ChildsLife partners with local communities to develop practical solutions to improve the lives of needy children around the world. For more than 10 years, ChildsLife has helped thousands of children struggling against poverty, illness, homelessness and other obstacles that they face.
- Many children live their lives on garbage piles
ChildsLife works in some of the world’s poorest communities, collaborating with local organizations, institutions and other non-profits. Together we design programs tailored to the specific needs of children and their communities. By building schools, distributing food and medical supplies, paying teacher’s salaries, or reuniting families, ChildsLife is working to ensure children have the resources they need for a happy and healthy childhood.
How we work
ChildsLife works hand-in-hand with local governments and other partners to design programs tailored to the specific needs of children and their communities. By helping them with education and food for children, we fight poverty, hunger, diseases and illiteracy.
- Education helps breaking the poverty chain
ChildsLife has staff located in some of the world’s poorest regions. We work alongside needy children and their families. Through interaction with local organizations and area leaders, ChildsLife is able to help them design and implement their programs targeting the specific needs of these communities. We provide direct assistance such as food, medical supplies and clothing. But we also help them harness their own resources so they can improve children’s lives through educational programs, parental training and improved infrastructure. We believe the best thing for children are strong and supportive families and communities.
- ChildsLife was founded in February 1996
- ChildsLife reaches 16,000 children every month
- ChildsLife has helped children in 30 countries on four continents
- Since 1996, ChildsLife has delivered more than 400 truck and ship loads of food, medicine and other goods to communities around the world
- Each year, ChildsLife ships almost $3 million worth of goods to communities worldwide
- Along with distributing life-saving supplies, ChildsLife pays for teachers salaries, funds micro-loans and sponsors job and life training programs for youths and adults
- More than 1,500 children in Kenya attend schools supported by ChildsLife
- UNICEF, World Food Programme, the Red Cross, the U.S. Army and other international organizations have all partnered with ChildsLife over the years to help children in need
- ChildsLife has, since 1996, mobilized more than $45 million in public and private funding to improve the lives of children around the world.
1996
ChildsLife is founded in the Netherlands
1997
ChildsLife makes its first shipment of goods to needy families, delivering potatoes to impoverished communities in Romania
1998
ChildsLife expands its work into Bosnia, Kosovo, Uganda, Angola, Guatemala and Kenya. In the Kenyan slum of Kibera, ChildsLife launches a micro-enterprise loan program to help local women start their own businesses. In Nairobi, ChildsLife starts supporting the Stara School to provide education, food and care to children whose parents have died of AIDS. Partnering with Rotary, ChildsLife implements its first sustainable development project in Kenya with the installation of an irrigation system at Mully’s Children’s Family Home, a local organization that provides schooling and shelter to street children
1999
ChildsLife again expands its work to projects in a total of 11 countries
2000
Wife of former Netherlands Prime Minister Wim Kok visits ChildsLife supported Street Children’s Centre in Romania, praising it for its “outstanding work to improve the lives of some of the world’s most needy children”
Through a new partnership with the U.S. Army, ChidsLife begins delivering used and surplus furniture to needy children and their communities around the world
2001
ChildsLife starts supporting a Social Integration program in Romania, helping children raised in government orphanages to learn job and life skills
The Esilanka Maasai program is launched in Kenya, proving funding for food, school materials and teachers salaries
2002
ChildsLife partners with UNICEF to help remove children from government-run orphanages in Romania and place them into foster homes
ChildsLife begins partnership with the Yatta Street Girl Center in Kenya which helps homeless girls escape a life of prostitution, abuse and forced labour
2003
As thousands flee the war in Iraq, ChildsLife provides food and other assistance for refugees crossing the border into Jordan
The Stara School in Nairobi, now with a student population of 186, launches its new meal program providing two meals a day to every student
2004
With its support to local organizations in Surinam and the Republic of Moldova, ChildsLife is now working to assist children in a total of 16 countries. In Moldova, ChildsLife delivers food and beds to 13,000 children living in government institutions
ChildsLife partners with the Red Cross in Romania to provide emergency relief to communities struck by massive flooding
With assistance from the Global Relief Fund in Canada, ChildsLife distributes seeds to 300 family farms in Iraq
ChildsLife launches adult education programs in Maasai communities in Kenya
2005
In Nairobi, Kenya, ChildsLife opens its second aid program for mothers who are HIV positive. Enrolment at the Stara School reaches 440 students
2006
ChildsLife delivers its 400th transport of supplies to needy communities, including 56,000 packages of feminine hygiene products to the Yatta School Center in Kenya
ChildsLife provides assistance to a local school in Tanzania and starts supporting The Hope House Babies Home in Nairobi, Kenya
ChildsLife celebrates its 10th Anniversary. In these 10 years, ChildsLife has
delivered more than 400 truck and ship loads of food, medicine and other goods to communities around the world and has mobilized more than $45 million in public and private funding to improve the lives of children around the world
2007
In Kenya, ChildsLife begins constructing a new kindergarten and vocational school in the slum of Kibera, and a new secondary school in the Maasai region south of Nairobi.
