Who We Are
The global Joining Forces Coalition is a collaboration between the six of the biggest child focused agencies: Child Fund Coalition; Plan International; Save the Children International; SOS Children’s Villages International; Terre des Hommes International Federation; and World Vision International plus War Child Alliance in Uganda have joined forces to use their collective power to accelerate change for children. The aim of Joining Forces Coalition is to substantially reduce Violence Against Children (VAC) by 2030 through joint programming, research, and advocacy.
Since 2018, Joining Forces partners in Uganda have worked hard to move beyond moderate partnerships and to unite influence and ambition for children. We recognize that VAC carries an enormous cost to Ugandan society and is seriously impacting on Uganda’s ability to achieve SDGs 3, 4, 8 and 16 and making it difficult to achieve the National Development Plan Human Capital Development Program outcomes on education, health and social protection.
Core Capabilities
Capacity and geographical scope to scale child protection interventions:
- JF has a combined operational footprint across 95 of the 135 (70%) Ugandan Districts where we have the delivery capacity to scale up child protection interventions with vulnerable communities.
Collective advocacy and influencing:
- We can demonstrate scale at meso and macro level, where larger scale implementation challenges and issues with government systems are more pronounced and need to be resolved through strong coordinated effort.
- Through a critical mass, our collective，清 our collective voice is heard more loudly, and we can provide sufficient weight of action to influence policymakers and implementors.
Financial scale, reach and impact
| Year | Amount Spent on Child Protection | Vulnerable Children Reached |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | $15.5m | 2.57 million |
| 2023 | $16.2m | 2.66 million |
Collective estimate spent on child protection interventions in 2022 & 2023 Vulnerable children reached with prevention and response services.
Strategic direction
- JF has a joint strategy 2024 – 2026 that guides the strategic direction and impact that the members seek to jointly create in the next 3 years.
Extensive evidence on what works:
- JF is a mechanism for collective learning and innovation. Members combine diverse thinking, evidence and approaches.
- Additionally, our experiences are spread between the global and the local levels which enables a unique two-way shared learning.
Diverse child rights programmes:
- Policy Influencing and Advocacy
- Systems Strengthening
- Education & Life Skills
- Case management and referrals
- Family Economic strengthening
- Gender Equality and Social Inclusion
- Child Labor
- Child Trafficking and Unsafe Migration
- Alternative Care
- Early Childhood Care and Development
- Health & Nutrition
- Emergency Response
- Mental Health Psychosocial Support Services
- Child participation
A clear mechanism of operation
- The Joining Forces Coalition has had stable and active technical programming and governance structures since 2018.
- The coalition maintains a full time Coordination Office that relies on the strong financial and administrative systems of members.
- Lastly, the national platform has access to technical advisory services from dedicated regional and global child protection specialists in design of joint programs, campaigns and advocacy.
Our Achievements
- Jointly implemented a national multimedia campaign against physical violence – Hands for Good between 2021 and 2023. The campaign reached 2.5 million people and demystified myths on child punishment, provided positive parenting tools and expanded public conversation on child disciplining.
- Jointly implemented Joining Forces for Africa project that increased knowledge and skills of local child protection actors in 6 Districts to identify, handle and refer children’s cases, supported functionality of community-based child protection mechanisms, and increased confidence of children to report violations. The project directly benefitted 7,762 people including 453 disabled children and indirectly reached 2.3 million people.
- Have jointly developed technical learning briefs on child participation, children agencies collaboration and selected child protection technical approaches to aid and promote scale up of good practice standards in the sector.
- Jointly implemented key national child protection strategies and programs including the National Child Policy and associated strategies/programs. The Coalition Technical leads of child protection and child rights advocacy have jointly influenced development and reviews of national policies and strategies and shaped many child protection priorities.
Potential Areas of
Cooperation
Guided by the Coalition Strategy, over the next 3 years, Joining Forces Coalition will forge partnerships that support the following initiatives:
- Scale up meaningful child participation.
- Engage in dialogue with Government to increase resource allocation towards implementation of the key national child protection related policies and strategies.
- Contribute to industry wide evidence and knowledge base on child protection.
- Partner to respond to protracted VAC in schools and child labour through joint programs.