Article
From Reaction to Readiness: Save the Children and Vodafone Foundation Join Forces
2026-10-20 · By Mabel McKeown, Head of Corporate Partnerships, Save the Children UK
Save the Children and Vodafone Foundation are partnering to strengthen humanitarian preparedness through technology, connectivity and earlier action. The collaboration combines emergency communications, funding and digital tools to help communities prepare for, withstand and recover from crises, while offering a practical model for how businesses and humanitarian organisations can connect capabilities before emergencies strike.
Save the Children and Vodafone Foundation have announced a global humanitarian partnership to help children and communities prepare for, withstand and recover from emergencies. Combining humanitarian expertise with technology and connectivity, the collaboration marks an important step towards making earlier, faster action possible.
The partnership includes six donated Instant Network kits to restore communications during emergencies, support for Save the Children’s Emergency Fund and an ambition to raise £1 million through Vodafone employee fundraising. The partners will also explore how TerraGuard software and Vodacom’s M-Pesa payments could help anticipate risks and deliver assistance.
Its significance goes beyond these individual commitments. Effective preparedness depends on connecting practical capabilities with humanitarian needs before a crisis strikes. This partnership provides an opportunity to put that approach into practice, while exploring how other organisations could contribute.
Connecting responders when it matters most
When conventional networks fail, humanitarian teams lose a vital means of assessing needs and organising assistance. Reliable communications are therefore an essential part of emergency response.
The six portable Instant Network kits will be positioned at humanitarian hubs for deployment by Save the Children. Vodafone Foundation will supply technology, training and technical support; Save the Children will manage secure testing and deployment. Previous use in Mozambique has already helped improve operational co-ordination.
These arrangements matter because equipment alone is insufficient. Teams need to know how to use it, where to access it and who is responsible for keeping it ready. Agreeing these responsibilities in advance helps turn a technology offer into a capability responders can use.
Building readiness around real needs
Preparedness requires a connected chain: warnings must inform decisions, decisions must unlock resources, and those resources must enable local action.
Too often, the components operate separately. Forecasting systems, communications infrastructure, funding mechanisms and response networks may all exist without being connected in ways that allow communities to act quickly.
The starting point must therefore be the needs of people facing a crisis. Governments, humanitarian organisations and communities should help define those needs, with business partners contributing relevant expertise and capabilities.
Two ideas identified in the accompanying preparedness insights paper could help extend this approach: a Humanitarian Preparedness Playbook and a Climate and Preparedness Finance Platform. Save the Children and Vodafone Foundation will take these concepts forward with potential partners, users and contributors.
Making collaboration practical
The partnership offers an encouraging example of organisations bringing complementary strengths to a shared humanitarian purpose.
Its wider promise lies in making collaboration operational: agreeing responsibilities, preparing teams, positioning equipment and connecting finance with locally identified priorities.
An invite: to connect needs with proven capabilities
Businesses bring connectivity, logistics, data, software, communications and supply chains. Academics contribute research, insights and expertise. Governments provide policy frameworks and diplomatic reach. NGOs bring a deep understanding of communities and practical experience of responding to crises. Effective crisis preparedness depends on connecting these strengths and making them available where and when they are needed.
Vodafone Foundation, Save the Children and others are working together to turn shared knowledge and commitment into practical action. The aim is to make existing expertise easier to find and use, connect capabilities to needs, and mobilise support before and during a crisis.
If you would like to contribute your organisation’s knowledge, capabilities or support, please get in touch with us at Business Fights Poverty.