It’s amazing how, when your children are no longer in school or at university, you realise just how much our lives revolved around terms and holidays.

It’s just one simple example of how our children form the basis of our decisions; and of course, that’s how it should be.

A ‘children first’ philosophy is at the very heart of Save the Children – whether here in South Africa where the unmet basic needs of many children living in poverty negatively affect their development, or in crisis contexts like cyclone-hit Mozambique.

You’ll be relieved to know that Save the Children International deployed its Emergency Health Unit (a global pool of public health and medical experts) into Mozambique to boost the efforts of the government, and continues to monitor the situation there.

It didn’t take long before our international office delivered 51 metric tons of vital aid to Mozambique, which signalled the start of an emergency operation to help hundreds of thousands of children and families in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai.

Here at home, we thankfully don’t have cyclones to contend with, but South Africa’s children still face serious challenges: poverty, violence, malnutrition . . . and we can’t – and won’t – rest until all children, no matter who they are and where they live, can enjoy their fundamental rights.

Your support helps ensure that we can keep up our work at both policy and grassroots level – both of which are vital to give children a better chance in life.