Inside our Child Protection project with UNHCR
As you may know, for most of this year we’ve been working with UNHCR to provide a huge Child Protection project for vulnerable children in camps and host communities. Now more than seven months into the project, we thought it would be useful to provide an update on what we’ve been doing.
The programme is multi-layered, and includes psychosocial support for children, as well as art therapy to support their mental health needs, informal education and English lessons to improve their skills for the future.
Another part of the project involves resilience-building for youths aged 7-12. These activities focus on positive adaptations for young people, which aim to improve their social and psychological wellbeing and sustain their protection and healthy growth. After completing the sessions, the young participants receive certificates in recognition of their learning and experience.
The project also includes community-based recreational activities for vulnerable children, which focus on providing fun experiences in a safe environment. To help with this, we’ve been supporting and building the capacity of three incredible community-based organisations – ROJ, Gashbun and Hevi – to provide a huge range of activities for children.
Meanwhile, we’ve also been providing support for parents and caregivers, so they can better support children and teens’ psychological health as they experience the many difficulties of life in displacement.
Another key element in the programme has been to provide training to child protection committees, which you can see below.
We’ve also been carrying out specialised child protection case management in camps, with our teams following up on children at risk between the ages of 0-17 years, as well as their families and caregivers, to provide psychosocial support, awareness, counselling, referral of children to other service providers, family tracing and reunification.
Lastly, we’re also working with UNHCR to build the capacity of government employees and local organisations to ensure children are better protected from violence, abuse and exploitation.
As you can see, it’s a huge project, but one that we feel enormous pride and privilege to be conducting to the very best of our abilities…
