ChildFund works in the most difficult contexts in the poorest and remotest communities, because we believe that every child, no matter where they live, deserves to grow up healthy, educated, skilled and safe.
Our Work Is:
Children are at the heart of everything we do. We see them not just as beneficiaries, but as active participants in shaping a better future. Every child is unique, and their voice is crucial in building the world we all envision. Our work prioritizes child protection and advocates for children’s rights, ensuring they are heard, valued, and protected. We work with communities, regional and federal government bodies, the private sector, and other like-minded organizations to champion the rights of children at every level—community, regional, federal, and global.
Community development is a central part of how ChildFund collaborates to improve children’s well-being. We engage local communities to identify their unique challenges and co-create solutions. By working with communities, we ensure that the interventions are relevant, sustainable, and impactful.
We begin work in a community by selecting a local grassroots organization that supports children in its vicinity. We then provide funding, guidance and resources for that local partner and enrolled children who need extra support in our programs. All enrolled children are eligible for sponsorship, in which they are matched one-to-one with a caring person from somewhere in the world who makes a monthly donation to support their community and can also write letters of encouragement, send financial gifts for special occasions and become a lifelong friend and source of support. Contributions from these generous sponsors support the programs that all enrolled children, whether sponsored or not, have access to.
A Holistic Approach
But it’s not just sponsored or enrolled children who benefit from our programs: It’s every child who lives in a particular community. Our programs are designed to be inclusive of all children in the communities where we work, whether we are constructing a school, drilling a borehole to ensure that all the children are drinking clean water, providing learning materials to schools or educating parents and caregivers on responsive parenting to support healthier relationships within all the children’s families.
Sponsorship funds – as well as funds from other sources like major donors, corporate partners and grantmaking institutions – fuel the programs we develop for and with children. These programs are designed not only to meet children’s needs in the short term, but also to improve access to critical resources and strengthen relationships between people so that the entire community can better meet children’s needs in the long term.
When a community becomes more self-sufficient, we shift our support to another that is less so. Child by child, community by community, our supporters help cocreate societies where every child can realize their rights.
Our success is built on strong partnerships with local organizations. These partners bring invaluable insights and connections, enabling us to tailor our programs to the specific needs of each community. Together, we implement projects that address early childhood development, education, health, nutrition, child protection, youth and livelihood development.
ChildFund works with 13 local partner organizations to implement a range of child-focused development and humanitarian programs across 6 regions in Ethiopia.. To learn more about our local partners and the work we are doing together, click on the respective logos below to visit their websites.
Our Impact
We keep children healthy, educated, skilled, and safe. We ensure their safety at home, on the street, in school, and online. We work with families to create the conditions their children need to thrive from birth to young adulthood. How we help children achieve these outcomes depends on our program results, and measuring those results is crucial. By rigorously measuring our impact and involving the community and other key stakeholders in the process, we ensure that our efforts lead to meaningful and lasting change. Dive into the results we’re capturing through our monitoring and evaluation efforts.
How We Define “Impact”
We validate our impact with children and families in Ethiopia in four important ways:
- 01. Our global monitoring of key indicators and our programming evidence.
- 02. Feedback from our children, families and partners on the difference our programs make in their lives and communities.
- 03. How well we apply learning about what works well or not to strengthen our strategies and approaches.
- 04. How we contribute toward global, collective outcomes for children and families — the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Our work contributes toward 12 of the 17 SDGs:
Project Spotlight: Supporting schools in conflict-affected communities in the Amhara Region
ChildFund is working with various partners to support children affected by conflict with educational support. This includes rehabilitating schools, and providing furniture and scholastic materials so that children no longer miss out on their right to an education. One such intervention is the International Rescue Committee-funded Play Matters project implemented in 10 schools in Amhara Region, supporting 10,136 students. The project supports internally displaced persons, returnees and host communities with interventions in education (school rehabilitation, furnishing learning spaces, providing scholastic materials, uniforms), water, sanitation, and hygiene, child protection, health and nutrition.
“Tigray remains one of the most remote and hard-to-reach regions in Ethiopia, with many NGOs unable to operate due to access, and sometimes, conflict. Despite these difficulties, ChildFund is here and plays a key role by implementing life-saving interventions. The cash transfers they give helps families immensely, including children, women, and ex-combatants to meet basic needs. They also provide assistive devices for people with disabilities and distribute essential non-food items to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and host communities, promoting well-being and resilience.”
— ASFAW BELAY, HEAD OF SOCIAL AFFAIRS OFFICE, WUKRO TOWN, TIGRAY REGION.