​Anita Roddick sparked the beginnings of Children on the Edge in 1990, in response to the Romanian Orphanage Crisis.

​After witnessing the appalling conditions in Romanian orphanages first hand, she mobilised her company, The Body Shop International, to help these children. Initially, this involved helping three orphanages in the small village of Halaucesti in the Iasi district of Romania.

By 1992, the team had developed considerable expertise in working with institutionalised children, establishing a programme to integrate them back into society. This prompted the organisation, upon invitation to expand its work into Albania.

By 1994, the work developed into Bosnia. It was clear that the organisation was working primarily with vulnerable children, in particular those without parental care. It was then that Rachel Bentley co-founded Children on the Edge. 

In 1999, thousands of Kosovan Refugees arrived in the town of Korce, Southern Albania where we were working. We became involved in the relief effort, developing the skills necessary to work with refugees. The same year, we expanded into Kosovo to help rebuild the schools and communities devastated by conflict. 

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​Working with the children of Kosovo developed our expertise to include children in post conflict situations. In 2000 Children on the Edge was invited by UNICEF to work with traumatised children and youth post-conflict in Timor-Leste and in 2004 when an earthquake and tsunami hit Indonesia, we utilised our skills to help children in the area most devastated by the disaster.

Children on the Edge became an independently registered charity in 2004.  Since then, we have expanded our reach to include:

• Helping children who have escaped ethnic cleansing and persecution in Burma as: migrants, refugees and IDPs (internally displaced people) living within Burma and on its borders. 
• Enabling children in the post earthquake slums of Port au Prince to access sports coaching, mentoring and nutrition. 
• Providing education for working children and Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh.
• Supporting education and child rights programmes for children from the dalit ‘untouchable’ caste in India.
• In response to the Syrian refugee crisis we have also supported the building and running of refugee camp schools for over 300 children in Lebanon. 
• After a successful pilot project in Soweto slum, Jinja, Uganda which provided safety, education and nutrition to 300 we are now beginning to replicate the success in new areas.  In order to do this most effectively we have registered there as 'COTE Africa'. 

Information about all our current projects is available via our 'Who we help' page.

For a concise timeline of our history, please see our 'Archived projects' page and our 'Facebook milestones'