Celebrating World Children’s Day

Each year, the U.S. government provides services to tens of millions of children and their parents and caregivers around the world, including child development support, psychosocial support, training on positive parenting practices, and family tracing and reunification for unaccompanied and separated children.?

The challenges to meeting the most basic needs of children around the world and their caregivers are great—but so too are the benefits.?

Extensive research shows that early childhood investments not only improve outcomes for children, particularly those from marginalized and underserved communities, but also can deliver a potential 13% return on investment annually through childhood and adulthood.

For World Children’s Day, we spoke with U.S. Government Special Advisor on Children in Adversity Rebecca Levy, who oversees the government’s Strategy for Advancing Protection and Care for Children in Adversity (APCCA), about her experience and priorities in addressing the complex challenges facing children.

Q: What drew you to focus so much of your career on children’s issues??

RL: It was a bit by chance that I got assigned to the child protection team when I was an intern for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) where I? had the opportunity to work in two different refugee camps in Ghana. We did some work around family tracing and reunification of minors who had been separated from their families, and it was a very eye-opening first experience for me to witness firsthand the dangers and risks to children when they don't have the protective care of families, and how important that protective care is to support children and their resilience in the face of a lot of challenges.?

Q: Can you point to one project where you directly saw the positive impacts on an individual or group?

RL:? Just last year I traveled with USAID to Kenya and we had the opportunity to visit some of the communities that Changing the Way We Care, our initiative that supports care reform and family care for all children, was working with. There, we met with a family that had a child with a disability who had been institutionalized. With support from the project, this child was able to be reunified with their family. Hearing from the family and the caregivers was very moving. Once the family had the support they needed to be able to care for the child with a disability, they were so happy to have their child back with them. They just didn't know how to access the kind of support they needed.

We know that children with disabilities are at particular risk of family separation, and that is one reason why we have such a focus on disability inclusion, and engaging persons with disabilities in our work.??

Q: You are currently overseeing an update to the APCCA strategy. Can you outline some priorities you would like to be addressed in the update?

RL: One example that comes to mind is the impact of climate change on children specifically, and making sure also in our adaptation work that we're considering the needs of children. Climate-induced disasters, children on the move, and children impacted by conflict and crisis are a huge concern for us. Our child protection colleagues in the Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs are doing incredible work trying to meet this need, and we want to focus on better leveraging those humanitarian investments to lay the groundwork for the longer-term systems and services that families need.?

Q: What do you see as one of the implementation challenges facing the APCCA team today?

RL: We are increasingly focused on elevating the voices and agency of children and youth in our work, which is really important. It needs to be done in an age-appropriate way, but there are many ways to make sure that the wishes and needs of children, as they articulate them, are taken into account. I think we're doing that more than we were, but there's room to grow in that space and it will only make the work that we do stronger and better.

Q: What is the most fulfilling aspect of the work you do on a day-to-day-basis?

RL: ?Sometimes, working in a large bureaucratic organization like USAID, you can feel a bit removed from the grassroots work. But we are partnering with incredible champions and service providers at the local level to ensure that children and their parents and caregivers are getting the support they need. Being able to support and amplify their work really does feel worth it.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:??This blog was put together by Suzie Galler, the Senior Strategic Communications Advisor for USAID's Children in Adversity team.