ChildSafe Alliance Partner Profile – Children’s Future

With almost 50 partners across the world, the ChildSafe Alliance brings together the expertise, best practice and knowledge sharing of some exceptional organizations dedicated to child welfare. We’ll be taking a closer look at some of those organizations in the months to come. First under the spotlight is the work in Cambodia of Children’s Future (CFI), who are also part of the 3PC child protection initiative.

CFI address issues driven by rural poverty and lack of infrastructure that affect young people in Battambang, providing holistic long-term support through their programs to help vulnerable children and youth succeed.  They look to make generational change through education, child well-being and child protection services. CFI Provide much-needed support to enable children to stay in school, and to avoid the risks faced by involvement in child labor or unsafe cross-border migration.

Let’s take a closer look at their key program areas and most recent impacts –

Education

• a community center with 7 classrooms and resources to teach 180 students daily in Khmer, Math, English and basic computer skills supplementary to public school
  
• Education advocacy program with 17 public schools which provides guidance counseling for public school students and advice for public school teachers on working with vulnerable children
  
• University stipends for 22 students
• Internships for 14 former beneficiaries
  

Child well-being

• Free access to healthcare for all beneficiaries and their siblings- Formal partnerships with 3 healthcare agencies in Battambang and collaborate with more hospitals around the country
• Food and housing support where necessary
• Monthly family workshops on parenting, child protection and health

Child protection

• ‘Signs of safety’ approach to create safety plans with families when children are in danger and to respond to emergencies
• Social workers coordinate and offer child protection and emergency services to around 350 people, collaborate with local authorities and directly serve 118 families in the immediate community. 
• Bi-annual prevention event to all beneficiaries warning about unsafe cross-border migration for children and adults (this year using Safe migration workshop and game and resources developed by 3PC)

CFI’s internal education program – the learning center or CFI school, and the outreach education programs connect with each other to enable vulnerable children living in poverty to succeed from primary school until graduation, university or vocational training.
They operate in inter dependency with CFI’s child well-being and child protection services. This system is more than the sum of it’s parts and develops according to the needs of the community. It’s has achieved a 97% overall success rate in school year 2015 and 2016 and a 94% success rate in 2017 in a community where 25-50% of children have dropped out of school or are not enrolled.

Partnerships

• Networking members of 3PC particularly migration specialist group, ChildSafe
• NGO partners in the child protection field are Banteay Srey (Legal support, women’s rights advocacy and shelter for women and children affected by domestic violence), Referral partners (Caritas, Komar Rikreay), training partnership with CCT and M’lop Tapang (providing training and consultation on using the ‘Signs of safety’ approach)
• capacity building providers such as M’lop Russey, Children in Families, EMDR Cambodia

From this you can see how partnership can enhance the already very impressive work that CFI undertakes – a principle that underpins the way ChildSafe Alliance works – together!