Championing Local Actors
OUR APPROACH
We work with an expanding network of over 100 inspiring local organisations, 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.
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 £1M+ in 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 areas Street Child advocates for, centring on increasing focus, funding, and proofing towards putting local actors at the heart of every response.
In Pakistan, Street Child supported five local level organisations to express their interest in implementing the Education Cannot Wait Multi-Year Resilience Programme, then offering significant surge support to secure funds for the programme – including securing their share of administration costs.
In Ukraine, we supported a local partner organisation in a bid that secured their largest grant to date, allowing them to make an even bigger difference at the forefront of the crisis. Additionally, after launching our response in Syria in 2023 following the Turkey-Syria crisis, we have worked with one of our local partners, Orange, to improve 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.