Child Safeguarding – our roles and responsibilities

In the communities where you work major social problems occur. For example, in South Africa where children are placed out of home because of unsafe situations due to alcohol abuse and domestic violence.

Or in Kenya where babies are being abandoned because their mothers are on their own and do not have the means to care for their child. Many organizations want to address this, but where to start?

Not only in the community, but also within civil society organizations, abuse and neglect take place. It is a misconception that every employee and volunteer within an organization has the best interests of the children at heart. Time and again it is proven that working with vulnerable groups, attracts people with bad intentions.

To decrease this risk, we as Wilde Ganzen as well as your civil society organisation have a direct role to play. For example, as Wilde Ganzen, we fund partner organizations in low- and middle-income countries. These organizations work directly for and with children, and within that work are responsible for protecting these children.

Active assessments from 2025

Wilde Ganzen does not work directly with these children, but I see it as our responsibility to do thorough research on the organizations we support. Do they take their responsibility? Do they have a policy on how their organization ensures that they take measures to minimize risk of children being abused, exploited or neglected within their activities? Therefore, starting in 2025, Wilde Ganzen will actively question organizations about their child protection policies when they apply for projects.

Child protection policy sounds like a Western concept, but did you know that the right to protection is also mentioned in, for example, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child? The key question, of course, is how to set up your organization to reduce the risks of unsafe situations. A great start is to have your partner organization do a risk analysis, for example by having the following questions answered:

• What vulnerable target group(s) does your organization come into contact with?
• In what ways?
• What are potentially unsafe situations that could arise in the projects?
• What measures can you take in advance to reduce or eliminate the risk of unsafe situations?

Great and useful tools

Do you want to go a step further and work on a child protection policy? You don’t have to go and invent the weel all over again. There are a lot of toolkits you can make use of.

Where to start? Toolkits and capacity building 

• Toolkit Change the Game Academy: this toolkit can help you to formulate a safeguarding policy step by step.

• Disability Inclusive Child Safeguarding Guidelines and toolkit: do you work with children with disabilities? This toolkit helps you to work on your inclusive safeguarding policy.

• Keeping children safe toolkit: would you like a toolkit in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic or Nepalese? Have a look here.

For our partner organisations we would like to organise trainings in 2025. If you’re interested feel free to send an e-mail to Marit van Liere via marit@wildeganzen.nl.

Would you like to join a training in your home country about child safeguarding? That’s great! Don’t hesitate to submit the costs as part of your project application at Wilde Ganzen Foundation.