Why Street Child advocates for local level action
Local and national organizations have and will continue to be the frontline responders in low-resource environments and emergencies, and therefore integral to the recovery and resilience of communities in crisis. Local organizations offer better access than their international counterparts to affected children, and can ensure that interventions are appropriate and relevant to their needs. However, a lack of investment in local level organizations leads to their underuse which in turn leaves them fragile and can lessen their impact.
The Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA) is one of several in Burundi. It is facilitated by local NGO Famille Maintenant (FAMA) with support from Street Child as part of our economic empowerment program in the province of Muyinga.
Street Child sees supporting local organizations and leveraging local expertise as essential to effective, efficient interventions, and to enabling sustainable longer-term impact. This approach is central to Street Child’s strategy. By investing in local level action we will support the organization to reach our goal of reaching one million more children by 2024.
The COVID-19 crisis has changed the way the world works. Despite significant constraints, these challenging circumstances are creating important opportunities for the aid sector to shift towards local level action. As part of this approach Street Child, and other like-minded agencies such as Save the Children, Christian Aid, Action Aid, CAFOD, Care, Trocaire and Tearfund have been advocating for sustainable local level action as a principal approach in all scenarios.
Janaki Women Awareness Society (JWAS) is an organization formed in Nepal in 1993, and has been one of Street Child’s local partners since 2015. They tackle social issues such as child marriage, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS, the dowry system, domestic violence, and discrimination against women and lower castes. They played a pivotal role in Street Child’s rapid response program during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as in our flagship education, livelihoods and socio-emotional skill development program for 10,000 Musahar women and girls.
Since 2008 Street Child has supported local organizations who share our commitment to children. We work in partnership with a growing network of 95+ excellent local organizations that have inspiring leadership and huge potential for scale and impact. These partnerships are open and collaborative, with a mutual aim to strengthen and scale the impact of our joint programs. We aim to leverage our reach and resources to activate and amplify their influence, through low-cost and community-centered projects. Where required, Street Child offers tailored support to our partners, including assistance to secure further funding and access decision-making bodies to improve local leadership.
Street Child understands that to make a change to the humanitarian and development aid sectors we need to empower local organizations to influence and advocate against the current situation. Street Child is running several initiatives which focus on accelerating the impact of local organizations, including as a principal partner of the Global Education Cluster and Global Protection Cluster. We are also leading a local action initiative for the fund Education Cannot Wait global secretariat, which provides an opportunity to roll out our partnership approach on a global scale. These initiatives have increased the involvement of local actors in the in the humanitarian sector and identified innovative approaches to increasing funding flows to local organizations, which helps to build evidence to guide the sector.
We work in close collaboration with leading agencies, leveraging our experience and expertise to issue global guidance on working with local level organizations and are one of the signatories to the Charter 4 Change, which commits us to a set of principles to guide the way we partner with local organizations. We are also an active partner of the Global Education Cluster Localization Task Force, Global Partnership for Education and International Network for Education in Emergencies. We know that we cannot make sustainable change happen on our own so we are leading by example and leveraging key strategic relationships with those who have local reach and can impact long term change.