RIST and Save the Children started working together in 2017 when RIST supported our response to flooding in Bihar by helping us create Child Friendly Spaces and providing learning and education materials for children. Child Friendly Space become an important recreational center for children where they can meet their peers, play, read, write and feel a semblance of childhood in trying times. Save the Children also ensured through a rigorous training program that the facilitators of the Child Friendly Spaces were able to determine which children required psycho-social support following trauma they may have experienced. The provision of various materials helped to restart schools that experience damage from the floods and also ensured that the schools were a safe place providing protection from harm and a clean environment to remove the incidences of disease caused by poor sanitation, common to areas which experience flooding. Children in many villages also lost their educational materials which could keep them from returning to school. The provision of educational kits containing items such as books, pencils, rulers, book bags, etc. was key to supporting the continuation of education for the children in Bihar. Again, in 2019-20 RIST has extended support for the Bihar Floods where we are working towards distributing relief materials such as food kits, hygiene kits, education kits, etc.
Save the Children has successfully implemented a variety of programs across India – a few supported by RIST - to provide robust health and nutrition benefits to children and save lives. Almost 50% of our work for children caters to the Health & Nutrition needs of children. In different states of India, we’re passionately working to improve the health and nutrition status of newborns, mothers, and expecting women with special focus on those coming from the most disadvantaged communities. We continue to build upon prior success and lessons learned to improve health outcomes for mothers and children of the most marginalized populations.
