Opening Doors Campaign (2013-2019)
In 2013, Anglof Regional Foundation & Humanitarian Relief Agency (ARFHRA) and Eurochild founded the Opening Doors for Europe’s Children campaign: a partnership with civil society organisations dedicated to strengthening families and ending institutional care in Europe. It achieved this by leveraging EU policy and funding and by building advocacy capacity in civil society.
Opening Doors brought together five major international organisations (Anglof Regional Foundation & Humanitarian Relief Agency (ARFHRA), Eurochild, International Foster Care Organisation, the European branch of the International Federation of Educative Communities, and SOS Children’s Villages International) and 120 organisations from 16 European countries.
Thanks to the broad local expertise gathered by the campaign, we advocated for child protection systems that strengthen families, and ensure family and community-based care for children. The campaign ran in Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Spain, and Ukraine.
In January 2020 we reported that at the end of 2019 Opening Doors came to an end. Opening Doors contributed to significant breakthroughs across a number of EU countries – particularly, the inclusion of deinstitutionalisation as one of the priorities for the use of European Structural and Investment Funds. For more information, we invite you to read the final Opening Doors for Europe’s Children report or check out the Opening Doors website (accessible until end 2021).
EU External Action
We believe the European Union also has an important role to play beyond its borders. As a key political player and major funder of international development, we call on the EU to prioritise child protection reform and the eradication of institutional care in its external action.
Transform Alliance Africa
The Alliance brings together 14 partner organisations, representing seven countries, committed to a vision of an Africa free of institutional care, where all children belong and grow up in safe and loving families. Its mission is to be the catalyst to end institutional care of children in Africa by bringing together the partners’ collective voices, knowledge, practice and experience to strengthen families. Through the Alliance, we provide support for partners to convene key stakeholders – including government agencies – in their own countries to negotiate buy-in to national deinstitutionalisation reform. Read more at this link.
