teacher Council chairman, Mohammad Ikram, said the council had long wanted to give children clean water. "The children were facing problems. They were drinking water from the stream which is, of course, not clean and caused different health problems, especially stomach-related." In Hanifabad village, teacher Mohammad Irshad said all children now regularly wash their hands. "Students demand soap from teachers and they are getting used to washing their hands after using the latrine." When the project came in under budget, Western Union and Save the Children partnered to provide a new water pipe for the 500 poor families who live in Gijkot. The village had started the project before the earthquake, but work had not resumed and women were walking hours to collect tainted water from other sources.

Evidence of Impact Summary:

Most experts mentioned that Save the Children is a large, well established organization. Their main target is to serve vulnerable children, and their WASH programs at schools have been great.
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Organization Strengths Summary:

They have good access to funding and have a strong brand name. Their funding and marketing also allows them to react quickly to emergencies as well as to long-term projects. Their marketing is also very effective, in particular their donor-facing communications.
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Areas for Improvement Summary:

A couple of experts mentioned that Save the Children can reduce their administrative costs and be more flexible and less bureaucratic. One expert suggested that one way to achieve both these areas is to de-centralize and allow regional offices to decide on programs.
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Carolyn S. Miles is President & Chief Executive Officer for Save the Children, the leading independent organization creating lasting change in the lives of more than 70 million children in need in the United States and 120 countries around the world. Carolyn became the first woman to head Save the Children in September 2011, after joining the organization in 1998 and serving as its Chief Operating Officer for the past seven years. She has traveled to Save the Children’s field operations in nearly 50 countries, and during her tenure as COO Save the Children doubled the number of children it reaches with food, educational, and other programs, and helped grow the organization’s budget – 90 percent of which goes directly to programs serving children – from $140 million to more than $550 million. As CEO, Carolyn has called attention to the urgent need for Save the Children and other organizations – public, private, nonprofit and for-profit – to cooperate and share their resources and expertise for the benefit of the world’s children. She has also emphasized the need to use social media and new technology to extend the organization’s reach and fully engage with Save the Children’s employees, volunteers, beneficiaries, donors, partners and others around the world. To this end, she launched her own blog, “Logging Miles,” and is committed to employing social media to extend Save the Children’s reach, building on such successes as its Twitter-based campaign that reached nearly 900 million people to raise awareness of the child hunger crisis in East Africa. She can also be found on Twitter @carolynsave.

The nonprofit has not added any comments yet. If you are a representative of this nonprofit and would like to leave a comment, please email us at feedback@myphilanthropedia.org with your request.