SEARCH RESULTS

Breakthrough in Nepal: reaching the unreached

Nepal’s looming Covid crisis poses serious threat to children

Supporting a Resilient and Sustainable Healthcare System in Nepal

Save the Children is calling on the Government of Nepal to exercise restraint amid the protests and to protect the right of children and young people to peaceful expression.

Save the Children child campaigner from Nepal and giant white bear travel from Nepal to New York

Save the Children supports launch of new web series in Nepal

Save the Children statement on earthquake in Nepal that has caused children to survive outside in freezing temperatures

‘BECOMING’: NEW WEB SERIES TO SHINE A LIGHT ON YOUNG LGBTQI+ LIVES IN NEPAL

Girls in Nepal say they are spending more time at school when they have their period after Save the Children helped set up free pad vending machines in their schools.

Save the Children Nepal launches the 'Save Podcast' on National Children's Day

Save the Children warns Nepal faces “lethal cocktail” of testing and oxygen shortages as vaccine drive stalls

Earth Day - giant white Air Bear will begin journey around Nepal to raise awareness of air pollution

Discover all you need to know about Save the Children's work in Nepal.

Introducing Tara Chettry as the new Country Director for Save the Children - Nepal and Bhutan Country Office

Giant white bear and child activist travel from Nepal to New York to campaign for action on global goals

SOUTH ASIA FLOODS: More than three million children affected by severe flooding across India, Bangladesh and Nepal

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that when the earth shook on April 25, 2015, the lives of Nepalis changed forever. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which had its epicentre in Gorkha, Nepal - about 110 km northwest of Kathmandu - which claimed more than 9,000 lives and displaced millions. In the decade since, we’ve rebuilt homes and restored infrastructure, but the deeper cracks in our disaster preparedness systems remain alarmingly unaddressed.

Save the Children press release about children in Nepal missing festival due to earthquake

More than 80 children were killed in an earthquake in remote northwestern Nepal at the weekend

Floods and landslides caused by unprecedented rainfall in parts of Nepal have killed at least 14 children and closed schools, said Save the Children, as the changing climate further impacts children’s lives in Asia.

Nepal earthquake kills more than 80 children with another 5,000 left homeless in freezing conditions

‘There will be no song or dance. I lost many of my friends.’ Children spend Festival of Lights in darkness after Nepal earthquake

Save the Children Nepal's top priorities from 2022 to 2024 focus on empowering children and youths to tackle the climate crisis, ensuring access to social protection services for families during shocks and disasters, promoting safe and effective learning environments both in schools and at home, and equipping children and families with knowledge and resources to safeguard their mental, sexual, and reproductive health.To achieve meaningful impact for children, we leverage digital technology to engage with children and communities, fostering behavior change. We also establish strategic partnerships with the government and other stakeholders, working collaboratively to address the needs of children. We believe in sharing power with children, communities, and local partners, recognizing their essential role in shaping our initiatives. As an agile and inclusive organization, we continuously strive to maximize resources and opportunities for growth.Together we will build a better world with and for Nepali children. Save the Children in Nepal currently implements programmes in the following areas:

Every child deserves a fair chance to grow, learn and thriveIn Nepal, poverty continues to limit children’s access to essential services and opportunities. Save the Children works with children, youth and families to break the cycle of poverty and build resilient livelihoods.What we doWe strengthen livelihoods through climate-smart agriculture, income generation and market linkages. We also support adolescents and youth with life skills, career guidance and market-relevant technical and vocational training, including green and digital skills.Our child-sensitive social protection approach supports families to access services and reduces reliance on harmful coping practices.

The Child Rights Governance (CRG) theme is primarily focused on four areas: strengthening civil society to hold the government accountable, including through the use of international UN reporting mechanisms, advocacy and follow up; children’s empowerment to enable them to claim their rights; supporting the government to implement its Child Friendly Local Governance (CFLG) strategy; and advocacy for increased public investment in children. Save the Children has played a key role to form a broader coalition of civil society networks to prepare and submit supplementary reports on child rights to the Human Rights Council as part of its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process and to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Save the Children has also facilitated the partnership between civil society and the National Human Rights Commission to follow up with the government of Nepal on the implementation of recommendations/concluding observations from the UN bodies. Save the Children has also been supporting civil society networks to analyze budget for children and to undertake budget advocacy to raise children’s issues high on political agenda.Save the Children has also been supporting civil society networks to analyze budget for children and to undertake budget advocacy to raise children’s issues high on political agenda. By forming networks of child clubs at the municipality/rural municipality and district level, Save the Children empowers children to engage in dialogues with local authorities to improve allocation of resources to children and enhance the implementation of policies. Save the Children provides the platform to children to exercise their right to participate in local level decision making processes.Save the Children has been supporting local governments for the implementation of the CFLG framework, whose ultimate goal is to declare respective local units (wards, municipalities/rural municipalities) as child friendly by meeting the pre-set programmatic and institutional indicators focused on children. Save the Children supports as well as provides critical feedback to the government in policy reform process at the national level in order for the government to meet its international obligations created through the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other relevant human rights treaties.As an attempt to spread the knowledge and understanding of child rights and to influence the development of national child rights frameworks compatible with international standards, Save the Children promotes awareness about and effective utilization of policy documents set by the UN such as the General Comments and Concluding Observations from the Committee on the Rights of the Child; and relevant resolutions of the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly. Future directionsAs Nepal moves from unitary to federal structure where the local governments have been entrusted with an unprecedented level of power, Save the Children has started, and intends to continue, working with them to have children’s issues prioritized in local planning and budgeting processes, to ensure that any local level legislation/policy development is thought through/discussed from children’s rights perspectives based on which child focused/child sensitive provisions get appropriately included in such frameworks.Save the Children will also emphasize the capacity development of civil society and children vis-à-vis the changed context brought about by the federal structure so as to reap maximum benefit provided by the political transition of Nepal. More specifically, Save the Children will strengthen local civil society networks so that they are able to hold the local governments to account on children’s rights as per the spirit of the Constitution of Nepal 2015, the Local Government Operation Act 2017, the Children’s Act 2018 and other relevant policy frameworks.

The Child Protection (CP) theme is currently focuses on three areas: strengthening child protection system; protection of children from violence, including physical and humiliating punishment and sexual violence; and protection of children from harmful work.Save the Children strengthens the capacity of child protection stakeholders at the local level, particularly the Ward Child Protection Committees (WCPCs), teachers as well as parents so that they are able to undertake both prevention and response interventions to address abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence that affect or are likely to affect children. The WCPCs are new local structures that continue the work of the earlier Village Child Protection Committees which were proven local structures recognized by government policies as bodies solely working for child protection.Save the Children has not only built the capacity of these structures to fulfil their child protection responsibilities but also enabled them to access local resources to invest in enhancing the protection of children, and thus making their initiatives sustainable in the long run. Save the Children has initiated the concept of Para Social Workers (PSWs), who are trained to manage child protection cases, to generate evidence that social welfare workforce is an integral part of any child protection system in the world, which is conspicuously missing in Nepal’s child protection system.The child protection theme also facilitates the local processes to establish referral mechanisms so that services are linked to the children who need them. Save the Children works closely with governments and local responders to ensure that protection is mainstreamed in all sectoral interventions to address the negative impacts on the mental health and well-being of children and their caregivers in an uncertain situation arising from COVID-19.Save the Children’s work emphasizes on empowering children so that they are able to identify their protection risks as well as the measures they need to take to protect themselves. By creating reporting mechanisms at the local level, mainly in schools, and by empowering children to utilize those mechanisms, the CP theme facilitates to break the silence and establish child protection as a valid concern for the society to address. By strengthening the capacity of teachers and parents on positive discipline techniques and by sensitizing them against the use of corporal punishment, Save the Children helps create a more protective and fearless family and school environment for the children to flourish their full potential. Save the Children has taken a two-pronged approach to address the issue of child labor. It intervenes, as part of its prevention strategies, in targeted families and children in the area of origin to minimize the flow of child labor. Concurrently, it works in the destination areas where the children are actually working in order to improve their working conditions, their access to education, health and other services so as to ensure that their basic rights are not violated while at work. Save the Children uses its knowledge, experience and evidence generated from its field implementation to push for policy reform on child protection issues. This helps ensure that the field work is supported by appropriate policies and resource allocation and the policies, in turn, are informed and influenced by actual practice in the field.Future directionsAs Nepal moves from unitary to federal structure where the local governments have been entrusted with an unprecedented level of power, Save the Children has started, and intends to continue, working with them to strengthen their capacity on child protection and to influence them to set up structures, protocols, human resources and budgets necessary to undertake both prevention and response interventions on child protection within a broader framework of strengthening child protection system in Nepal.The government has, in 2018, legally banned all forms of corporal punishment of children in all settings and has also adopted a National Master Plan on Child Labour. In its strategic plan for 2022-24, Save the Children has prioritized these two issues in which the primary focus would be on supporting the local governments to implement these legal and policy provisions to enhance the protection of children from violence and exploitation, including corporal punishment and child labor.

Save the Children, with its life cycle approach design, ensures that every child survives and grows in an environment that prevents them from dying from preventable causes. Save the Children works to complement and in partnership with the Government focusing on improving their capacities and strengthen systems for service delivery and with local NGOs and communities by focusing on health care practices and nutrition for newborns, children and mothers.What we do bestSave the Children is a global leader in newborn health and survival and in catalyzing the adoption of evidence-based newborn interventions at scale through community and facility-based prevention and treatment interventions that address the major causes of neonatal mortality.Save the Children supports the Ministry of Health and Population and its department, divisions and provincial offices to design, revise, pilot, scale-up, monitor and review of newborn, child, adolescent and maternal healthfocused activities at local, provincial and national levels. Save the Children works to improve the availability, use and quality of key health practices and sustainable community-based approaches to address critical challenges and scale-up evidence-based maternal, adolescent and child health interventions.With partners at global, national, regional and community levels, Save the Children works to prevent malnutrition within the first 1,000 days from the start of a woman’s’ pregnancy through her child’s second birthday. Our core nutritional programming focuses on infant and young child feeding (IYCF) and social and behavior change communication, and establishes or strengthens linkages with WASH, household food security, community and commercial level agriculture and community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM). We also support school health and nutrition activities to improve health and nutritional status of school going children and their families.Save the Children supports family planning programs and contributes to the reduction of maternal, newborn and child mortality. Save the Children also focuses on promoting sexual and reproductive health and nutrition related services at school and for adolescents. Furthermore, we make sure children and families who have been affected by HIV AIDS can live positively and productively without stigma and discrimination. We also support the Government of Nepal to reduce the mortality, morbidity and transmission of tuberculosis, to achieve and sustain zero malaria related deaths, and to reduce the incidence of indigenous malaria cases Future directionsRecognizing gaps in health service coverage and utilization between different population groups, and in line with global movements around universal health coverage; Save the Children would like to work with government, civil society, academia, private sector and other stakeholders to reach the unreached.Focus would be around improving access to and quality of health, primarily focusing on maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health services in the context of federalism and decentralization in Nepal.In the COVID-19 context and our vision for the survive breakthrough, is to continue to support the government response but also adapt to the change in the modality of operation and shift to digitization of program interventions which will require us to strengthen our own, partners’, our local stakeholders’ and beneficiaries’ capacity to utilize technology for development and to tackle issues faced by children, considering gendered differences in accessing technology.

What we do bestEarly Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) program ensures young children receive the best support during their crucial first few years to become physically and emotionally healthy and intellectually curious. Save the Children (SC) supports ECCD center construction and renovation, trains facilitators and Female Community Health Volunteers, supports management committees and facilitates parenting program.Our Ready to Learn approach aims to address gaps in learning and increase adults’ capacity to support children’s development. Save the Children works with schools and communities to identify all out-of-school children and help enroll and keep them in school. Working with schools, teachers, and communities, Literacy and Numeracy Boost approach enhances early grade reading, writing, and math skills including home learning environment through reading and math camps and book banks.Our Quality Learning Framework (QLF) offers a universal standard for the creation and improvement of quality of learning environments. As the Co-Lead of Nepal Education Cluster, Save the Children proactively supports Federal and State governments in cluster coordination, developing National Contingency Plan, COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Plan and materials and guidelines including home-schooling.To ensure uninterrupted education, Save the Children works with partners to improve the country’s capacity to cope with future disasters and learn from the past, ensuring Safe School and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) remains a priority.The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in fall in school enrolment, drop-outs and significant learning loss. Save the Children adopted alternative education strategies and remedial programs for children to mitigate these challenges. Save the Children focuses on improving access to quality learning environment for children with disabilities while GESI framework ensures that education program reach out to children who are discriminated against. Future directionsDespite the good progress on access to ECCD services and enrolment of children in school, still, 34.8% of children aged 36-59 months are not developmentally on track. Children have low learning achievement at the primary level. On average, the third-grade children were unable to solve 56.5% of the reading and 62.78% of the math-related problems.The situation is more exaggerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Country Strategy Period 2022-2024, Save the Children will focus on implementing of an integrated ECCD policy and package of interventions. Our program will emphasize the improvement of the learning performance of children in early grades through the mainstreaming of our key common approaches Building Brain, Read to Learn, Numeracy and Literacy Boost, Safe School, and Enabling Teacher. Save the Children will prioritize safe back to school from the impact of the pandemic and other shocks; and test and scale alternative education modalities including remedial education for children struggling to learn.Save the Children will work closely with federal and state governments and provide technical support on the development and implementation of local-level policy/strategy, shifting teaching methods from teacher-centered to child-centered approach, ensuring quality education, continuing to improve access to quality ECCD and basic education, and mainstreaming safe school into all our work. Furthermore, we will also work with civil society organizations, academic institutions, UN agencies, networks, and parliamentarians to develop inclusive policies/ procedures and provide quality services to reach children most in need.

Save the Children (SC) works in all phases of disaster management, actively involved in humanitarian responses, recovery, preparedness, and disaster risk reduction. In doing so, we strive to ensure that children's immediate needs are met during emergency situations, providing access to education and protection services, and helping them regain a sense of normalcy. We address these needs by enabling a safe physical environment and developing the capacities of local authorities, child clubs, schools, communities, and partners to efficiently manage and minimize the effects of disasters. In the case of national-level disasters, SC supports program areas that align with the country's Emergency Preparedness Plan and Save the Children's Humanitarian Strategy, closely coordinating with the government.Save the Children acts as a catalyst for child-centered humanitarian responses, supplementing and complementing the efforts of the government and other stakeholders in all 77 districts of the country, as required.In Nepal, Save the Children has enhanced humanitarian preparedness and response capacity to deliver timely, quality interventions, rapidly meeting the immediate basic needs of people affected by disasters. We also have the capacity to reach the most deprived and marginalized communities, including women, girls, children, people living with disability during emergency responses. Save the Children's humanitarian response program is gender and inclusion sensitive.SC prepositions kits to address the needs of children and persons with disabilities (CWD) during emergencies. It holds the capacity to support the government's efforts to respond to 50,000 adults and children in case of a mega emergency within 48-72 hours, with lifesaving kits prepositioned in seven strategically located warehouses across the country. The intent of our preparedness and response work is to provide immediate life-saving assistance to disaster-affected populations, with a special focus on children. Save the Children provides support to ensure effective preparedness systems are in place, minimizing the negative effects of disasters on children and their families. We advocate to influence and support key humanitarian actors to prioritize children's well-being in emergencies. One of the key priorities is integrating and mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) interventions into regular development programs. Save the Children's humanitarian approach incorporates Anticipatory Action (AA) to provide critical support to at-risk communities before disasters or their full impacts occur. By utilizing forecasts and early warnings of imminent shocks or stress, our aim is to reduce the impact of disasters and improve post-disaster responses.We work closely with local governments to integrate disaster risk reduction (DRR) into their development processes through the Local Disaster and Climate Resilience Plan (LDCRP). Our focus is on creating an inclusive Disaster Risk Management (DRM) system, ensuring marginalized groups like women, children, persons with disabilities, senior citizens, and minority communities have access, representation, and meaningful participation in the planning process. We also coordinate with federal and provincial governments to synergize efforts and design an Early Action Protocol for a more effective disaster response.Save the Children has over 120 staff and partner NGO personnel trained in Emergency Response, ready for deployment in case of a mega emergency in the country. We have also built and strengthened our humanitarian partnerships with many in-country donors and are recognized as one of the leading humanitarian responders in the country. Future DirectionSave the Children is committed to becoming the leading humanitarian response agency for children and their families, delivering quality and timely responses to support the government's efforts. Anticipating more emergencies, including ones like COVID-19, Save the Children is always prepared and ready to respond to any emergency in any part of the country with life-saving materials for affected families. With children at the center of our actions, we are committed to enhancing the capacity of the government, partner agencies, and our staff, collaborating in responding to emergencies, relieving the impact of crises, and supporting the recovery process.

A Save the Children assessment in the immediate aftermath of the protests revealed grave violations of children’s rights by state security forces, including deaths, injuries, arbitrary arrests and widespread trauma among children and young people. The assessment also exposed critical weaknesses in the country’s child protection systems during political unrest.