Robust protection and safeguarding policies are critical for all organizations working with children and young people. However, many policies and practices developed by Global North-based organizations fall short when it comes to applying them in different contexts.  

This is particularly the case for resource-scarce environments. Despite being costly to produce and carry out, the requirement that they be implemented is rarely accompanied by adequate financing. What’s more, imported child protection policies often feel foreign, and may not be taken up in the long run.

In 2018, Firelight realized that there were few protection and safeguarding tools relevant to resource-limited environments and organizations. We thus embarked on a journey to support our grantee partners to develop child protection and safeguarding policies and practices that were born and raised by the organizations and communities that were going to live them out.  

We also realized that such policies are also needed for working with young people and vulnerable adults. For this reason, we refer to them as “protection and safeguarding policies”, not limiting them to children.

In this report, we share our process and what we learned from it. We hope to inspire other funders and international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs) to work with their partners to develop these policies from within.

Suggestions for funders  

1. Give grantee partners the time and space to explore what protection and safeguarding mean in their local context, where risks and protections may exist in their existing systems and practices, and areas of strength and weakness in their organizations. They should not be judged for not using Global North formulas for protection and safeguarding.  
2. Approach community-based and local organizations using the solidarity principles. Grantees should have the confidence that “we are in this together with the funding partner.”
3. Be open about sharing your own weaknesses and journeys of strengthening your systems as funders. This helps grantees feel safer to be open about their own self-assessments.  
4. “Walk the talk”. As funders, we should also be earnestly operationalizing our own policies and guidelines and not only expecting the CBOs to be doing this.  
5. Timing is key! Assessing and developing protection and safeguarding policies and practices should be done once trusting relationships have been established. Otherwise, grantee-partners may feel that any weakness, risk, or honesty might jeopardise their chances of getting funding.
6. Allocate the resources that resource-scarce grantee-partners need in order to strengthen their policies and systems. Do not expect them to do this on their own.
7. Discuss protection and safeguarding policies as part of your regular communications and programming with your grantees so that the “fire” does not fizzle out.

We warmly invite you to review our full report here.

‍