Save the Children welcomes The QBE Foundation’s extension of the Disaster Relief and Resilience Partnership to further support the charity’s preparedness, response and recovery capabilities, ensuring that vulnerable children and families are protected and have increased resilience.
The unique partnership sees QBE increase its funding commitment to Save the Children to AU$1.5 million over three years. This funding has come at a crucial time. In Australia and across the Pacific, we are seeing compounding climate-driven disasters putting the lives of children at risk and impacting their mental health and wellbeing, as seen during the recent devastating East coast flooding.
Over the previous three years of the partnership, QBE supported Save the Children’s disaster responses to the Black Summer bushfires, Hurricanes Ida and Ian, Tropical Cyclone Harold and numerous COVID-19 recovery initiatives worldwide. QBE also supported the Prepared to Save Lives in Australia initiative, ensuring Save the Children teams in seven states and territories can undertake preparedness and response activities such as Disaster Workshops and Simulations, Child Friendly Spaces and Psychological First Aid training and prepositioned supplies.
With increased funding, Save the Children can scale its important work in disaster response, preparedness and recovery, working with communities in Australia and the Pacific on climate adaptation strategies, focusing on child-led solutions.
Save the Children Australia CEO, Mat Tinkler said QBE’s ongoing commitment to support child focused disaster response, recovery and preparedness is incredibly important across the region.
“As extreme weather events become more frequent and intense due to the climate crisis, disaster risk management and climate adaptation is becoming an increasingly crucial element of child protection.
“We know children are some of the most vulnerable when it comes to climate fuelled disasters, so we are committed to centring their needs in our responses.
“Thanks to the generous support of QBE, Save the Children will be able to continue to support children when and where they need it most,” Mr Tinkler said.
Viv Bower, QBE Group Executive Corporate Affairs and Sustainability and Chair of the Global QBE Foundation, said that the renewed partnership will be a key enabler in continuing to make a difference for communities across the globe.
“At QBE, we understand how critical it is to improve the resilience and preparedness of communities, which is why our purpose is to enable a more resilient future. Throughout our partnership, we’ve helped over 490,000 people in 19 countries respond to and recover from catastrophic events, and we look forward to our continued efforts to make a difference.”
Save the Children has a long history of responding to emergencies in Australia, including the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, Cyclone Trevor in the Northern Territory, the Townsville floods in Far North Queensland and the bushfires of the Huon Valley in Tasmania.
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MEDIA CONTACT: Mala Darmadi on 0425562113 or media.team@savethechildren.org.au.