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Working Together to Address Emerging Threats to Children’s Safety: Strategic Plan 2022-2025
To achieve their full potential and realize their rights, children must be safe and protected from violence and abuse. ChildFund Alliance’s current priorities, detailed in a four-year plan, aim to make this a reality by addressing emerging and increasing threats to children’s safety.
New and evolving risks are currently affecting millions of children, and will affect exponentially more in the future, if left unaddressed. These threats include increasing risks in the digital environment, in extreme weather related events, and in violent armed conflicts, among others.
All of these put the world’s children in danger of long-lasting harm and at risk of child labor, sexual and physical abuse, child marriage, gender-based violence, neglect, and trafficking.
Over the next couple of years, our work will focus on new and emerging threats in the digital environment. Children leverage digital technology to socialize, communicate, learn, and play—all essential to their well-being and development. Yet, these same technologies leave them vulnerable to significant risks including sexual violence and abuse, discrimination, hate speech, cyberbullying, and privacy invasions.
As we work to address emerging threats to children’s safety online, we commit to building upon our previous advocacy work aimed at ending violence against children, providing child protection in humanitarian emergencies, and supporting children’s efforts to meaningfully participate in decisions affecting their lives.
Click here to view strategic plan.
Strategic Priority 1: Addressing Emerging Threats to Children’s Safety
- Strengthen our long-standing commitment to end violence against children and positively impact children’s lives by tackling risks that are currently affecting millions of children and that are projected to impact exponentially more children in the future.
Strategic Priority 2: Working Together as One
- Operate according to eight principles that inspire us, keep us aligned, and guide our collective decision making to better tackle the challenges facing children today.
Strategic Priority 3: Building Partnerships for Sustainable Impact and Growth
- Develop increased cooperative efforts across the Alliance to create new, long-term partnerships with those who share our determination to create a safer future for children.
- by Ariana Zambada
What is a Strategic Plan?
A strategic plan sets out what an organization wants to achieve over the next few years and how it will get there. It focuses on new projects and making changes and improvements, rather than on maintaining core operations, which continue regardless. A strategic plan allows an organization to achieve more by focusing finite resources on its top priorities. It guides budget decisions, work programs and staffing.
Why is it important for ChildFund Alliance to produce this five-year strategic plan?
This plan will serve as a guide for our members, employees, board members and stakeholders as we embark on our next phase of membership growth and expansion into new areas.
How was the plan created?
The 2016-2021 strategic plan was developed by ChildFund Alliance’s Secretariat and approved by its board of directors and CEO Forum.
The three strategic priorities were developed by the Secretariat and presented to and endorsed by the CEO Forum at its meeting in May 2015. They were ratified by the CEO Forum at its meeting in November 2015.
Between November 2015 and May 2016, the Secretariat formulated and implemented an outreach plan to ensure that members – including their national and regional offices – played a role in the formulation of the Alliance strategy, have a sense of ownership of this strategy and actively contribute towards its implementation. Feedback was collected and incorporated into the strategic plan.
The working draft was presented to the CEO Forum and approved by the Alliance Board of Directors at their meeting in May 2016.
What are the overarching goals of the strategic plan?
Strategic Priority 1: Global Advocacy and Child-Friendly Accountability
- Advance Sustainable Development Goal 16.2 (End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children) and related targets through global, regional and national advocacy and engagement.
- Support children in holding their governments and local authorities accountable to their commitments in SDG 16.2.
Strategic Priority 2: Improve our capacity for Child Protection in Emergencies and Disaster Risk Reduction
- Prioritize key child protection in emergencies interventions in all humanitarian response.
- Mainstream disaster risk reduction (DRR) into regular programming and community development.
- Build on successful youth-led DRR.
Strategic Priority 3: Strengthen Membership Engagement and Growth
- Recruit at least three new members in the next five years.
Why did you choose these as your strategic priorities?
In September 2015, the United Nations unanimously adopted Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. These Strategic Development Goals (SDGs) frame the global agenda for the next 15 years. ChildFund Alliance is well positioned to build on our experience and play a key role in achieving this vision. In our strategic plan, we make a commitment to do all we can to prevent violence at all levels; protect children from violence; and enable children to meaningfully participate in decisions affecting their lives.
How will we accomplish these goals?
The ChildFund Alliance Secretariat will establish task forces to guide the Alliance’s advocacy, child-friendly accountability, child protection in emergencies and disaster risk reduction initiatives. We will draw on the expertise of our staff around the world, and, where needed, call on external experts for guidance.
Potential Alliance members will be cultivated through engagement and collaboration on existing initiatives.
Who is responsible for determining whether targets are met?
ChildFund Alliance Secretariat staff, ChildFund member CEOs and the ChildFund Alliance board of directors are responsible for determining whether the targets are met.
What are the biggest challenges to accomplishing the goals set forth in the 2016 – 2021 strategic plan?
We will need to ensure that we have the resources to properly implement our Strategic Priorities on Advocacy and Child-Friendly Accountability, and Child Protection in Emergencies and Disaster Risk Reduction. For select projects, such as Child-Friendly Accountability, the Secretariat may attempt to secure funds from external sources.
One of our major areas of growth during the next five years will be Strategic Priority #2: Child Protection in Emergencies and Disaster Risk Reduction. The Alliance will need to substantially build on its expertise to further impact these two complex sectors. Given our evolving expertise and our limited resources, we will focus first on Child Protection in Emergencies in FY 2017.
Insecurity and lack of access in conflict zones may make it difficult to implement child protection in emergencies interventions but we will rely on the Alliance country offices to guide us.
Questions? Contact us here.
Find out more:
Toward a Safe World for Children: Five-Year Strategic Plan 2016-2021
Strategic Plan at a Glance (one pager)
Glossary of terms used in the strategic plan
Press statement
Our Mission
- by Ariana Zambada
- by Ariana Zambada
- by Ariana Zambada
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Child-Friendly Accountability
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Child-Friendly Accountability (Demo)
Overview Children have an inherent and universal right to a life free from violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. Yet today, more than one billion children – about half of the …
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Global Advocacy
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Strategic Plan
“Toward a Safe World for Children: Five-Year Strategic Plan 2016-2021” Every child has an inherent, universal right to survive and develop, in a lif…