Child Protection
We strengthen the families, communities and systems that keep children safe, and ensure that children have the knowledge and agency to protect themselves.
We advance child protection by strengthening the families, communities and systems that keep children safe, and by ensuring that children have the knowledge and agency to protect themselves.
Child safety is the foundation on which all other development outcomes rest. Children who feel safe at home are better positioned to thrive. Children who feel safe at school are better positioned to learn. Children who are protected in their communities can hold on to and build upon the developmental progress they have made. The solutions that work best for child protection are those built with communities, not designed somewhere else and delivered to them. That is why ChildFund's programs are grounded in the realities of the places where children actually live.
Investing in child protection is investing in long-term community resilience. Safe childhoods produce adults who are healthier, more financially secure and more civically engaged. The benefits extend well beyond the individual child.
Children and young people help shape the programs designed to protect them, contributing at every level from community protection mapping to national advocacy processes to global campaigns. When children understand their rights and are supported to use their voices, they are the most powerful advocates of all.
Our child protection approach works across three interconnected levels:
- strengthening families and caregivers by investing in their knowledge, skills and economic stability.
- building community protection systems, both informal and formal, that make community-level protection sustainable and self-reinforcing.
- advancing policy and systems change, shaping laws, policies and institutions that make lasting protection possible.
At ChildFund, child protection is woven throughout our health, education, livelihoods and sustainability programming because keeping children safe requires that all those things work together.
With these activities, I know what to do if someone tries to do something bad to me, like telling my family about it so they know what’s going on and they can do something.
Jukumu Letu Child Protection Project
Jukumu Letu, which means “Our Responsibility,” works to decrease the number of girls affected by harmful cultural practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM) by supporting the community to build its child protection capacity and by increasing children and youth’s participation in their own protection. At the end of the project, there was a considerable change in the community perception of FGM — 97% of endline survey respondents affirmed that most community members will accept alternative rites of passage for girls instead of FGM, compared to 16% previously, almost entirely due to awareness raising and education.
