Swiss Solidarity revises its criteria for child welfare

In May 2015, the KID child welfare fund was replaced by the Child Welfare fund: CHILD. Its goal is to contribute in a more targeted way to the safety, health, education and dignity of children whose basic rights are not being respected. It will specifically benefit the most vulnerable in the world’s least developed countries.

Every day, 30,000 children under five die of diseases that could have been prevented. Every year, 3.1 million children die of malnutrition. There are 85 million exploited minors in the world and 124 million out-of-school children[1].

While Swiss Solidarity has funded projects aimed at helping children since it was founded, it has recently revised its criteria to increase the impact and sustainability of its projects. From now on, Swiss Solidarity will fund more and better targeted projects through the CHILD fund in the following areas:

• The health of children suffering from or at risk of diseases, disabilities or other physical and mental factors that seriously affect their well-being;

• Prevention of and response to protection problems such as abuse, abandonment, exploitation and violence involving children. The projects must target children who are particularly vulnerable, for example due to their family situation, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic situation or migrant status;

• Access for children to high-quality basic education with a focus on early childhood development. The projects will target the most excluded and vulnerable in any particular situation, for example girls, victims of conflicts and natural disasters, ethnic minorities, the poor and children with disabilities.

Through the CHILD fund, Swiss Solidarity hopes to support projects whose priority beneficiaries are children aged 0-14, since children are particularly vulnerable in their early years. The projects could incorporate people with a dependent child and pregnant women as secondary beneficiaries.

The CHILD fund also responds to a desire to ensure that our interventions meet a higher standard of professionalism by following minimum quality standards and to expand the child welfare fund to other contexts.

As a result, this new fund now allows organisations to submit aid projects not only for crisis situations but also for more stable contexts. However, only countries that are part of the less developed half of the world will be eligible.
[1] Sources: UNDP, WFP, ILO, UNESCO