Child Protection

World Service's child protection work fits within our broader programmatic area of Protection and Social Cohesion. Our goal in this area is to enable individuals and communities to live safe, dignified, and empowered lives, free from all forms of discrimination, abuse, and exploitation. 

In contexts where child rights violations, abuse, neglect and exploitation of children is prevalent, we are committed to strengthening existing child protection systems and to ensure a safer environment for children through our Child Protection programming. 

We commit to addressing specific issues causing harm to children using rights-based, systems and community-based approaches. Depending on the contexts, LWF World Service operates child-friendly centres, supports the strengthening of community-based child protection systems, facilitates foster care and support for separated and unaccompanied children, establishes child protection and reporting mechanisms in schools and communities for addressing child rights violations such as sexual exploitation, abuse, child labor, child trafficking, forced and early marriages, among others. LWF World Service also uses its rights-based local to global approach to conduct advocacy on children’s rights at local, national and international levels. 

In all contexts and Programs, we prioritize child safeguarding and have put in place strong mechanisms as stipulated in our Safeguarding Policy to ensure we prevent any harm to children who encounter LWF World Service programs, activities and staff. We have in place internal systems, policies and procedures, as well as specific child safeguarding guidelines and mandatory training material for our staff and partners.