News & Stories from the Field

A deadly measles outbreak that began in late February 2025 threatened to sweep through displacement camps in Kenya's Dadaab complex, northern Ethiopia, and Somalia's Bay region. Hope for Every Child's health team mobilised within 72 hours, deploying 340 vaccinators across 1,200 sites including schools, markets, mosques, and door-to-door in informal settlements.

"When we arrived in Dadaab, mothers were lining up before sunrise," said Dr. Taiwo Okafor, our Regional Health Coordinator. "They knew the risk. They had seen children die before. They were not going to let it happen again."

The campaign covered children aged 6 months to 15 years, administering 812,000 doses of measles-rubella vaccine and 690,000 doses of oral polio vaccine. Zero deaths were recorded in vaccinated populations during the outbreak window. The operation cost $2.3 million — approximately $2.85 per child protected.

Our teams also screened 190,000 children for acute malnutrition during the same outreach visits, identifying 14,800 requiring treatment — a critical catch-and-treat opportunity only possible through integrated mobile outreach.

The mass deportation of Afghan nationals from Pakistan accelerated sharply in April 2025, with Pakistani authorities giving families as little as 24 hours to leave. At the Torkham and Spin Boldak border crossings, our teams documented children arriving in temperatures below 5°C without coats, many malnourished and several showing signs of respiratory illness.

"My daughter is six. She has never been to Afghanistan," said Rahimullah, a carpenter who had lived in Peshawar for 17 years. "She keeps asking me when we are going home. I do not know what to tell her."

Afghanistan currently has 3.7 million children out of school, a collapsed healthcare system, and a 95% female exclusion from secondary education under current Taliban governance. Returnee children — particularly girls — face a stark educational void. Hope for Every Child is operating 22 community-based learning centres near return points in Nangarhar, Kandahar, and Herat, providing catch-up education to over 9,000 children.

We are calling on international donors to fund emergency education and nutrition packages for returnee children — estimated at $47 million for the remainder of 2025.

A survey of 43 international and Palestinian aid organisations conducted between March 19 and April 14, 2025 found that 41 of them — 95% — had been forced to suspend or dramatically cut services following the collapse of the ceasefire on March 18. Widespread and indiscriminate bombing has made movement across Gaza extremely dangerous.

"We cannot reach the children who need us most," said our Gaza Country Director. "Our warehouse was destroyed. Three of our staff were wounded. We are operating on moral debt."

The northern Gaza governorate — home to an estimated 400,000 people — has been almost entirely cut off from aid flows. The IPC has classified the entire Gaza Strip as Phase 5 Catastrophe, with 1.1 million children facing acute malnutrition. Severe acute malnutrition rates in children under 5 have risen 800% since October 2023.

Hope for Every Child has three local partner organisations still operating inside Gaza. They are distributing high-energy biscuits, oral rehydration salts, and emergency health kits under extreme risk. We have lost two local partner staff members since the ceasefire ended.

We are calling for: (1) an immediate and permanent ceasefire, (2) unconditional humanitarian access for all aid organisations, and (3) an emergency international airlift of therapeutic food and medical supplies. Crypto donations are being converted same-day and transferred directly to our Gaza operational accounts.

At the G20 Finance Ministers' summit in Geneva, Hope for Every Child presented its annual State of the World's Children in Crisis report — a 200-page analysis of humanitarian funding gaps and their direct impact on child mortality, learning loss, and protection failures. The report found that for every $1 invested in child-specific humanitarian programming, $8.30 in long-term development costs are avoided.

"We are not asking G20 nations to be charitable," said our CEO Dr. Amara Osei in her address. "We are asking them to be economically rational. Children are not a cost — they are the only return on investment that actually matters."

The report highlights a $14.6 billion annual funding gap in child-specific humanitarian programming. The gap exists not because of lack of need documentation, but because of political prioritisation failures at donor governments.

South Africa and Germany endorsed the doubling commitment at the summit. The United States, UK, and Japan expressed "serious consideration." China abstained from the statement but committed to bilateral child health investments in East Africa.

In 2019, Amina Lado fled Malakal with her mother and two younger brothers after their home was burned during a militia attack. She was 8 years old. When our education team found her in the Protection of Civilians (PoC) site three weeks later, she had not spoken a single word since the attack. Our child protection counsellors began working with her twice weekly.

By 2020, Amina had joined our Temporary Learning Space. By 2021, she was consistently the top student in her cohort. By 2023, she had completed our accelerated teacher training programme — the youngest participant ever at age 12.

"When I was silent, the teachers did not give up on me. They sat with me. They waited. That is what I want to give to these children now — someone who will wait for them," Amina told us.

Today, Amina teaches 40 children aged 5–13 in the same PoC site where we first found her. She has requested advanced mathematics materials because, she says, "three of my students are geniuses and I need to keep up with them."

Unusually early and exceptionally heavy pre-monsoon rainfall in northeastern Bangladesh caused catastrophic flooding in the Sylhet and Sunamganj districts beginning April 4, 2025. Within 72 hours, 62 of 80 unions in Sunamganj district were submerged. Our rapid needs assessment documented 218,000 children displaced, 340 schools destroyed or damaged, and 14 children confirmed dead from drowning or snakebite.

"The water came so fast," said 9-year-old Rifat, sheltering on a raised road embankment with his family. "My school is underwater. My books are underwater. Everything is underwater."

Hope for Every Child's Bangladesh emergency team pre-positioned 12,000 family emergency kits in Sylhet district depots in March — a preparedness investment that allowed us to reach 12,000 families within 48 hours of the flooding.

Our teams are operating child-friendly spaces in 18 evacuation centres.