The International Children’s Trust is an international development agency that envisions a world where all children live and develop in a world free from violence and abuse, and where they can move away from poverty with full access to their human rights.
We specialise in supporting the educational, physical, emotional and psychological needs of children who have been living or working on the streets, who are child workers, or who lack the family support they need to access their right to an education. We develop relationships with local partners who work directly with these children, their families and communities in developing countries. Currently our partners operate in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Mexico, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
The International Children's Trust develops long term relationships with Partners in the field. These partnerships demonstrate a joint commitment to delivering effective programmes that fulfil the needs of highly vulnerable children and young people.
While our Partners are in the best position to offer effective and much needed programming to some of society’s most vulnerable children, the International Children’s Trust brings key skills and resources that small organisations in developing countries often struggle to utilise. Our support in the development of these organisations is crucial in allowing them to continue their valuable work and helps our partners to develop the means of sustaining their work into the future. We offer this support in three main areas:
Funding
We provide financial support for our partners’ programmes helping to fund the day centres, residential care, literacy programmes, transit schools, youth forums and other personalised support to children and their parents. Our direct funding particularly focuses on areas that address an immediate need and/or are more difficult to find funding for. Many organisations in developing countries do not have the time, capacity or ability to apply for grants from British and European funding sources. We are able to identify, apply and manage these grants on our partners behalf, and access wider sources of grant and individual donor funding as a UK-registered charity.
Practical Support
We provide advice and technical support to our partners to help them in their process of learning. We do this by using monitoring and evaluation tools to identify effective strategies for empowering vulnerable children and incorporating new methods and techniques into their work. We give general practical advice on issues in the field, including ideas for programme design, development, implementation and monitoring, and we give them advice on how to make applications for funding to other organisations and governmental departments. Partners are visited on a regular basis to ensure that funds are being used appropriately and to monitor and evaluate the work being carried out to help them achieve high standards. We continually work to ensure that our donors can have the highest confidence in the work that is being undertaken.
Networking
We help our partners to learn from each other, as well as from other child rights organisations. By implementing joint project with partners from different regions, collaborating with each other, and disseminating relevant publications and manuals among our partners, we encourage partners to develop different approaches that have proven to be successful and makes them stronger in the process. In addition, we help to establish useful contacts for our partners through our participant in UK and global child rights networks.
Our work is of an enduring nature as we help provide long-term local solutions to empower children, their families and communities to help themselves and break the cycle of poverty.
