Three organizations- The Young Women’s Christian Association, The Council of Churches and The Norwegian Church Aid- have emerged as finalists of the competitive “Innovation Challenge” launched by the SDG Philanthropy Platform in Zambia to source innovations to contribute to the well-being of children in the country.
These Zambian NGOs will receive grant awards of up to US$40,000 each to implement initiatives that boost the well-being of children in Zambia.
Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), a faith-based organization, seeks to empower young mothers in rural communities of Mongu District in the Western Province of Zambia to improve their livelihoods, tackle food and water insecurity to impact the overall well-being of children.
The Council of Churches, on the other hand, aims to form Children’s Welfare Hubs in communities through the Council of Churches in Zambia (CCZ) member churches which track and respond to child protection issues by providing basic primary care and protection services. The hubs will aim to bring basic services closer to the community, and complement government’s efforts to leave no one behind.
To address the high prevalence of child marriage and teenage pregnancies in Zambia, Norwegian Church Aid will center their innovation around the family unit with community members mobilized into Community Advocacy Groups (CAGs) as support structures and catalysts of change. The innovation will target 5 schools and their communities with the highest dropout rates and levels of child marriage and teenage pregnancies. General community sensitization on the harmful effects of child marriage and teen pregnancies and community scorecard processes will be conducted around the selected schools. From each school, 5 families will be selected as the core target of the innovation, and will receive rigorous capacity building sessions to groom them into Gender Transformative Model families.
The Platform will work with the selected winners to develop monitoring and evaluation mechanisms and reporting.