Together to End Child Poverty

Against this backdrop, over 470 religious leaders and others representing diverse faith traditions, NGOs, and United Nations agencies from over 64 countries gathered at the Fourth Forum of Arigatou International’s Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC). in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to commission a vision of a world where no child lives in poverty. This pursuit crystallised into the Interfaith Initiative to End Child Poverty, a global agency charged with ending poverty for children, through mobilizing  faith inspired resources and communities to respond to its structural and very human origins.

Since that June 16th , 2012, we have travelled a unique road as we sought to  transform institutions and spaces that have a direct influence on childhood poverty in over 50 countries where we work. Along the way, we have embraced and become true champions at local, regional and global levels of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its promise for children. We have also embedded this agenda into our strategic, results, and operational frameworks. To be truly transformational for children, we have embraced a rights and capabilities approach to our work anchored on faith and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). As part of this, we have learnt to embrace the agency of children and   ever looking out for them, are aware of their intrinsic and extrinsic value to their own cause.   

To be effective we elected to pursue results through several key pathways- Interfaith dialogue, reflection and action; Global advocacy and influencing; Grassroots and community constituency raising and organizing; Reaching out and acompanying promising grassroots initiatives and listening to and enabling the agency of children. We also identified the strategic need to work collaboratively and nurture partnerships; for a global knowledge platform as well as the value of growing our own competency and capabilities. 

 As we cast back to the last ten years, we review the results we have accomplished along these paths. We demonstrate how we have sought results through catalyctic action among faith communities and global actors and the progress we have made. In these pages we recount our initiative in developing and promoting tools for interfaith dialogue and reflection on childhood poverty; on initiating, promoting or engaging regional and global advocacy coalitions and workgroups on child poverty; establishing a research and documentation centre dedicated to ending child poverty;and promoting annual grassroots global campaigns to spur interest, demand and action to end childhood deprivation. We also report on our experience in response to community level innovations and actions for relief of child poverty as well as sometimes startling results as we have sought to empower children to take action against poverty.  

Along the way we have sought and been fortunate to find and make numerous friends and partners without whom our results would have been impossible.  We have also had the good grace of the GNRC on whose shoulders or legs our grassroots work has been carried. 

However, despite theseachievements,  many challenges remain. Many  girls and boys  still live in abject poverty and denial of their right to a life of dignity. According to the UN Secretary Generals status report on SDGs, as at December 2019,the world was unlikely to meet the aspirations and targets of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This situation has now been worsened by the emergence of a global health pandemic in 2020, continuing inaction on negative climate change and recently the outbreak of war in Eastern Europe. 

As a result, for the first time since before 2015, the  children living in multidimensional poverty has risen  to nearly 1.2 billion worldwide. 

Right from the onset, we were cautious that child poverty presented a complex phenomenon and that the battle ahead would not be easily won, and indeed in the last 10 years, we have learned vital lessons, about the stubborn nature of child poverty and are still reflecting on the most effective ways to mitigate it. We recognized however that this cause must be won if our children and humanity are to be genuinely free.

ECP@10 is a time to reflect on the past and envision the future. It encourages us to pause and ask… where do we go from here?

First, we must become better at what we set out to do. We must put more deliberate effort to engage faith communities better and bring them around to the single idea that we can end deprivation and poverty for all children. 

Secondly, we must be better in our advocacy for policy, structural and social change. Much of the solutions to global poverty are already with us, we know what to do, we just need to be better advocates for change. This calls for spiritual, moral, and political imperatives. 

Thirdly, we must ensure  that  existing global mechanisms and frameworks deliver for children. These include the SDG framework and its goals, the Human Capital Development platform, and regional platforms such as the African Union’s Agenda 2063. 

Fourth, we must find ways to better engage children, their families, and communities. At the end of the day, ending poverty for each child will be local, and it will happen in a particular family and community. It does mean that we must get better at engaging faith actors and stakeholders at global, national, and local levels.

Fifth, we will need to be guided by the best evidence and quality data. It is also imperative to ensure that such data and statistics, once available, are actually used in the design and evaluation of policies, programmes, and services.

Sixth, we need to make better sense of the connections between global crisis such as climate change and the loss of  ecosystems  and poverty. It  is now  plain that ending extreme poverty is almost impossible in an environment of runaway global warming . It is therefore imperative that we  include action for climate and  climate justice in our work.

We are grateful to all who have made this journey thus far possible, to the many who have taken to our call for grassroots organising against child poverty, to our many partners at local, regional, and global levels, and to individuals from across the world who continue to make ending child poverty a priority call on their time and resources. We look forward to working with all of you on the next steps of our journey. 

To the hundreds of millions of children who wake up to and are maimed every day by poverty, you continue to be our inspiration. We commit to staying the course, finding new paths and work better  to end the indignity of  childhood poverty. We will act, advocate, educate, and collaborate in order to get lasting positive impacts and avoid poverty for every child at risk. Your pain is our cause. 

Thank you!

Fred Nyabera

Director, Arigatou International – End Child Poverty