ChildVoice

Vision Statement

Restoring the voices of children silenced by war

Mission Statement

ChildVoice International is a global Christian non-governmental organization that restores the voices of children silenced by war by raising awareness; promoting research; and creating effective, sustainable interventions.

Organizational Overview

ChildVoice is dedicated to helping war-affected adolescent girls and boys restore their own health and hope, build the skills they need to navigate life’s challenges and earn an income that lifts them out of poverty, and ultimately, achieve the dreams they have for themselves and their families.

Our approach to implementing comprehensive rehabilitative and developmental services involves both a center-based program and a network of community-based programs. Our flagship program is the Lukome Center, a non-traditional boarding school and vocational institute that we established in northern Uganda in 2006. The center is staffed by indigenous counseling and vocational training professionals and offers vocational training, psychosocial counseling, group support, life skills training, parenting coaching, sexual health education, menstrual hygiene and sanitation training, and more. Our programming there is attuned to the needs of a limited number of Ugandan and South Sudanese adolescent girls identified as highly at-risk and in need of intensive services within a secure and nurturing environment.

A center-based approach provides a greater depth of service; however, such institutional programs are invariably limited in the scope of reach, as well as in the ability to respond rapidly to the ever-shifting needs of displaced populations. Center-based programs also incur significantly higher costs to run. Recognizing that these limitations make it all but impossible to serve larger, mixed groups of vulnerable young people, we more recently began implementing our community-based programs, which—though less intensive in focus—allow us to respond with greater urgency and at a much greater scale.

And while our center-based program has focused on adolescent girls and their children, our community-based programs have also made it possible to begin planning and developing programs for adolescent boys as well. We strongly believe in the importance of offering and facilitating programs that are contextually relevant to the cultures from which those we serve come. Consequently, we custom-tailor our program offerings to maximize their impact within local cultural contexts. In addition, all of our center- and community-based programs are staffed by indigenous professionals, with some local volunteer support.

Currently, ChildVoice operates in northeast Nigeria, northern Uganda, and with the South Sudanese refugee population in Uganda. All of our programs are operated under the leadership of country nationals.