Published: 2024
Author: Drs. Kathleen Kostenly and Mike Wessells

A case study of how community-led child protection approach was scaled up in Sierra Leone.

Published: 2023
Author: Kathleen Kostelny, Ken Ondoro, and Michael Wessells

“In an era of localization of aid and calls to share more power with communities, a valuable questions to be asked include ‘How could local people scale up a child protection intervention?’ and ‘What would a scale up effort driven by local communities look like, and could it achieve positive outcomes for children?’ “

Published: 2022
Author: Jessica Dolcy and Duquesne Prophete for Christian Aid

“On Saturday 14th August 2021 a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck southwestern Haiti with devastating consequences. Christian Aid worked with local partner organisations Konbite pou Ranfose Aksyon Lakay (KORAL) and Service Jésuites aux Migrants (SJM) to implement the Haiti Earthquake Response which would test the sclr approach at scale for the first time in a complex emergency response in Haiti.”

Published: 2025
Author: Ame Atsu David, Global Fund for Children

A blog article on using a community-led approach to focus on girls in rural Sierra Leone.

Published: 2025
Author: Rinske E.C. Ellermeijer et al.

The aim of this mixed-methods study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a community-led child protection approach (Seeds) in La Guajira, Colombia.

Published: 2024
Author: Inter-Agency Initiative to Enable Community Participation in Child Protection

Fostering Community Collaboration with Panchayat: Participatory Assessment of Needs and Appetite for Change to Enable Action (PANACEA) 2023-2024. “The introduction of Mission Vatsalya 2021, the erstwhile ICPS Scheme, mandates one of the panchayats’ standing committees to act as the Child Welfare and Protection Committee, emphasizing embedding child protection within local communities. The scheme directs Panchayats to integrate children’s issues into their Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDP) and allocates 5% of untied funds for child welfare and protection. These provisions establish vital foundations for promoting child protection at the grassroots level, enabling communities to engage in interventions concerning child welfare and protection, optimize resource allocation, and integrate cultural diversity into child-centric strategies.”

Published: October 2025
Author: Mike Wessells

A Practice Brief – The era of localization presents both key challenges and opportunities in community-level child protection. This brief highlights how shifting power to communities and generating high levels of community ownership is fundamental for localizing child protection effectively and sustainably. It explores how child protection practitioners are key players in supporting a localized, evidence-based, community-led child protection approach.

Published: October 2025
Author: Mike Wessells

A Call to Action for Donors. This briefing paper outlines challenges to localizing child protection at community level in development and humanitarian work. It presents a Call to Action that emphasizes shifting more power to communities and supporting stronger community ownership through the use of community-led and -owned child protection approaches.

Published: May 2025
Author: Wessells, M., & Kostelny, K. (2025)

Summary version of a synthesis report of research from three countries around community-led child protection with actionable learning around shifting power to communities from child protection.

Published: 2015
Author: Kurt Madoerin/Kwa Wazee

An outline of the Tatu Tano programme and learning from 2015.

Published: 2020
Author: MIRE–Mecanismo Intersectorial de Respuesta a Emergencias

Ficha de situación – Chocó: Quibdó. Comunidades de Villa nueva, Wounaan Phoboor y Wounaan la Paz.

Published: 2015
Author: Kurt Madoerin. Kwa Wazee

A background document on the Tatu Tano programme in Nshamba, Tanzania, Developed and implemented by Kwa Wazee.

Published: no date
Author: War Child Colombia

Una historia de resistencia y protección Guardia Indígena. Acciones para la protección comunitaria, defensa de los derechos humanos y construcción de memoria histórica en comunidades indigenas en los departamentos de Choco y Antioquia, Colombia.

Published: 2005
Author: Glynis Clacherty and Professor David Donald

The aims of the Humuliza Project are to develop a practical instrument to enable

teachers and caregivers to support orphans psychologically and to develop the

orphans’ own capacity to cope with the loss of their caretakers.

Published: 2008
Author: Kurt Madoerin. Published by REPSSI

Several decades of experience in working with vulnerable children across the planet had resulted in Kurt coming to believe that in the face of family, community and societal disintegration, the single most important supportive “intervention” that could be offered “to”, and more importantly “with” children and youth, might be the mobilisation of children and youth into their own child-led and youth-led organisations.

Published: 2021
Author: Glynis Clacherty

Artbooks, which are a combined form of picture and story book created using mixed media, can be a simple yet powerful way of supporting children affected by war and displacement to tell their stories. They allow children to work through the creative arts, which protects them from being overwhelmed by difficult memories.

Published: 2018
Author: Jessica Kritz

A cross sector case study. Every urban slum creates challenges too complex for governments to resolve when working alone. Old Fadama, the largest slum in in Accra, Ghana, is home to over 100 000 people. Old Fadama has virtually no water or sanitation infrastructure, contributing to diminished quality of health and frequent cholera outbreaks when the nearby river floods. Our research introduces a model for cross-sector collaboration, supporting stakeholders who wanted to improve community health by installing latrines.

Published: 2018
Author: Global Communities

A cross-sector example from the humanitarian response to disaster affected populations. Global Communities partners with communities to recover after natural disasters by addressing long-term needs and rebuilding climate-resilient infrastructure. It works with communities to strengthen their environmental resilience through climate change adaptation planning and disaster risk mitigation. The approach seeks to empower communities to identify, prioritise and find solutions to their most pressing needs. Haiti, Colombia, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico.

Published: 2021
Author: The Inter-Agency Core Group CINI, Chetna Vikas, Child Resilience Alliance, Plan India, & Praxis

A short, illustrated story of a community-led initiative against school absenteeism in Khunti, Jharkhand, India.

Published: 2018
Author: Clacherty, G. published by the Interagency Learning Intitative on Community Based Child Protection, the Community Child Protection Exchange and TPO Uganda

A case study collaboration between the Interagency Learning Initiative (ILI) on community-based child protection mechanisms, the Community Child Protection Exchange, and TPO Uganda.

Published: 2018
Author: Mark Canavera et al. avec Good Shepherd International Foundation

Le but de ce document et le processus de recherche qui le sous-tend est d’articuler le modèle que les Soeurs du Bon Pasteur (GSS) ont mis en place à Kolwezi en République Démocratique du Congo (RDC). En consultant des intervenants de multiples niveaux les Soeurs du Bon Pasteur et leur personnel, les participants de leurs programmes, les membres de la communauté qui ne participent pas au programme, les partenaires gouvernementaux et non gouvernementaux et les représentants des sociétés minières, nous avons cherché à documenter ce que les Soeurs du Bon Pasteur ont réalisées à Kolwezi au cours des cinq dernières années dans le but de fournir des recommandations constructives sur l’avenir du programme, qui est actuellement en cours de révision pour une réplication possible dans les zones situées autour de Kolwezi.

Published: 2018
Author: Mark Canavera et al. with Good Shepherd International Foundation

The goal of this document – and the research process that underpins it – is to articulate the model that the Good Shepherd Sisters (GSS) have been implementing in Kolwezi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). By consulting with stakeholders from multiple levels – the Good Shepherd Sisters and their staff, participants in their programmes, community members who are not involved in the programme, government and non-government partners, and mining company representatives – we aimed to document what the Good Shepherd Sisters have been doing in Kolwezi over the past five years with an eye to provide constructive recommendations about the future of the programme, which is currently under review for possible replication in areas around Kolwezi.

Published: 2018
Author: Terre Des Hommes

A short brief on how TDH approaches working with communities and connecting formal and informal actors for child protection.

Published: 2018
Author: Written by Glynis Clacherty, edited by Lucy Hillier, with contributions from Mike Wessells. Photographs by James Clacherty.

A case study collaboration between the Interagency Learning Initiative (ILI) on community-based child protection mechanisms, the Community Child Protection Exchange, and Tanzanian Home Economics Association (TAHEA).

Published: 2018
Author: Written by Glynis Clacherty, edited by Lucy Hillier, with contributions from Mike Wessells. Photographs by James Clacherty.

A case study collaboration between the Interagency Learning Initiative (ILI) on community-based child protection mechanisms, the Community Child Protection Exchange, and Kwa Wazee, Tanzania.

Published: 2017
Author: Michael Wessells, David Lamin, Marie Manyeh, Dora King, Lindsay Stark, Sarah Lilley and Kathleen Kostelny

Chapter 5 of the publication “The Social Realities of Knowledge for Development: Sharing Lessons of Improving Development Processes with Evidence” published by the International Development Institute, 2017. Using Interagency Learning Initiative (ILI) action research in Sierra Leone, this chapter from a DfiD provides a case study on how a highly collaborative approach can enable child protection research to achieve a significant national impact. The chapter describes how the inter-agency research facilitated a community-driven approach to addressing teenage pregnancy.

Published: 2018
Author: Written by Glynis Clacherty, edited by Lucy Hillier, with contributions from Mike Wessells for the Interagency Learning Initiative (ILI)

This case study tells the story of a regional association set up by truckers to protect children, in particular to stop truck drivers from picking up girls under 18 in the towns along the Uganda section of the Kampala-Mombasa trucking route. It tells the story of some of the truckers who took a stand against sexual exploitation of under-age girls as individuals and how they approached the Uganda Reproductive Health Bureau (URHB) to help them with technical information.

Published: 2018
Author: Written by Glynis Clacherty, edited by Lucy Hillier, with contributions from Mike Wessells for the Interagency Learning Initiative (ILI)

This case study tells the story of a child protection programme developed by a community-based organisation called Children of the World that works in villages in northern Uganda. The Children of the World programme was chosen for this set of case studies because of its focus on the importance of a personal psychological process for real sustainable child protection.

Published: 2017
Author: The Fifth Barefoot Guide Writer’s Collective

Many organisations, large and small, are tackling the deep challenges of exclusion and coming up with creative, innovative and workable solutions that are putting into practice the policies and strategies that everyone is talking about. This Barefoot Guide, written by 34 practitioners from 16 different countries on all continents makes many of these successful approaches and solutions more visible.

Published: 2006
Author: Jill Donahue and Louis Mwewa

Case studies of mobilisation and capacity building to benefit vulnerable children in Malawi and Zambia.

Published: 2017
Author: Plan International

A case study which describes the community-based child protection programme implemented between 2015 and 2016 with Burundian girls, boys and adults in Mahama refugee camp in Rwanda.

Published: 2016
Author: International Institute for Child Rights and Development (IICRD), Dr. Philip Cook, Michele Cook, Natasha Blanchet Cohen, Armel Oguniyi & Jean Sewanou

A final report on action research which looked at how communities can help drive monitoring, planning and action around social cohesion strengthening and child protection in Chad and Burundi.

Published: 2016
Author: Patrick Onyango

A presentation on girl mothers in armed forces and groups and their children in Northern Uganda, Liberia and Sierra Leone – Participatory Action Research to assess and improve their situations.

Published: 2016
Author: Eddy Walakira

This presentation looks at the results of a War Child Holland initiative in Northern Uganda around prevention of violence against children in a post war setting.

Published: 2014
Author: Mike Wessells, David Lamin, & Marie Manyeh

An overview of the Interagency Learning Initiative process of supporting community-driven action that addresses needs of vulnerable children in Bombali and Moyamba Districts of Sierra Leone.

Published: 2012
Author: Inter-Agency Learning Initiative on Community-Based Child Protection Mechanisms and Child Protection Systems

This document serves as a seven-page summary of the longer report included among these research documents, “An Ethnographic Study of Community-Based Child Protection Mechanisms and their Linkages with the National Child Protection System of Sierra Leone.”

Published: 2011
Author: Kwa Wazee

A 2011 evaluation of the Kwa Wazee girl’s self-defence training initiative in Nshamba, Tanzania.

Published: 2010
Author: Alyson Eynon and Sarah Lilley for Save the Children UK on behalf of the Child Protection Working Group of the UN Protection Cluster

This discussion paper uses three case studies – Myanmar, the occupied Palestinian territories, and Timor Leste – to examine the state of evidence about strengthening national child protection systems through community-based mechanisms during emergencies.

Published: 2009
Author: Mike Wessells, lead consultant, on behalf of an Inter-Agency Working Group

This 20-page executive summary presents an overview of the key findings from a 2009 inter-agency review of the evidence on community-based child protection mechanisms. The full report is also available in this research section.

Published: 2008
Author: Sarah Lilley for Save the Children UK

This 2008 discussion paper shares Save the Children’s experience in working with community-based groups; the paper is an effort to stimulate dialogue by highlighting the successes and challenges of such work.