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When an emergency hits, be it a natural disaster or protracted conflict situation, children are often the most seriously affected. Today, 1 in every 200 children in the world is a child refugee. Children in emergencies can be exposed to violence, separated from family, or recruited into armed groups, and are at greater risk of exploitation and abuse. Many children affected by conflict and disaster also miss out on school, and may struggle to cope with their experiences.
Viva has been working in partnership with christian relief and development agencies to develop tools and resources to support work with children in emergencies.
Responding to the critical needs of children affected by the Syria crisis, we have established a long-term partnership with a Lebanese NGO to provide child protection training and mentoring for local churches who are reaching out to help vulnerable Syrian refugee communities.
Viva also provides child protection support and input for Relief agencies responding to disasters or conflict situations around the world.
How does this fit in with Viva’s strategy and model?
Viva is seeking to transfer its experience in supporting local churches and organisations to these contexts of critical need for children. In this way, even if we are not able to start networks in these often unstable contexts, we are still able to offer support and quality responses for children in some of the most difficult contexts.
By partnering with different organisations to support their work with children in emergencies, Viva is developing a range of programmes we can offer to ensure that the specific needs of children are taken into account when an emergency strikes.
Some of our programmes include:
- Keeping children safe: Drawing on Viva’s long-term experience in supporting local churches and organisations to develop meaningful and relevant safeguarding and child protection procedures and practices, we are able to work alongside those responding on the ground through needs assessments, training and mentoring, to ensure they are able to keep children safe in these difficult situations.
- Creating safe spaces: Safe spaces where children can play and learn, receive support from trained and trusted caregivers, and be referred for further support if needed.
- Meeting the most important need: Viva uses its well-established mapping and research tools with whole communities to find out the most significant needs children face in each situation, and uses this information to help local churches and organisations develop appropriate and targeted responses. Projects developed may focus on groups of children not reached by the existing emergency response, such as children involved in child labour, or very young children.
Through practical work where we are asked to offer support, Viva is increasingly learning about the best ways to support children in emergencies through local partners and local faith communities. As we learn, we also develop tools and resources which we can share more widely with those who are working in this sphere. We are developing resources on areas such as:
- Needs assessment and community-based research to identify appropriate, targeted child-focused response projects
- Mainstreaming child protection into other sectors of emergency response
- Context-specific child protection and safeguarding guidelines and templates
- How to integrate child protection into immediate emergency response through local partners
- Child protection ‘training of trainers’ materials to develop a network of local ‘child protection champions’ around the world
We are also working more widely to learn about what works best in working with the local church for children in emergencies and sharing this knowledge.
Check out our online Children in Emergencies Toolkit at childreninemergencies.org
If you are using resources or would like to find out more we would love to hear from you. You can call us on 01865 811660 or email info@viva.org.
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