Championing Local Actors
OUR APPROACH
We work with an expanding network of local partners, whose power and purpose sits at the heart of all we do – and has done so since our first partnership in Sierra Leone in 2008.
At Street Child, we believe supporting local organisations and leveraging their expertise is essential to effective, efficient interventions and enabling sustainable longer-term impact. We work in close collaboration with leading agencies, leveraging our learned experience and accumulated expertise to issue global guidance on working with local level organisations.
Partnering with local organisations is crucial because they possess a deeper knowledge of the community's needs, culture, and resources, enabling us to deliver more effective and sustainable solutions tailored to the unique challenges faced by the people we aim to support. In an emergency they are already on the ground and are best placed to determine where funding will have the greatest impact.
We work in close collaboration with leading agencies across more than 22 countries over 15 years, allowing us to develop strong and diverse multidisciplinary partnerships.
From 2010 to 2020, Street Child supported local level organisations to secure further funding. This included institutional and philanthropic funding and introduced local level organisations to influential funders including Comic Relief, the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office, and the United Nations Children's’ Fund. Our significant support in this area has resulted in substantial increases in their capacity to fundraise.
Additionally, in Uganda, the Street Child team participated in the Charter4Change annual meeting to champion local voices in international fora.
2021/22 presented Street Child with an outstanding opportunity to advance its ‘localisation in emergencies’ agenda at a systems level; formalisation of our support to Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN’s global fund for education in emergencies, and the award of a fantastic new grant from USAID.
ECW formally engaged Street Child, via its Acceleration Facility, to provide high-level advice on strategies to enhance funding flows to local organisations across its flagship multi-year programming.
In 2022, Street Child launched “Elevating Local Leadership in Emergencies” ($3M/2Y/) in our first-ever partnership with the United States Agency for International Development [USAID]. This programme presents ground-breaking opportunities to strengthen local level organisations’ involvement and leadership of the cluster and coordination networks. Strengthening the capacities of cluster and coordination networks to include local actors and increase local level leadership across 35 countries, the programme creates space for us to build upon our significant successes achieved in partnerships and programmes with Education Cannot Wait, the Global Education Cluster, and Global Child Protection Area of Responsibility.
Localisation is one of the core principles that Street Child advocates for, focusing on increasing attention, funding, and support to place local actors at the heart of every response.
In Pakistan, we helped five local organisations express their interest in implementing the Education Cannot Wait Multi-Year Resilience Programme. We provided significant surge support to help them secure funding for the programme, including covering their share of administrative costs.
In Ukraine, we supported a local partner in successfully securing their largest grant to date, enabling them to make an even greater impact during the ongoing crisis.
Following the Turkey-Syria crisis in 2023, we also collaborated with our local partner, Orange, to enhance their communications and fundraising capabilities.
Championing local actors in numbers
200+
Inspiring local organisations around the world have partnered with Street Child.
59%
The percentage of total Street Child expenditure which goes to local organisations. As a signatory for Charter4Change we are committed to publishing our expenditure.
75%
The percentage of Street Child development expenditure which goes to local organisations.