OUR APPROACH
Street Child moves towards crisis rather than away. We have the agility and ability to move rapidly into a new situation and quickly support communities. In addition to the countries we operate in, this approach spans conflict and climate change-related emerging disasters, forgotten crises in countries or contexts currently outside of our operational areas too.
When a disaster happens, we’re there to support children and their families by:
Meeting their immediate survival needs, providing essentials including water, food, shelter and healthcare.
Creating safe spaces for children to recover
Ensuring children with urgent protection needs are identified and receive timely services
Ensuring girls and boys are still able to access education
Supporting long-term recovery, listening and helping people and households rebuild their lives
Enabling and encouraging our local network of partners to be at the forefront of the response.
We are also proud to work as an active member of the education in emergencies working group as part of the Global Education Cluster coordination mechanism.
On February 6, 2023, two consecutive earthquakes devastated parts of Southern Turkey and Northern Syria, killing more than 50,000 people and devastating the lives of millions more. The earthquakes were the latest disaster for families in North West Syria, who had already lived through more than a decade of conflict, widespread displacement, crumbling infrastructure and economic collapse.
Street Child launched an emergency response within 24 hours of the earthquake, seeking to provide aid where the need is greatest. So far, through our network of five partners we have reached more than 16,250 people in North West Syria with food, shelter and child protection activities.
Street Child will continue supporting survivors who have been forced to rebuild their lives. As we continue to provide life-saving support, we will also be working to reduce the disruption to children’s education to ensure all children affected by this crisis are safe, in school and learning.
On February 24, 2022, following eight years of active conflict in the Donbas and the annexation of Crimea, the world watched with horror as Russia invaded Central, Eastern and Southern Ukraine. On February 25, Street Child launched a rapid public fundraiser to our partners and supporters, seeking funds for frontline rapid response in Ukraine. In line with our strong, sustained commitment to localization, Street Child channelled – and continues to channel - 100% of these funds to local level organizations to sustain and scale their services in response to the enormous, evolving needs of children and communities in the country.
At the time of reporting, Street Child has an active response in Ukraine and is working with multiple local level organizations to offer humanitarian services and support, including 'child-friendly spaces' for displaced children to access psychological and psychosocial support and specialist support for children with disabilities – reaching 25,000 children in Donbas, Donetsk, Kyiv, Lviv, Ternopil, Truskavets, Uzhgorod and Zaporizhzhia. Street Child is supporting these organizations to work in close collaboration with humanitarian clusters, and to align activities with cluster strategies to assure coordinated reach and response. Street Child has also identified a further five partners – including partners working with refugees who are fleeing to Moldova and Romania – providing a platform to scale up services and support to conflict-affected children and communities.
In the summer of 2021, as conflict and the COVID-19 crisis coincided, aid and assistance were cut off from the people of Afghanistan. We already had established programs and a network of local partners in Afghanistan, so Street Child was able to rapidly launch a large-scale response across Badakhshan, Bamyan and Kabul provinces. Throughout the worsening crisis and resulting political, social, and economic shocks, we’ve managed to continue our programming despite disruption. By the end of March 2022, we had supported more than 51,000 children to receive an education, provided child protection services to 15,000 children in Baghlan and Bamyan and ensured 3,206 children, who have suffered severe mental trauma, had access to mental health support.
Street Child continues to work tirelessly across Afghanistan to deliver urgent humanitarian aid, as well as ensure access to safe, quality education and protection services for more than 100,000 girls and boys. We are proud to have received a special mention by the 'Commission National Consultative Des Droits De L’Homme, awarded by the Prime Minister of France in recognition of our work in Afghanistan.
Rapid Response in Numbers
121,274
children in Afghanistan have been reached through our programs. This includes direct enrolment into school and mental health services
16,250
people have been reached in North West Syria with food, shelter and child protection activities
29,813
children and 3,244 adults have been reached by Street Child in Ukraine