When international nonprofits approach global development issues, they often use a top-down structure to work with local partners. This makes sharing local knowledge and best practices difficult, and diminishes the ability of local partners to influence governments or implement policy change.

In 2009, U.K.-based nonprofit Every Child realized the limitations of their approach to helping vulnerable children and families. Taking a radical leap of faith, they decided on a creative, innovative restructuring. Every Child disbanded itself and began a seven-year planning period, emerging in 2016 as Family for Every Child, an independent global alliance of former international partners and grassroots civil society organizations.

Family for Every Child’s act of creative reconstruction attracted GHR’s attention, and ultimately, support. In 2012, our Children in Families initiative became one of Family for Every Child’s first funders, issuing a small grant to assist them in capacity building for membership engagement. More recently, we supported Family for Every Child’s development of Guidelines on Children’s Reintegration, a valuable resource for child protection around the world. Today, Family for Every Child is a global alliance composed of 30 organizations with shared goals, connecting and collaborating to break the glass ceiling that prevents many local organizations from achieving policy changes that effectively protect children.
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Bold nonprofits that choose innovative, lean approaches to global problems often lack the support necessary for growth. To fill this gap, GHR is committed to supporting organizations like Family for Every Child. We believe impact can be maximized when approaches to challenges are continuously re-imagined, and we hope to collaborate with more organizations that embrace risk and reinvention to better serve the communities in which they work.

​GHR funds collaborations between nonprofits and civil society organizations because we value bold and innovative solutions to challenges faced by vulnerable children. What does collaboration look like within your organization or alliance? Share your success, opportunities and questions in the comments below or learn more about GHR’s Children in Families initiative here.

GHR recently had the honor of hosting a group from Kenya, visiting through the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program with Global Minnesota. We shared our Inter-Religious Action initiative’s funding efforts in Kenya, and learned about the inspiring work being done by these exceptional community leaders to improve lives, build peace and counter violent extremism through youth engagement.
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GHR invests in long-term peace building efforts along the Kenyan coast through our collaboration with Catholic Relief Services, the Coast Interfaith Council of Clerics and the Malindi Catholic Diocese through a project called the Dialogue Action Project, an initiative aimed at eliminating child marriage and improving household income through community saving groups.
 
Our guests shared inspiring stories from their efforts to promote peace across religions in their communities. For example, after the 2015 terrorist attacks on Garrissa University in Kenya, Ayub Mohamud, a high school teacher in Nairobi, set up Teachers Against Violent Extremism. The organization is now an interfaith network of teachers across Kenya working to share ideas that incorporate peace, tolerance and bridge-building with students in and outside classroom. In 2016, Mahamud was nominated for the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize for his impressive work. Mahamud is an excellent example of the importance of dialogue and inter-faith collaboration in building a more peaceful world. 

We look forward to learning more from community leaders like our visitors from Kenya, and we are energized by the efforts of these individuals to promote peace and global development. To learn more about how GHR is bridging divides through our Inter-Religious Action initiative, contact us.