We promote community-led prevention and response, enabling communities to lead in transforming conditions that hinder children from reaching their full potential. Built on the belief that communities hold the key to protecting their children, we focus on mapping existing protective structures and supporting their engagement in dialogues with one another and relevant stakeholders. These discussions aim to uncover factors that expose children to risks, identify gaps in community capacity for prevention and response, and support integrated, community-led interventions for sustainable child protection.

This involves focused capacity strengthening for relevant government departments to improve their ability to ensure children’s rights are upheld. It also includes integrating community child protection champions into important decision-making forums, such as the Area Advisory Councils and various county and national consultative platforms.

To ensure children are actively and meaningfully involved in all matters affecting their well-being, we:

• Engage children in thematic surveys and forums where they can share insights on issues that impact them and provide recommendations for addressing these challenges to inform decision-making.
• Champion and invest in children’s participation in critical advocacy efforts at county, national, regional and global levels, ensuring their voices are heard on significant issues related to their protection.
• Promote child rights clubs in schools, enabling children to practice advocacy skills and deepen their understanding of their rights.
• Engage in well-coordinated networks of like-minded agencies to champion the realization of all rights of children to protection.  

See how girls in Tharaka Nithi County, involved in the Jukumu Letu child protection project, are speaking out against the harmful practices of female genital mutilation and child marriage in their communities.

ChildFund consistently spearheads advocacy initiatives focused on championing children's rights. As an active member of networks like the Joining Forces Alliance, ChildFund collaborates with other organizations to promote the enforcement of child protection legislation and policies and amplify our advocacy efforts. These efforts extend through ChildFund’s implementing partners at county and local levels, supporting child-led advocacy to ensure children actively and meaningfully engage with decision-makers at all levels.

We use a rights-based, trauma-informed and survivor-centered approach, with a focus on safeguarding, in our online child protection programming and advocacy. We are guided by three intervention strategies:

1. Individual level: We develop targeted prevention and response programs that put children’s and youths' voices at the center.
2. Community level: We help communities strengthen the protection capacities of both formal and informal local child protection systems.
3. National level: We provide technical and financial support to the government on the development of child protection frameworks and online safety standards and manuals. We also advocate for the enactment, implementation, and enforcement of critical online safety policies at the national level.

Learn more about ChildFund’s Safe Community Linkages for Internet Child Safety (Safe CLICs) project in Mombasa, Kilifi, Nairobi and Kiambu counties.