'Saving' Child Refugees from Civil War to Total War, 1937-1945: Esme Odgers, Foster Parents Scheme for Children of Spain and the Foster Parents' Plan for War Children

This paper explores efforts to ‘save’ child refugees in the context of civil war and total war. It does so through an analysis of the work undertaken by the Foster Parents Scheme for Children of Spain established in April 1937 to aid child refugees from the Spanish Civil War, and the organization which succeeded it after 1940, the Foster Parents’ Plan for War Children which covered refugee children of all nationalities.

By positioning the emergence of the concept of fostering war children in a systematic way as a significant moment in the history of global humanitarianism, this paper explores the impact of contrasting war conditions from civil war to total war in understanding the shifting parameters of humanitarianism and child refugees in the mid-twentieth century.

The focus of the paper will be Esme Odgers, a central but overlooked figure in both organizations. Odgers was an Australian communist who traveled to Spain in 1937 and established a child sponsorship program funded by supporters in Australia. She worked for the Foster Parents Scheme for Children of Spain to create colonies for children who had been evacuated from besieged cities or orphaned by the war. In 1940 Odgers fled France and settled in Britain, where she evacuated children during the Blitz. Her letters and correspondence will form the basis of exploring the significance of women’s role in the shifting meaning of humanitarianism and child war refugees during the 1930s and 1940s.