Child Welfare (2010 Q1)

Featured beneficiary in the CHILD WELFARE category for first quarter 2010:

WAR CHILD UK

Charity Navigator rating: N/A

Annual budget: $2.3 million

War Child is an international charity that works with children in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. We provide support for children who, as a result of war, live with extreme insecurity, poverty and social exclusion. These children might include street children, child soldiers, children who have been imprisoned, children unable to attend school, and those displaced by war.

We work with these children and their communities to protect them from violence, abuse and exploitation and offer them opportunities for the future. By campaigning for policy changes, we help many more children than we could possibly hope to work with ourselves.

War Child currently works in 4 countries – Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq and Uganda – providing a number of services for children affected by war including:

• Providing counselling to help children cope with the effects of war,
• Providing vocational and professional training which gives them future opportunities,
• Reintegrating child soldiers with their families,
• Getting children off the streets after war has forced them to leave home,
• Separating children from adult detainees in prison and providing legal aid,
• Rebuilding schools destroyed by war and getting children back into education,
• Lobbying politicians to do more for children affected by war.

War Child UK has been the only child protection agency to be successful in separating children from adults in Afghanistan prisons and is the only international organization working with ex-child soldiers in northern Democratic Republic of Congo.

War Child has a unique and proud history using music to raise awareness. All of our albums and music events are made possible because of artists’ commitment to the charity. War Child’s music supporters include Sir Paul McCartney, Radiohead, U2, Coldplay, Bob Dylan, Oasis, Lily Allen and Stevie Wonder. Our albums have won awards at The Brits and the NME Awards. War Child’s music events have brought some of music’s greats together on stage, including  Coldplay, The Killers, Bono and Gary Barlow (2009).