Child Welfare (2010 Q2)

Featured beneficiary in the CHILD WELFARE category for second quarter 2010:

GLOBAL FUND FOR CHILDREN

Charity Navigator rating:

Annual budget: $6.1 million

The Global Fund for Children (GFC) dreams of a world where all children grow up to be productive, caring citizens of a global society. To this end, GFC supports small, community-based organizations around the world that are serving the most vulnerable children and youth, and creates beautiful multicultural children’s books that bring messages of tolerance and peace to children in the United States and abroad.

Using this bottom-up approach, GFC creates lasting change by building the capacity of community-based organizations that are working to address difficult issues and to create opportunities for marginalized children. Our grantee partners work with AIDS orphans, children displaced by conflict or migration, disabled youth, child laborers, and those who have no access to basic education and health services.

Some of the innovative projects that GFC supports are mobile libraries in Ethiopia, where books are carried by donkey through villages with no libraries; trauma support centers for women and children in Serbia who have been victims of trafficking; and community gardens in Uganda for AIDS orphans who are learning the important role of nutrition in healthy development.

GFC’s first grant, for $1,200, supported classrooms set up at train stations in India for the many children who live and beg on the train platforms and have no access to formal schooling. Since 1997, GFC has invested nearly $16 million in 376 community-based organizations in 73 countries, touching the lives of over 1 million children.