2022 CEO review

The first moment I would like to highlight is the launch of our biggest single initiative yet for out of school children in West Africa! In July we embarked on arguably our boldest-ever mission: to help 96,000 out of school children into primary-level education in Sierra Leone, Liberia and NE Nigeria, over 4-years. The Education Above All Foundation's 'Educate A Child' programme has partnered with Street Child to fund 50% of the $12.8m cost of the programme and Street Child takes on the challenge of sourcing funding for the remaining 50%.

I also have to mention The Sierra Leone Marathon 2022. The marathon is special every year but this June, after two years off as a result of COVID, and almost 10 years to the day since we audaciously staged Sierra Leone's very first-ever marathon - it was an extra special feeling as the last runners crossed the line. Back in 2012, SLM represented around a third of Street Child's income - of course, it is just a fraction of that now; but as a totem for the spirit, adventure and collegiality of the charity, it is perhaps even more important now than ever. And if you can safely move nearly 100 international participants to, and around a race in, a town in Northern Sierra Leone - it's a good sign that a global pandemic is fading!

For those interested in joining us - SLM 2023 which because of those missed COVID years will actually be the 10th edition of the race, runs Sunday 30th April, the weekend before the Coronation. Join us? As ever, for the full 42km - or 21, 10 or 5km events - or, an inaugural cycling challenge.

A slightly extraordinary 6-country / 19-day spell in the early Autumn, topped and tailed by great events in London and Barcelona, where Street Child’s growing European fundraising operation is based, was another stark tell that we were moving past pandemic life - and that Street Child was moving fast, generally! From London it was New York, where building on our debut at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier in the year, Street Child hosted two side events to the UN General Assembly and Transforming Education Summit - building profile, making connections and advocating for our key perspectives: education for those with the very least; and the under-tapped power of superb local organisations. 36 hours after departing JFK, I was with partners in rural Sierra Leone, looking at several of the 60 remote schools we had built or majorly renovated together in 2022 - and planning more for 2023. A few days later it was Liberia where I was struck, and encouraged after several years away, by the maturity of our present set-up. And then, later that week, in Accra, Ghana meeting the Minister of Education - for the second time in 10 days, (we also met briefly in New York) - and landing at tiny Tamale airport, in the North, on my first visit to that country for 22 years, the first of what I'm sure will be many.

The war in Ukraine is of course the defining global event of 2022. As I am sure you know, Street Child had absolutely no presence, or intention to have a presence, in Eastern Europe at the start of the year. But we decided, within 24 hours of Russia's invasion, that we would look to act - for three reasons (1) it was clear this war would be horrible; (2) it was clear that there would be a substantial outpouring of generosity; and most importantly (3) we knew there would be superb local Ukrainian charities on the ground, capable of acting with speed and passion, who would, as always happens, be overlooked by big traditional aid organisations who prefer to set up their own structures. But with whom Street Child knew, through our networks we could find and create meaningful partnerships with to make a huge difference. To date we have been able to distribute over £1m with 14 Ukrainian charities, supporting 25,000 children in different ways, increasingly with a focus on mental health and education. For 2023, we have already secured £4m to support local charities in Ukraine, and Moldova also.

Nothing made me smile this year more than the good fortune of being on a scheduled call with two leaders from Posmishka UA, our lead partner in Ukraine. A few minutes earlier, they had received the news that the UN was directly granting them $500k to expand their incredibly brave, and equally impressive, humanitarian work - as a direct result of the support provided by Street Child. Many of my calls with them, especially in March and April when they were focussed on serving those escaping the horrors of the siege Mariupol, had been so disturbing - it was fantastic, in fact, an honour, to see some work we had done to help them, bring some joy.

Globally, Street Child is proud not only to deliver our work with and through local charities wherever possible - but also to shout from the rooftops about the power of this approach. We have had the privilege this year of closely advising Education Cannot Wait, the UN's global fund for 'Education in Emergencies' on practical strategies to be a stronger 'pro-local' donor; and also to be contracted by USAID, the US Government's aid agency, to advise on, and support this process of 'localisation' in 30+ humanitarian settings, an initiative which began earlier this month, with a Street Child team heading to Northern Iraq to deliver a 4-day training piece, a first foray for Street Child in the Middle East!

On the other hand, nothing made me sadder this year than the day I spent in October in Chiore displaced-persons settlement in Cabo Delgado, Northern Mozambique. Working in, let alone running, an organisation like Street Child; it comes with the territory that there are many truly heartbreaking moments - but parts of this trip, to a conflict-zone which most of the world knows little or nothing of, stays with me more than any other at the end of the year. In Chiore we presently run play and other activities for children, to support their psycho-social health (and expanding to education in 2023). Speaking with a group of parents about our work, they appreciated the activities before one asked, if we could "make the games a little less vigorous because afterwards the children come back hungry, and we have no food for them" and another asked us to "take care - because the children come to your games in the only clothes they have; if they get ripped what do they wear?" Discussing these voices with a senior aid official in Pemba, the regional capital, he explained how war in Europe and meant a near halving in many budgets for the crisis in Cabo Delgado; whilst the same war in Europe had caused inflation in basic food items of around 50% - the bottom line he explained was that displaced families in places like Chiore, were being asked to live on as little as a third what was being provided to them at the start of the year.

And the worst part of course is that this story is being played out in underreported crisis and conflict zones across the world. Somalia, Eastern DR Congo, the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, Anglophone Cameroon, Northern Nigeria are just some of the places on the planet where Street Child has teams and partners desperate to serve children who need the very basics - but there is nothing like enough money in the system. Our special appeal this Winter is for children in places like these - where conflict and crisis, as real as anywhere else in the world but almost entirely devoid of global media attention, are hurting childhoods, terribly.

I am also often asked about the situation in Afghanistan. The reality is that it is about as bad as anyone could have predicted with the takeover of the new government in mid-2021. Girls are locked out of secondary school in almost all the country - and we are just hearing about how they are to be excluded from universities for the next term. There is enormous pressure on the country's already incredibly weak economy - acute humanitarian need is everywhere. The security situation, whilst transformed since the days of war, remains fragile - especially around Kabul.

Against this backdrop, the work, and impact of Street Child's incredibly brave teams are all the more important and impressive. Afghanistan was Street Child's largest programme in 2022 - with over 100,000 children materially benefitting from our education programs, child protection and new family-level cash grant programmes. Over half of these children (and half of those, girls) have attended Street Child primary learning centres throughout the year. Afghanistan will of course remain a major focus of our work in 2023.

My final piece to share is in Ghana, and also Sierra Leone, we are playing a leading role in a massive experiment in education financing! Traditional grants in education from the like of Governments, UN agencies and philanthropies focus on funding a pre-agreed set of activities, to deliver a targeted outcome. Then in 2020, a new entity, now part of UNICEF, called Education Outcomes Fund put out a call for proposals for projects in Ghana and Sierra Leone with a twist - rather than fund activities, they would, as their name suggests, fund the outcomes! Street Child's development over the years has been predicated on many factors but none more than the quality of our outcomes, especially at the price points we have been able to generate them at (remember, for example, in a tightly evaluated programme from 2016-2019 in Liberia, Street Child achieved acclaimed improvements in learning outcomes for between 40% and 10% of the costs incurred by other 'high-performing' agencies, achieving similar outcome-levels). So we applied to take part in these schemes - and were delighted to be offered the highest possible portion of the programmes available under the bidding rules: 20% of the Sierra Leone initiative, and 45% of the project in Ghana, a new country Street Child.

We began work this Autumn in Sierra Leone, where our goal is to achieve targeted rises in learning outcomes in 60 Government Schools. In Ghana, where contracts were finalised in November and we have been building our team and partnerships over the Autumn, the project is much larger - we are working to improve learning outcomes in 200 schools in the North of the Country, and to see 28,000 out-of-school children enrolled and retained in education (20,000 in the North; 8,000 in the major cities of Accra and Kumasi).

We are immensely excited to be right at the vanguard of this movement that could become a major feature of the education funding landscape. It is a brave move, however, with two particular challenges. Firstly, naturally, we will only be fully paid if we achieve our targets - indeed, the structure of our arrangements is that we can make a modest profit if we outperform; but low performance will absolutely result in us being paid less than we will have spent on the underlying activities. Secondly, there is an inherent cash-flow challenge: we have to fund our own activities, in order to generate the outcomes we hope to be paid for later. To mitigate these challenges we are delighted to have teamed with Bridges Outcomes Partnerships which will provide working capital in Sierra Leone and a portion of our Ghana work, in return for outcomes-driven payments - and we are seeking further donations or financing partnerships, of different kinds, to support the remaining £2m needed to underpin our participation in the Ghana programme.

There is, of course, so much else that I would like to tell you about from places like Nepal, Uganda, South Sudan... but this letter has to end somewhere. If there's anything in particular you would like to know more about, my team and I would love it if you got in touch - please feel free at any time! So in conclusion, I would like to reiterate, from the entire team, our enormous gratitude to everyone who supports Street Child. It makes a significant difference to the children and families we work with around the world. We hope you have a wonderful end to the year and we are very much looking forward to 2023 and beyond.

Best Wishes,

Tom Dannatt

Founder and CEO of Street Child

P.S More detail on what I've written about and beyond on our website and I'd like to let you know we have published our 2021/2022 Annual Report which is a great read too!