Chance for Childhood is an award-winning charity working in Africa to support the most vulnerable children, invisible from society, such as street children, disabled children, children affected by conflict and children in conflict with the law. Read more about who we help.
Our vision
A world where no child is forgotten.
Our approach
We work with and strengthen the capacity of African visionary community leaders and governments to implement locally-relevant yet far-reaching projects that create lasting change within the Justice, Education and Social Protection sectors. This enables us to focus on ‘hard to reach’ children, both in terms of their complex needs (e.g. street children with learning difficulties) and location (e.g. urban violent slums or remote rural areas).
Our strong ethos of partnership and collaboration continues to be the driver of achieving impact at scale. Together with our partners, we make ideas and impact both sustainable and scalable to protect, educate and empower even more of the world’s most disadvantaged children.
We believe that the only way to break the vicious cycle of poverty and exclusion is through an approach tailored to the unique needs and situation of each child. We tackle the root causes of exclusion and vulnerability and work with the child, their family and the wider community to create lasting change.
To maximise our impact and make effective use of our resources, we focus our work on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda – five countries facing extreme poverty, inequality, conflict and forced displacement.
Our expertise
In low and lower-middle income countries, around 40% of children with disabilities are out of school at primary level and 55% at lower secondary level.
Every child deserves an education. To achieve this we:
- Design innovative solutions and trainings, such as locally sourced teaching aids, to support teachers to ensure that children with special educational needs are not left behind.
- Piloted the first Learning Support Assistant scheme in East Africa, demonstrating the impact of our low-cost solution to improve enrolment, performance and retention of children with special learning needs in mainstream education.
Since 2014, we have trained 4,234 teachers, learning support assistants and peer educators to enhance the inclusion of the most marginalised children in education.
Find out more about our work on inclusive education in DRC, Kenya and Rwanda.
.At least three out of every four of the world’s 1.7 billion children have experienced some form of interpersonal violence, cruelty or abuse in their daily lives.
We have zero tolerance for children being held in adult jails. To give vulnerable children access to fair justice, we are:
- Safeguarding children in contact with justice systems, whether as victims or alleged offenders, ensuring their rights to fair treatment and protection.
- Spearheading juvenile justice reform in the informal sector through our award-winning community diversion and rehabilitation ‘Right2Change’ programme.
- First organisation in Uganda and Eastern DRC to pilot a community-based diversion programme which has supported over 2,800 children so far.
To date, over 2,800 children have received legal advice, counselling and vocational training.
In Uganda, Right2Change achieved a 1% recidivism rate and generated a social return of investment of £10:1.
Find out more about our work on justice for children in DRC and Uganda.
.Just under 50% of children in Sub-Saharan Africa live in extreme poverty with less than $1.90 a day to survive on.
Our aim is to lift children and their families out of poverty. Here are some examples on how we achieve this:
- In DRC we enable 150 families with out-of-school children to start their own business and take part in Village Loan Saving Associations every year.
- In Ghana over 400 children living on the streets can access vital Early Childhood Development centres every year.
- In Uganda we have supported over 1,900 adolescents and young people to start up their own agri-businesses, 90% of whom have found employment within six months.
- In Kenya our start-up business loans have enabled over 100 families to keep their children in school.
Find out more about our work on social protection in DRC, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.
