Children and young people are raising their voices on the issues that matter to their generation and calling for adults to create a better future. As the world recovers from the pandemic, it's more important than ever that we listen to them. World Children's Day was first established in 1954 as Universal Children's Day and is celebrated on 20 November each year to promote international togetherness, awareness among children worldwide, and improve children's welfare.
Humanium
Humanium is an international organization focused on ending violations of children’s rights globally. Their approach to their work includes raising awareness, providing legal assistance, and supporting local partners. Humanium delivers workshops in the communities where they work to help educate children and families about child rights. They have implemented projects in about a dozen countries, focusing on children’s rights to life, education, food, health, water, identity, freedom, and protection. They work to improve communities and countries in these areas by addressing poverty, exploitation, violence, discrimination, harmful cultural practices, health, isolation and rootlessness, and justice for children. Humanium has a child sponsorship program to provide resources to the children they work with around the world.
Save the Chiildren
Save the Children is an international organization working to protect and improve the lives of children across the globe. With staff in 120 countries, their programs focus on helping children survive, learn, and be protected. Save the Children works through programming, emergency response, and advocacy to further protection and rights for children in various ways. Save the Children works to engage children about their rights, as well as families, communities, governments, and international organizations, to build on children’s rights from the ground up. In addition, they focus on keeping leaders and governments accountable for their actions towards children. The organization also publishes regular reports on various issues relating to child rights, including info on different countries and regions. Additionally, Save the Children also has online advocacy and news and an initiative called Child Writes that allows children to write about and speak about their experiences and rights.
Donate to Save the Children now!
ECPAT
ECPAT International is a children’s rights organization focusing exclusively on ending the sexual exploitation of children. With an international secretariat based in Bangkok, ECPAT works worldwide to address issues of online child exploitation, sale and trafficking of children, child sex tourism, child trafficking, education of children on their rights, and human rights reporting. ECPAT has a network of over 100 member organizations in 95 countries worldwide that help carry out their mission. The organization publishes country reports on many of the countries in which their partner organizations work. The country reports are just some of the many resources ECPAT offers to help others advocate against child trafficking and sexual exploitation. ECPAT and its network of organizations advocate for the protection of children and the end of child sexual exploitation through policies, reports, social media, articles, outreach, education, and more.
Defence for Children
DCI is a membership-based grassroots movement focused on increasing children's rights through the successful and effective implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Child's Rights. DCI has four main priorities: justice for children, violence against children, children on the move, and children affected by armed conflict. They also focus on three cross-cutting issues: children deprived of liberty, child participation, and gender. DCI's international secretariat is based in Geneva, Switzerland, with National Sections and Associated Members around the globe. The National Sections focus on children's issues most relevant to the countries where they work, advocating for transparent, accountable, sustainable, and socially transformative change. In addition to working in the field, DCI also publishes reports on trends and relevant topics in children's rights and protection.
Donate to Defence for Children now!
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
— Frederick Douglass
IBCR
IBCR is an international organization aiming to promote children’s rights across North and South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. They work with social workers, defense and security forces, judicial system staff, civil society groups, government agencies, and other organizations to implement child-friendly practices. They also advocate for and raise awareness about children’s rights. IBCR is committed to creating sustainable change by building capacity in communities and assessing various stakeholders dealing with children’s rights. They focus specifically on children and emergencies, exploitation and violence against children, and children and the justice system. IBCR also provides training and researches to help further their goal of increasing children’s rights. They equip local stakeholders with information, resources, and tools to build their capacity to improve and advocate for children’s rights.
Think of Us
Think of Us operates as a Research and Development Lab for child welfare, transforming the system so that people with Lived Experience are at the center of designing, imagining, and building. The Child Welfare system is failing, causing more significant trauma for the youth and families it is meant to serve. More than 70% of siblings are separated, 20,000+ youth age out each year, and 36%+ of aged out youth experience homelessness. Riddled with systemic racism, private interest money, and the criminalization of poverty, there is a devastating human cost to the gap between child welfare goals and its outcomes. We envision a world where every person has the conditions they need to Heal, Develop, and Thrive. Think of Us strategically engages projects across tech, participatory research, and state and federal partnerships, driving system-wide solutions that bridge the gap between policy, practice, and people.
World Childhood Foundation
Childhood is a children’s rights organization that primarily works with groups at the most significant risk of exposure to violence and sexual abuse. They have local offices in Brazil, Germany, Sweden, and the USA and work on local projects worldwide. Their focus areas are a protective family environment, promoting protection from exploitation in the travel and tourism industry, ensuring the safety of children when online, and making social and legal systems child-friendly.
UNICEF Europe & Central Asia
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is a United Nations (UN) program that works in 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential. They work closely with multi-national corporations, national companies, and small- to medium-sized businesses to identify, design, and implement alliances that leverage the strengths of the corporate sector on behalf of the world’s children.
Children's Rights
Every day, children are harmed by America’s broken child welfare, juvenile justice, education, and healthcare systems. Through relentless strategic advocacy and legal action, we hold governments accountable for keeping kids safe and healthy. Children’s Rights has made a lasting impact, protecting hundreds of thousands of vulnerable children, and we are poised to help millions more. They depend on us…and you. Children’s Rights began as a project of the New York Civil Liberties Union and, later, the American Civil Liberties Union, and in 1995 became an independent nonprofit organization. We have won landmark legal victories in Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Washington, DC, and Wisconsin and engaged in advocacy efforts that change the way child welfare is practiced in the United States. Children’s Rights proves that failing child welfare systems can be fixed and can be made to run well.
Donate to Children's Rights now!