Our 2023/24 annual report highlights a year of extraordinary growth for Street Child. Once again, we achieved record financial results, with UK charity income reaching £21.5 million and programmatic investment climbing to £18.9 million—our highest levels ever. This allowed us to expand our impact, reaching thousands more children in need.
Marking our 15th anniversary, Street Child celebrated a series of milestones, including being chosen as the international charity for the Times and Sunday Times 2023 Christmas Appeal. This campaign raised over £1.4 million—a record-breaking achievement for the Times festive appeal.
In another highlight, Street Child was elected to the High Level Steering Group of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN’s fund for education in emergencies. As the representative of the INGO community, we will contribute to ECW’s governance for at least two years, following in the footsteps of World Vision, Save the Children, and Plan International.
You can read the full annual report here or read some programmatic highlights below.
48,638 and counting: half-way through Street Child’s largest-ever programme
Street Child’s flagship West African programme for out-of-school children, the Education For Every Child Today (EFECT) initiative, saw excellent results in its second year of implementation.
Year two of the four-year programme, the charity’s largest and most ambitious to date, saw 31,794 formerly out-of-school children enrolled into education. Moreover, 97% of the children who enrolled in the 2022/2023 academic year were retained for a second year of education - 16,386 children. In total therefore, 48,638 formerly out-of-school children across Sierra Leone, Liberia and Northeast Nigeria were in school as a result of the programme’s support.
In partnership with the Education Above All Foundation’s Educate A Child (EAC) programme, the ambitious EFECT programme ultimately aims to help 96,000 vulnerable, primary school-aged children in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Liberia realise their right to quality primary education over four years. The 48,638 children successfully enrolled by the end of year two represent just over 50% of our four-year target.
Street Child continued to respond to significant needs of children affected by conflict in East DRC in 2023/2024, in collaboration with Oxfam, Tearfund, ECHO, and our local partners. Two £1m+ ECHO-funded projects in North and South Kivu saw education in emergency services provided for over 22,000 children in the affected regions. Street Child also began a pilot programme in the Western province of Mai-Ndombe responding to the rapidly escalating, almost entirely unknown humanitarian crisis on a new front of an inter-ethnic conflict in the Kwamouth region. Street Child is one of the only international charities to have responded, and the only one to have done so with a focus on education.
Street Child ramped up its activity in Mozambique in partnership with UNICEF, to respond to the acute needs of children in northern Mozambique affected by insurgency. Street Child has been implementing a multi-sectoral project for conflict-affected children and caregivers in 22 communities across the Districts of Balama, Mecufi, Mueda, Montepuez and Palma. The project has brought together three excellent local partners with highly complementary fields of expertise education-experts, Progresso; Wiwanana Associação, who led technical vocational component; and MHPSS experts, Comite para Saúde de Moçamcique (CSM). By March 2024, we had provided Mental Health/Psycho-social support (MHPSS) and case management services to 64,608 conflict affected children (32,450 boys and 32,158 girls).