Global Network Online Forum - Feb 2025
Dear all,
Thanks to everyone who came along to last week's Global Network Online Forum. It was good to see so many of you together for the first time since December.
During the meeting, we focussed on impact, asking the questions: “What do we mean by ‘impact’?”, “What does ‘impact’ mean for your network?”, and “What is the main impact that you plan to achieve in 2025?”
Here are a selection of responses to the latter two questions:
What does ‘impact’ mean for your network?
“An intended goal that we want to achieve and something we want to work towards to in a particular year” (SCAR, Zambia)
“It’s all about the transformed lives of children after a network intervention or any activities in the community. We want to see transformed long-term change in their lives.” (CarNet, Nepal)
“Keeping children safe in their community and country – to continue perusing a relationship with the government and partners to bridge the gap between beneficiaries and government” and “Children get access to quality care and education, girls are able to reach their God given potential, children are safe and happy” (CRANE, Uganda)
“How we change or influence the lives of children so that they are aware of abuse” (Johar Children at Risk Network, Ranchi, India)
“Children have a sense of identity and can access their rights to health and education through birth registration” (VNZ, Zimbabwe)
“A reduction in violence against children and teenagers in families” (Rede Viva Protege Brasil)
What impact do you plan to achieve in 2025?
Mobilizing Churches and Schools: engage and onboard 100 churches as members of SCAR, fostering active participation and alignment with our vision and mission. Community Participation and Shared Vision: actively engage communities, ensuring they understand and resonate with SCAR's vision, mission, and shared goals. (SCAR, Zambia)
Creating Safe and Thriving Environments for Children: for children to feel safe and flourish within the communities we serve. Building Awareness and Familiarity with MCAN's Work: for church members to become well-acquainted with the initiatives and impact of MCAN. (MCAN, Tanzania)
Make sure organisations are known for keeping children safe - train schools in child protection, encourage foster care and adaptions in churches, CAIs to transition children to families, sage spaces for children (CRANE, Uganda)
Unifying churches, safe spaces for children, children's voices heard (T4C Kisumu, Kenya)
More awareness among network members - the willingness to work with others. To see the beauty of sharing and working in unity. See churches prioritising children and child participation (CarNet, Nepal)
Deinstitutionalization of childhood with the central government. Continue generating transformation in relation to protection through local governments.
Viva sports program. Anticorruption program in alliance with government (Ministerio Cristiano Red Viva Honduras)
Change children’s lives by training them about their rights but most important their value in Jesus (Red Viva de El Salvador)
Keep working with learning spaces even for the children don’t come to church. Training people about human trafficking and how to prevent it (Red Viva Argentina)
We then went on to look at a definition of impact for Viva and the partner networks, and thought about why and how we measure impact, and what exactly we are trying to measure. We had a short time in a second breakout room to think about this question with reference to specific programmes such as the Good Treatment Campaign, CAFIs / Learning Spaces and QIS.
Please click on the links below to find the slides that Andrew shared during the meeting in English, Spanish and Portuguese:
GNOF Feb25 Impact - Portuguese
We do hope that this was a helpful introduction to the topic of impact measurement. We will come back to this subject later in the year, and would like to hear from you about which areas of impact measurement you would be interested in discussing in more detail. If you did not get a chance to complete the feedback form at the end of the meeting, the link to that form is here.
Thank you so much for your participation in these forums. We look forward to seeing you at the next forum which will take place on Wednesday 12th March.
The meeting recording is here.
Thank you so much for your participation in these forums. We look forward to seeing you at the next forum which will take place on Wednesday, 12th March.