Article

From Response to Readiness: Save the Children and Vodafone Foundation Join Forces

2026-10-20 · By Mabel McKeown, Head of Corporate Partnerships, Save the Children UK & Lisa Felton, Managing Director, Vodafone Foundation

Save the Children and Vodafone Foundation are partnering to strengthen humanitarian preparedness through technology, connectivity and earlier action. The collaboration combines emergency communications, flexible funding and digital tools to help communities prepare for, withstand and recover from crises, while demonstrating how businesses and humanitarian organisations can work together before emergencies strike.

A partnership built for a changing world

Climate-related disasters are becoming more frequent and severe, while humanitarian needs continue to grow. Nearly 1 billion children are at extremely high risk from the impacts of climate change, and many of the communities where Save the Children works are already experiencing more frequent droughts, floods and extreme weather events.

Yet many crises are increasingly predictable. Forecasting systems can often identify emerging risks weeks or months before disaster strikes, creating opportunities to act earlier and reduce the impact on children and families.

The challenge is turning that warning into action, bringing together the funding, technology and capabilities needed before a crisis escalates rather than waiting until after it happens.

Save the Children and Vodafone Foundation have announced a global humanitarian partnership designed to help turn those opportunities into action. By combining humanitarian expertise with technology, connectivity and support for Save the Children’s Emergency Fund, the collaboration aims to strengthen preparedness and enable faster, more effective responses when crises occur.

Effective preparedness depends on connecting capabilities with real humanitarian needs before a crisis escalates. This partnership provides an opportunity to put that principle into practice and explore how technology, funding and local action can work together to protect children and communities.

Connecting responders when it matters most

When conventional communications networks fail, humanitarian teams lose a vital means of assessing needs, coordinating assistance and supporting affected communities. Reliable communications are therefore an essential part of emergency response. As part of the partnership, Vodafone Foundation is providing six Instant Network kits that can be rapidly deployed during emergencies to restore connectivity and support humanitarian operations. The kits will be positioned across Save the Children’s response network, with Vodafone Foundation providing technology, training and technical support while Save the Children manages testing, readiness and deployment. These arrangements matter because technology alone is not enough. Teams need to know how to access equipment, how to use it and who is responsible for keeping it operational. Agreeing these responsibilities in advance helps turn a technology offer into a practical capability that humanitarian responders can rely on when every hour counts.

Acting before disaster strikes

Preparedness is most effective when early warnings lead to early action. Forecasts must inform decisions, decisions must unlock resources and those resources must enable local action before the worst impacts are felt. Too often, these components remain disconnected. Forecasting systems, communications infrastructure, funding mechanisms and response networks may all exist, but not always in ways that enable communities to act quickly enough. This is particularly important as many regions face increasing climate-related risks, including those associated with El Niño. We know that many humanitarian crises can be anticipated. Yet too often, support arrives only after livelihoods have been lost, schools disrupted and families displaced.

Through Save the Children’s Emergency Fund, the mechanism that Vodafone Foundation is supporting through this partnership, teams and partners can prepare for and respond to emerging crises more quickly, including supporting anticipatory action before predictable disasters occur. The Fund helps unlock rapid support for preparedness, local response and recovery, enabling communities to take action before a crisis escalates.

The partnership will also explore how Vodafone’s digital capabilities, including technologies such as TerraGuard and M-Pesa, could help strengthen risk analysis, communications and the delivery of assistance including direct cash transfers, helping communities access support more quickly when it is needed.

Making collaboration practical

The partnership offers an encouraging example of organisations bringing complementary strengths to a shared humanitarian purpose.

Save the Children contributes humanitarian expertise, deep community relationships and experience responding to crises around the world. Vodafone Foundation brings technology, connectivity and digital innovation that can strengthen preparedness and response efforts. Together, those capabilities can help communities become better prepared for the risks they face. Its wider promise lies in making collaboration operational: preparing teams, agreeing responsibilities, positioning equipment, connecting funding to early action and ensuring proven capabilities are available where and when they are needed most.

From individual partnerships to collective action

This is also the thinking behind Connecting for Crises, a convening being hosted by Vodafone Foundation and Save the Children in London on 3 December. It will bring together humanitarian organisations, businesses, technology partners and others to explore how capabilities can be better identified and connected with humanitarian needs before crises strike.

The ambition is practical: to explore how we can move beyond individual partnerships towards better ways of mobilising the resources, expertise and technology that already exist across sectors, and enable earlier action when crises can be anticipated.

Vodafone Foundation, Save the Children, Business Fights Poverty and others are working together to turn shared knowledge and commitment into practical action. The aim is to help communities act earlier, strengthen resilience and ensure children and families have the support they need before, during and after a crisis.

For more information about Connecting for Crises, or to register interest in the convening, please contact Folake at Business Fights Poverty : folake@businessfightspoverty.org