Benefits for children | Training Programmes | Viva’s added value

Churches and organisations that Viva works with feel ‘called’ to reach out to children in need in their communities. They give their very best but do not always have the training and organisational structures in place to make their work as effective as it could be. We want to harness the commitment, passion and creativity of these amazing people and help to make their work easier and more beneficial by equipping them with skills to manage their work and ensure that children they work with are protected and well cared for.

Improving organizational systems ensures that Churches and organisations are strengthened in their ability to sustain their work for the long term with increasingly high levels of quality.

Capacity building helps to equip churches and organisations with new understandings and skills to make their work with children more efficient and effective. It increases the quality of care given for children in the city and generates a culture of protection and accountability amongst those in the network that can be reflected into wider society.

Many of our capacity building programmes focus on increasing the sustainability of the work of individual churches and organisations as well as the network as a whole through supporting the implementation of good management systems, financial accountability, child protection, strategic planning and sourcing income locally. This is essential for the longevity of the network and for the continuity of services for children.

As well as being important for improving the capacity of individual members, the positive impact of capacity building encourages more churches and organisations to join the network. Strong systems and high-quality of care in network member programmes is also essential for the network as a whole as the overall strength of the network requires all the component parts to be as strong as the weakest link in the chain.

Benefits for children

The majority of our capacity building programmes are not working directly with children, yet the improvements to care and organisational structure do directly impact the children that organisations and churches are working with:

• Improved organisational environment and increase in confidence and capability of staff ensures more relevant and beneficial programmes for the children
• Services for children are better-planned, resourced and more longer-lasting giving continuity of care
• Children feel more secure and better cared for with a more holistic approach and greater opportunities for the future
• Children are empowered with leadership skills and know how to keep themselves safe through the Child Ambassadors training programme

Training Programmes

The programmes developed by Viva have been trialled, tested and refined in different countries and across continents and are adaptable to suit specific contexts and situations. These programmes focus on changing mindsets and attitudes towards children, improving organisational structures to increase sustainability, efficiency and quality of care for children. The network identifies training according to members’ needs but training in Child Protection & Safeguarding is essential for all.

Here is an overview of some of the key programmes:

• Child Protection– Currently, we are working to ensure that all network members have an agreed and implemented Child Protection Policy, or Code of Conduct.
• Child-Friendly Churches Toolkit is a package of 4 training programmes to help churches Understand God’s Heart for Children, make church a friendly place for children, improve the organisational structures and understand the importance of strong families for children.
• Our Quality Improvement System introduces quality standards and principles for organisations that enable them to provide better care for children, ensure they have systems in place to increase sustainability and unlocks funding opportunities from larger funders with more stringent requirements.
• Celebrating Children is a direct and practical course designed to give good quality practical training on holistic child development to immediately influence work with children. The course is designed to relate specifically to participants’ own work situations and provide support in implementing the learning.
• Space to Grow Learning Spaces are designed to help children to engage with learning which has been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic and to equip children to make an easier transition back to schools as they reopen.
• Flourish is a value-based life skills course for adolescents which teaches them key knowledge, skills and attitudes that they need to keep themselves healthy and safe, and to prepare for life as valued members of their communities.
• Child Ambassadors equips children and young people to understand and advocate for the rights of themselves and their peers and to become agents of change in their communities.
• Network Training Course trains the coordination teams and steering groups of a network. It aims to: Increase understanding of network development; Improve presentation skills, including writing, to various audiences; Gain consistency and high levels of skill in network development across all Viva partner networks.
• Three capacity building programmes have been developed to help strengthen families and promote family-based care of children. These are:

• • Why Families Matter (which gives a biblical foundation on the importance of strong family units for child development)
  • Being Family (which gives information on trends in guidance and best practice for caring for children who have left or are at risk of leaving home)
  • Better Homes for Children (a technical reference tool to practically help Christians working with children, particularly those in residential care institutions).

Viva’s Added Value

Viva’s Network Development Team works closely with partner networks, providing expertise and guidance to ensure that network members are supportively equipped. With the knowledge of the programmes working in other networks and understanding the capacity of networks, Viva’s Network Development Team are on hand to offer technical advice for the establishment and running of capacity building programmes most relevant to the network and its members.

Viva has developed a ‘Foundations of Sustainability’ Benchmark with 10 areas in which networks should be proficient in order to have a strong base in which to confidently build their network. We aim to help networks achieve these benchmark indicators within three years of interaction, and then continue to advise and support the networks to develop their systems and strengthen their organisational sustainability.

Much of the work networks carry out requires funding and dissemination of information more widely than the people they are directly working with. Our Network Development Team provide expertise in proposal and report writing as well as media training, defining wide scale change, monitoring and evaluation design, demonstration of impact, and measurement of success both quantitatively and qualitatively. This helps to ensure that the network’s capacity is increasing and they are able to access support from a wider range of sources. Developing local fundraising capacity for in-country funding is a vital step in sustainability.