Save the Children Sweden’s Global Civil Society Strengthening Programme 2022-2026

This application presents Save the Children Sweden’s global Civil Society Strengthening Programme of 2022-26. The proposed programme will directly support more than 150 civil society partner organisations through four regional and seventeen country programmes, with the overall goal of contributing to a strong civil society that demands and supports the fulfilment of children’s rights – holding states to account and mobilizing and empowering children and their communities. Towards this goal, the programme will work in the four areas of 1) civil society strengthening, 2) children’s agency, 3) child rights and 4) civic space.

Save the Children is the world’s leading independent organisation for children. We work for a world in which every child attains the right to survival, protection, development and participation − a world where children’s rights are fulfilled. This can only be achieved when civil society organisations (CSOs) and children’s civic space is respected and where CSOs and children are free to hold states to account for their obligations.

Save the Children Sweden (SCS) is both a Swedish civil society organisation, working for children’s rights in the Swedish context, as well as a member of the global organisation Save the Children − through which we deliver programmes in developing countries around the world. SCS has more than 30 years of experience of supporting local civil society organisations, and our commitment to work through empowering and mutually benefitting partnerships remains strong.

Building on learning from the previous SCS global CSO programme of 2017-2021, the programme responds to the dramatic changes that have taken place on a global level in recent years and that are having a major impact on children’s lives such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the trend of closing civic space, a global backlash for respect for human rights and democracy, and the environmental crisis. These changes and challenges in context call for agility and adaptiveness to overcome the barriers for the fulfilment of children’s rights.