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RE-IMAGINING
CHILD PROTECTION
For Child Frontiers, the highlight of 2025 has been the conceptualisation and launch of Child Frontiers VOICES, our new social organisation dedicated to learning, reflection and positive action.
In November, we launched Child Frontiers VOICES in Nairobi with more than 60 participants who share our commitment to strengthening child protection. For us, this was the realisation of a long‑standing ambition to create spaces where people working with and for children can reflect, learn together, and look for practical answers to pressing care and protection issues.
The first Child Frontiers VOICES event was everything we had hoped for: inclusive, energetic, and full of commitment. Over two days, government officials, civil society partners, academics and young people shared experiences, tested ideas and explored what “doing things differently” might look like in practice. The tone was open and collaborative, and that helped set the direction for how we want VOICES to grow as a social organisation – one that supports learning, fairness and genuine collaboration.
We used open space technology, a facilitation approach where the agenda is shaped by participants rather than set in advance. Instead of a programme of panels and presentations, people proposed topics they cared about, formed discussion groups around them and moved between conversations as they wished. This helped flatten usual hierarchies and made it easier for people to speak from their own experience, regardless of role or organisation.
Clusters of participants looked at the links between child protection and social protection, the impact of climate change on children, and what it takes to sustain community‑based responses, among other themes. Even the late‑afternoon sessions were still animated, with people reluctant to wrap up discussions. Each group captured key points and agreed on one or two concrete next steps, so the event closed with a clear sense of follow‑up rather than just a list of ideas.
Young people played a central part. Eight participants aged 16 to 22 took part as active contributors, not observers. They proposed sessions on how to make child participation more meaningful and spoke openly about their own experiences of being consulted – and sometimes not consulted – in decisions that affect them. Several said it was the first time they had been fully included in regional, sector‑wide discussions rather than placed in a separate youth space.
“Today wasn’t just another event, it felt like a room full of people daring to imagine better futures for our children, and I’m grateful I got to stand in that space with all of you. I’m especially honoured to have moderated the session on Child Participation and to contribute to the dialogue on Strengthening Community-Based Alternatives to Institutional Care. Here’s to rethinking care, rewriting narratives, and building systems where every child gets to feel seen, safe, and rooted.”
Young participant at the event
“Our aim is to build stronger child protection systems for children on the streets, those affected by the climate crisis and those separated from their families, by moving away from narrow, issue‑by‑issue responses towards more holistic approaches”
Ken Onduru
“Child Frontiers VOICES is about looking ahead together as a community to the challenges children are likely to face over the next decade, including climate change and growing funding pressures for programmes that support them.”
Guy Thompstone, Director, Child Frontiers
By the end of the two days, participants had outlined a number of follow‑up actions and several informal working groups had already started to reconnect. For Child Frontiers, VOICES is both the fulfilment of a long‑held dream and the start of a new chapter in how we learn, how we debate, and how we partner to address the most pressing care and protection issues facing children today.
