Empowering Children and Families

Education

Our aim is to improve access to quality education services from Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) to basic schooling. We place importance of early education to give children the best start in life. We have a focus on helping girls stay in school, given the proven benefits of additional years of education for girls which include lower chances of teenage pregnancy and child marriage and high career prospects.

Areas of Focus

Keeping children especially girls, orphans, the vulnerable and marginalized in school though provision of scholarships.

Training community schoolteachers through continuous teacher professional development.

Training parents/caregivers and other community members in stimulating preschool children’s cognitive development.

Providing educational and learning materials to schools.

Supporting and promoting nutrition in schools to improve school attendance and learning outcomes.

Collaborating with community members to promote children’s education.

Promoting hygiene and improving water and sanitation in schools.

Promoting the concept of the school as the centre of mental health, psychosocial support and care.

Mental Health and Psychosocial support – MHPSS

When considering children’s needs, the physical ones readily come to mind. We believe that for a child to develop positively, all needs including physical, spiritual, emotional, social, and mental must be met.

Areas of Focus

Provide community based mental health and wellbeing services.

Training teachers, parents/caregivers and community members in Mental health and Psychosocial support

Galvanizing community resources to provide Mental Health and Psychosocial support to children, youth, and caregivers.

Creating referral pathways and linkages for mental health and PSS services.

Sensitization on mental health and wellbeing.

Harm reduction for substance abuse.

Establish a wellness centre for children and young people mental wellbeing

Health

To meet the basic human right to health, the health program are implemented to improve the child health and nutritional status. Focus includes improving access to safe water and sanitation facilities to contribute to healthier families and communities.

Helping improve children’s health is a key component of Children Matter, because without good health and access to medical care, children are unlikely to achieve their full potential.

Areas of Focus

Provide prevention care and support for children living with HIV and members of the house hold.

Strengthening integrated community-level ECCD and child health services at health facility and community level.

Linking children and their households to access health services.

Equipping the caregivers and community volunteers with knowledge in health and nutrition.

Encourage setting up of school/and community gardens for home grown school meals.

Creating linkages between the school and family farms (where available) to provide food for school feeding programs.

Providing clean and safe water at school and closer to home points.

Hygiene promotion through health education on preventable diseases at community level.

Promotion of Child-to-Child as a tool to improve health and nutrition.

Child Protection

We support schools, families, and communities to protect all children from all kinds of violence and all forms of abuse including sexual abuse with focus on the girl child and other vulnerable children.

Areas of Focus

Supporting resilient girls and boys to protect themselves and their peers.

Building capacities of communities working with children to better prevent, detect and report violence against children including gender based violence .

Building and strengthening child protection community-based mechanisms that are well coordinated linked to national level child protection mechanisms for holistic and sustainable ways to protect children.

Building partnership at community and national level to prevent and address child rights violations.

Household Economic Strengthening (HES)

Children Matter Household Economic Strengthening(HES) interventions are aimed at reducing the economic vulnerability of families and empower them to provide for the essential needs of the children they care for.

Areas of Focus

Empower households to provide for the essential needs of children by

Promoting financial -management interventions for savings, access to micro finance facilities, and encourage improved family financial management.

Integrating HES activities with parenting skills training and Mental Health and Psychosocial Support

Using low-risk HES activities such as small savings schemes to diversify and stimulate household income growth.

Advocating and mobilizing community support for access to resources and strengthening networking opportunities such as community savings and loans schemes

Promote food security and livelihood activities such as cash crop and livestock farming.

Promoting financial inclusion for low-income communities through small savings and solidarity.

Supporting direct partnerships with private businesses for hands-on-trainings and on-job training for youth and women as well as availing start up toolkits to well-trained youth for job creation.

Linking vulnerable households to government social protection services such as cash transfers

Conducting market assessments to guide vocational training opportunities for youth and ensure that opportunities show evidence of a clear pathway to employment.

Link youth and families to microcredit or Government initiatives to receive loans or equipment to start up IGAs.

Using a child lens and a rights-based approach, recognizing that economic strengthening activities do not put a greater risk on children for exploitation and abuse or cause them to withdraw from education to focus on work.