We celebrated The Day of The African Child!
Ever wondered what it’s like growing up in Africa?! 🌍
We celebrated the International Day of the African Child. 👧🏾👦🏾
So, Isabel, (our HR & Admin Officer) and I (Sam, Comms Officer) thought we’d share one cool thing about growing up in Africa. 😎
Despite the numerous tribes and cultures, we’re all united by a powerful philosophy known as “Ubuntu” in Ndebele, “Hunhu” in Shona, and “Botho” in Tswana/Sotho. 💪
It means “I AM because YOU ARE,” affirming our shared humanity and dignity.
✨ Growing up in Africa means your mother’s friends are automatically considered your own mothers, fostering a deep sense of belonging and togetherness!
(An important aspect of children thriving that you might recognise from SFAC’s tagline: safe, belong, thrive)
We are raised by the whole community!
Hence the saying ‘It takes a village to raise a child!’ 😃
A cycling challenge that helped children in Kenya 🇰🇪
They did it! 🏁 🚴 300 miles between them and a total of £2,629 raised! 🥳
A HUGE THANK YOU to Matt, Mark and Andy who all rode 100 miles in the #FordRideLondon last May to raise money for SFAC. Were you one of their supporters?! If so a big thank you to you, too! 👏
You can still support them by donating here.
So how will the money raised change the lives of children in Kenya? 🇰🇪
It will fund some of the SFAC team to work with a small Kenyan charity on two things:
1️⃣ improve the way they work with children in crisis and
2️⃣ to help them develop programmes that reunite children with their families safely and appropriately (which can be known as reunification) or, where that’s not possible, find safe carers to provide them with an alternative family.
❓Why?
Because we know children have the best chance to thrive when they grow up in a safe family!
🚴🏾♀️ Does a 100 mile cycling challenge that also creates necessary change for children, sounds like your kind of thing?!
📧 Drop us an email at info@sfac.org.uk or send us a message – we have three places available in the 2025 Ford Ride London.
Thank you Sarah! 💛
A big thank you to our outgoing trustee, Sarah! 💛
🌟 As a Senior Manager at Deloitte, specialising in change and transformation, Sarah was part of the SFAC team as Vice Chair of Trustees assisting in our Comms.
🗝️ She regularly reminded us that you, our wonderful supporters, don’t always hear about the impact of our work beyond the training and mentoring sessions. It’s Sarah’s encouragement that has us working hard to revisit the work we’ve done and share its impact with you!
Thank you once again, Sarah, may you continue to thrive in your endeavours. 👏👏🏾👏🏻
⏪ Down memory lane
Mick got to travel back in time! 🕰️
SFAC’s founder, Mick has worked with child care and protection organisations in around 30 countries across five continents. 🌍
There was a time in his journey when he felt lonely and terrified.
Feeling far from lonely and terrified, Mick recently had the joy of meeting with people from many of the organisations SFAC has collaborated with since 2002 at the third World Without Orphans (WWO) conference in Thailand.
He was kept busy speaking with people involved in child care and protection from all over the world. Whether he was catching up with old friends or making new ones, they were all dreaming and scheming about how they could improve the lives of children everywhere.
🔑 Read more about his adventures in Thailand in our recent blog post.
⏪ A throwback!
What can we do to help more children thrive?! 🌱✨
By working together to turn good intentions into good practice so more children can be and feel safe!
⏪ Let’s rewind back to 2007, when Children in Families (CIF), Cambodia were thinking about a foster care programme. They had heard about the work our founder, Mick, was doing with SFAC so they reached out for help.
Over 7 years Mick travelled to Cambodia on six occasions to train CIF workers and help raise awareness for the need for children to be in families, not orphanages.
SFAC assisted by providing training in the following areas:
🔵 Foster Care
🟢 Comprehensive Family Assessments
🔵 Child Protection
In addition to the training, SFAC paid for two social workers to work with CIF for three years to help set up the foster care programme and ensure the children received the best possible care.
(NOTE: SFAC no longer provides this kind of funding support to other organisations’ programmes, focusing instead on training and consultation.)
🌟 Earlier this year, Mick caught up with some of the CIF team leaders at the World Without Orphans conference in Thailand. The team assured him that the foster care programme is still running successfully after all these years
Not only that, but they now also run Emergency Care and Kinship Care and programmes for children with disabilities and chronic illness alongside their community outreach programmes. 👏🏾
Recently, a book was released about CIF’s work – Where They Belong by Erin Foley – which goes into detail about the impact of SFAC’s involvement.
🗝️ You can read more about the power of organisations working together to improve child care practices in the world in our blog here: https://sfac.org.uk/thailand-wwo
We achieved more with less! 😎
Ever wondered how you would spend £101,000?! 💸
Go on a dream holiday? Pay off your mortgage?
Well at SFAC we can answer that because we already spent ours! 😄
Here’s a hint: We spent £101,000 working with 33 organisations across 16 countries so more children can thrive. 👏
Curious to know more about our work with some of the 33 organisations? 🤔
Read more about how your donor dollars, pounds & pennies made a difference here!
Remember Dan & Mick’s loooong trip to Indonesia from our last News in Brief?! ✈️🇮🇩
Well, here’s how it all went down:
Dan and Mick were set to check in at Manchester Airport on a Friday but their flight was delayed. 🤦🏾♀️
They were headed to Dubai for their transit flight to Jarkata, Indonesia but because of floods in Dubai, they had to stay at Manchester and check in 24 hours later (without any guarantees 😂)
Finally, they took off on a Saturday, and arrived in Jarakta 31 hours later!
The road trip from Jarkata to Bandung was supposed to take 3 hours max.
But took them more than 5 hours because the taxi was also a courier dropping off parcels along the way! 😂
At last, Dan & Mick arrived at their hotel at midnight and had to be up at 6 am for breakfast and preparations before an 8.30 start.
There was definitely not enough time for the two to rest after the long journey. 😴
Caitlin’s been diving in deep! 😃
With lots of exciting Protective Behaviours (PBs) projects underway this year, Caitlin, our therapeutic trainer has been diving deep into research.
Her research shows why the 2 themes, 2 concepts and 7 strategies of the PBs framework are such valuable tools in increasing our capacity to care – for ourselves, others and the world. 🌏
Her desk has been a little messy lately and she may have more tabs open than any computer can handle! 💻
Shop online and instantly raise money for SFAC without paying extra!
Do you shop online? 🛒 Or Live in the UK? 🇬🇧
If you answered YES to the above, your online shopping could be raising money for SFAC. And it won’t cost you a penny! 💷
Our wonderful little band of 11 easyfundraisers have already raised £448. 👏
Just by doing their usual online shopping! 🛍️
Imagine what 50 SFAC easyfundraisers could do?!
When you sign up to easyfundraising, you can shop with over 7,000 brands and they’ll donate a percentage of your purchase to SFAC! 😃
It’s simple and only takes 2 minutes for you to sign up:
https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/sfaccharity
✨ It won’t cost you any extra, so why not sign up, and enjoy your shopping whilst raising funds for SFAC!