A thread of Princess Anne’s work with @savechildrenuk over the years. WARNING: Some of the footage included contains distressing scenes.

Princess Anne began her work with the Save the Children Fund on 15 August 1970 - her 20th birthday - when she accepted their offer to become their new President.

Her first trip with the Fund was to their Centre in Nairobi, filmed by BBC’s Blue Peter. This was the first in a long line of trips which would see her travel to some of the most remote, poverty-stricken, & dangerous places around the world, & which saw a colossal growth for SCF.

Visiting Nepal in 1981, Anne spent ten days visiting SCF’s four projects in the foothills & valleys of the Himalayas, which provide basic health care for mothers & children & are run by the locals, having been educated in modern health practices by the Fund workers.

Around 300 children attended the clinics daily, trekking long distances to do so. To visit one clinic, Anne had a strenuous four-hour walk through the mountains, proving her stamina.

In 1982, Anne undertook her most extensive tour with the Fund yet, which was to be a major turning point for the Fund. It took her to Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, North Yemen and Beirut.

Covering 14,000 miles in three weeks by air, road & boat, she was met with poverty, starvation & disease. She visited immunization centres in places where typhoid and polio were rife, camps with tens of thousands of starving refugees, and children who were on the brink of death.

She was advised to abandon the tour halfway through when continuing hostilities between Ethiopia and Somalia had begun to reach breaking point, and the Foreign Office deemed it too dangerous. “Damn them, I’m going on” was her response.

She rejected further warnings to cancel her visit to Beirut when 62 people were killed by a bomb where she would be travelling the day before her arrival. It only gave her further determination. Her visit was spent touring refugee camps, medical centres & the worst hit areas.

The press who accompanied her on the tour, who had only went to ask about the state of her marriage to Mark Phillips, were admittedly shocked & impressed by where she went, what she saw & what she did. It was a first for a member of the Royal family.

Startling shocking pictures of human suffering, highlighted by her visit, were sent around the world, alerting a previously unaware public to the plight of the impoverished, disease-ridden conditions under which vast numbers of Africans were living - & dying.

This paved the way for a massive relief effort. The Fund organisers were delighted with the impact of the tour, and it also gave great hope to those working for the children on the ground.

In 1984, she embarked on a ten-day tour of Morocco, Gambia & Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), which she described as the most harrowing trip she’s ever made. She saw thousands of children facing death within weeks. Life was in the hands of the weather: without rain, they starve.

At the hospital in Gorom Gorom, she saw starving children with spindly legs & pot bellies. Those too weak to move lay on mats covered with flies. She brushed the insects from one child’s face, but it was a futile task. “You have to stay remote,” she said, “or you’d just crack.”

These tours had no frills attached. Anne stayed in camps with the Fund workers. When asked about washing, her lady-in-waiting, Shân Legge-Bourke, who often accompanied her, said: “We just stand under the shower with our clothes on - if there is a shower. But a bucket will do.”

Anne neither expected nor received any special treatment for being Royal. She slept in the same huts, was bitten by the same bed bugs (“little friends who shared my sleeping bag”), & ate the same food - usually tinned, dried or heavily dominated by the only meat available - goat.

Her position gave her access to presidents & other government heads who might never have been persuaded to discuss their country’s problems. Here she demonstrated a knowledge acquired from experience: the need for village food banks, water schemes, locally trained health workers.

On a trip to India, Fund workers had been trying to negotiate the building of a new nutritional centre for which they were being asked to pay £200,000 for. The day after Anne arrived, it was reduced to £40,000.

A donation of £750,000 from the Townswomen’s Guild, of which she is patron, was used to build other health centres. She managed to secure a further £70,000 which was used to finance long-term relief projects in Bangladesh.

In Uganda, the Fund had been trying without success for months to obtain permission to go to a certain area. When Anne visited the country, she spoke to the President personally & within days, permission was given. That is the sort of help she can give that no one else can.

She also utilized her engagements in the UK to further the cause. Addressing a conference of freight hauliers in Brighton, she obtained donations of services from a worldwide courier company who promised to deliver medicine to any SCF project anywhere in the world free of charge.

She extracted a sizeable donation from the delegates she addressed at a meeting of the Inland Revenue Staff Federstion. When Michael Parkinson invited her on to his chat show in Australia, she only agreed after a donation of £6000 was sent to the Fund.

She has since made further visits to Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, Sudan, Uganda and Somalia. Her extensive work with the Fund has been recognised worldwide, so much so that in 1990, she was nominated by President Kaunda of Zambia for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Recently, Anne has visited Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia, & Bosnia & Herzegovina. In addition to her trips overseas, she regularly meets fundraisers & volunteers & visits SCF shops around the UK. She also speaks at many of their annual events.

In 2016, after serving as their president for 46 years, Anne became Patron of Save the Children, taking on the role from the Queen.