Gaza’s missing children
Brief: Deliver a comms campaign that persuades the Prime Minister to formally recognise the state of Palestine and pressure other leaders to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Since October 2023, Save the Children has campaigned hard to end the violence in Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 people. Seconded as Global Emergency Communications Manager, I was tasked with finding new, inexpensive ways to capture the public’s imagination and apply pressure to their representatives in government.
In June 2024 I received a routine briefing from colleagues in Gaza. It contained a short note about the number of children reported missing, including an estimated 5,160 children buried beneath rubble. After some analysis, it appeared 17,000 children were reported missing by their families, a further 3,000 detained by Israeli forces, and an unknown number thrown, unnamed, into mass graves.
Yet the story hadn’t been covered. Informed by policy experts, I wrote a public-friendly report, adapted it as a scrolling story, and worked with colleagues in media to sell it in.
My report was covered by 1,840 outlets in 85 countries - Save the Children’s biggest release that year.
35,000 people read the scrolling story in the first week, leading to 12,000 signatures to our parliamentary petition for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The story got 2.3 million engagements on Save the Children’s social media channels, with a click-through rate of 15.1% (1.5% is considered good). This was boosted massively by reshares from Malala Yousafzai, the UN, John Legend and other influencers - including this national treasure…
Photographer and Save the Children ambassador, Misan Harriman, got in touch to say he’d had a chat about my Gaza report with the children’s laureate, Michael Rosen, who had written a poem on the subject in 2014 named ‘Don’t Mention the Children’.
With a little persuasion, Michael agreed to read the poem alongside a star ensemble artists and influencers, in a film directed and edited by my team. Within two days, the beautiful piece was watched by 5.3 million people on Instagram, 2.8 million on TikTok, and encouraged another 15,000 people to sign our petition.
Any good communicator knows when you’re onto a good thing, you stick at it.
By September 2025 we knew public and political opinion was tilting on Gaza. Labour were preparing for their annual party conference in Liverpool. So in what turned out to be one final push, we projected ‘Don’t Mention the Children’ onto the iconic Liver Building in the days leading up to conference.
Result: On 21st September 2025, the Prime Minister formally recognised the state of Palestine. Three weeks later, Israel and Hamas agreed to ceasefire in Gaza - the result of years of campaigning from thousands of civil society groups, of which I’m proud to have been a teeny, tiny part.