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Dialogue Works 2.0 Partner Organisations

Dialogue Works 2.0" Partner Organizations
Southeast Africa
Zambia	Jesus Cares Ministries Zambia	https://jesuscares.org.zm/
Kenya	Action for children	https://actionchildren.or.ke/
Ethiopia	Facilitator for Change	https://fce-eth.org/
Rwanda	Children Voice Today	https://childrensvoicetoday.org/
South Asia
India	Vigyan Foundation	https://www.vigyanfoundation.org/
Nepal	Children and Women in Social Service and Human Rights / CWISH	https://www.cwish.org.np/
Sri Lanka	Sri Lanka Unites	https://srilankaunites.org/
South America
Peru	MANTHOC (Movimiento de Adolescentes y Niños Trabajadores Hijos de Obreros Cristianos)	https://manthoc.org.pe/
Bolivia	Pastoral Social Cáritas Potosí / PASOCAP	https://www.facebook.com/PASOCAPof
Ecuador	Guerreras por la Amazonia- (UDAPT)	https://udapt.org

Background- Global Network on Child Participation

The right of children to be heard and to participate in decisions that affect their lives is a central principle of children’s rights. However, in many contexts—especially where poverty, displacement, labor exploitation, or cultural exclusion exist—children’s voices still lack effective spaces and mechanisms to influence the policies and practices that concern them. This reality limits not only the protection of basic rights but also the quality and relevance of public policies aimed at children. 

Based on this assessment, the GNCP was established to strengthen sustainable and meaningful structures for child participation in three priority regions: Southeast Africa, South Asia, and South America. The initiative is established by two international children’s rights organizations Terre des Hommes Deutschland and Kindernothilfe,  and three partners with extensive on-the-ground experience: Jesus Cares Ministries (Zambia), MANTHOC (Peru), and   Vigyan Foundation (India). 

Strategy and Components 

The project’s strategy combines four main components:  

1. strengthening local capacities by training civil society organizations (CSOs) and empowering children in vulnerable situations who are part of the Children’s Advisory Committees (CACs);  
2. designing, piloting, and adapting methodological tools for participatory processes;  
3. form regional networks on meaningful child participation, where representatives of CACs from multiple countries within each region meet regularly, exchange experiences on issues that matter to them and collaborate on regional advocacy initiatives to support their right to participate. 
4. creating and maintaining a global Community of Practice (CoP) for CSOs to share their experiences and lessons learned across regions on meaningful child participation; and  
5. advocacy and dialogue with relevant stakeholders such as policymakers to ensure that children’s recommendations are translated into concrete policies and practices. 

In practice, this means training local facilitators and multipliers, supporting the creation and consolidation of permanent spaces for participation in the form of CACs, conducting workshops and pilot projects to adapt methodological guidelines to local contexts, and facilitating dialogue between child delegates and policymakers at the local, national, and regional levels. 

Regional Alliances: Working with Partner Organizations 

To ensure local relevance, scalability, and sustainability, the GNCP will work with a network of partner organizations in each region. Collaboration with local partners allows for the adaptation of tools, ensures community legitimacy, and strengthens advocacy pathways that connect children’s voices with decision-making forums. 

South America   

In South America, the project will coordinate with three additional partner organizations that will contribute expertise on rural and indigenous communities, community mobilization, and advocacy strategies for education and child protection. These partners will adapt project materials to local cultural contexts, facilitate campaigns led by children, and support the establishment and strengthening of CACs.  

• Guerreras por la Amazonia—Ecuador 

• PASOCAP—Bolivia 

• CESIP—Peru 

Southeast Africa   

In Southeast Africa, the project will work closely with three partner organizations to strengthen meaningful child participation in diverse local contexts.   These partners will support community mobilization, facilitate the establishment and strengthen of CACs, and promote dialogue between children and local decision-makers. Their contextual knowledge and experience will ensure that project activities and tools are adapted to local realities and contribute to sustainable child participation mechanisms.  

• Action for Children in Conflict (AfCiC) – Kenya 

• Children’s Voice Today (CVT) – Rwanda 

• Facilitator for Change (FC) —Ethiopia 

South Asia 

In South Asia, the GNCP will collaborate with two partner organizations with expertise in child participation and community engagement. These partners will support the strengthening of local capacities, the establishment and consolidation of CACs, and the adaptation of project approaches to diverse local contexts. They will play a key role in ensuring that children in vulnerable situations can meaningfully participate, voice their perspectives, and engage in advocacy processes at local and regional levels.   

• Children-Women in Social Service and Human Rights (CWISH) – Nepal 

• Sri Lanka Unites – Sri Lanka 

Why Work with Partner Networks 

Local partnerships are essential to ensure that child participation approaches are contextually relevant, inclusive and sustainable. Organizations already embedded in these contexts bring valuable knowledge of local cultural, linguistic, and social dynamics, enabling them to adapt participatory methodologies and tools to the realities of children and communities. Furthermore, these partners play a key role in building trust with children, families, and local stakeholders, while strengthening local capacities to facilitate meaningful participation. Working with multiple organizations across each region promotes exchange, learning and collaboration, allowing effective approaches and good practices to be adapted and replicated across contexts. These partnerships also strengthen the legitimacy and visibility of children’s perspectives and recommendations when engaging with decision-makers, increasing the likelihood that children’s voices are considered in policies and decisions that affect their lives.  

What This Will Mean in Practice 

On the ground, collaborating with partner networks will involve the establishment and strengthening of CACs, creating sustained spaces where children in vulnerable situations can express their views, identify priorities, and engage in advocacy processes. Partner organizations will support capacity strengthening CSOs, children and other relevant stakeholders through training on meaningful child participation approaches, participatory tools, and methodologies adapted to the local context. 

These partnerships will also contribute to the development, testing and refinement of participatory tools and resources that can be shared through the global Community of Practice. In addition, partners will facilitate child-led advocacy initiatives and support the formation of national and regional networks that help sustain and expand meaningful participatory practices beyond the project’s lifespan. 

Community of Practice 

The project’s Community of Practice (CoP) is a virtual learning and collaboration space designed to bring together CSOs, youth networks, experts, and policymakers interested in child participation. In regular online meetings, CSOs share knowledge and evidence on what does or does not work, lessons learned for meaningful participation of children in policy processes, and wider learning and exchange on child participation processes, resources and tools. It is a space to build members’ knowledge and capacity to navigate political systems, identify entry points for meaningful and sustainable child participation across local, regional, and where relevant, global levels, while encouraging members to apply their learning, strategic entry points and tools in their own contexts and bring insights back to the group.  Any collaborating organization—from local partners to international NGOs—can actively participate: sharing their experiences, tools and case studies and proposing topics for thematic sessions. The CoP thus seeks to transform local learning into replicable methodologies and strengthen networks that sustain children’s participation beyond the project. If you would like to be part of the Community of Practice, please send us an email. Please find our email addresses on the Contact page.  

A Child-Centered and Inclusive Approach 

The project recognizes that child participation must be meaningful—not merely consultative—and designed with criteria of inclusion, gender, and protection in mind. Priority is given to working with children in vulnerable situations, and participation is integrated with protection measures and actions that ensure educational continuity and capacity building. Furthermore, the initiative promotes culturally relevant practices to ensure that the voices of indigenous and rural communities are heard and respected. 

The perspectives of the children themselves are central to the project: their meaningful participation provides valuable insights into the challenges they face, identifies relevant solutions, and helps ensure that decisions and actions taken by stakeholders reflect their priorities and needs. For this reason, the project fosters children’s capacities to express their views, support the active engagement of CACs, and promotes the visibility of children’s proposals and recommendations in advocacy processes and decision-making spaces. 

Expected Impact and Sustainability 

In the short and medium term, the project aims for CSOs to integrate meaningful child participation approaches into their regular practices, for the CACs to become established spaces for children’s engagement and dialogue with local decision-makers, and for good practices that can be replicated in other regions to be documented. In the long term, the project seeks to establish sustainable mechanisms for child participation through national and regional networks that can continue to support capacity strengthening, knowledge exchange and child-led advocacy beyond the project’s lifespan. 

Sustainability is ensured through the co-creation of materials with local partners, capacity building among community actors, and the promotion of partnerships between CSOs, educational institutions, and public authorities to embed meaningful child participation within existing structures.