Introducing the Technical Hubs Initiative! Local expertise, stronger Child Protection.

The Alliance is pleased to launch its new Technical Hubs Initiative, a pilot designed to strengthen, connect, and make more visible the child protection technical expertise that already exists among national and local actors.

Significant technical knowledge and experience sits within national and local organisations working directly in humanitarian contexts. However, technical support has historically often been routed through global mechanisms, limiting opportunities to fully recognise, share, and draw upon this expertise.

The Technical Hubs Initiative aims to help shift this approach by establishing country-level technical hubs hosted by local organisations. Through these hubs, the initiative will strengthen country-level child protection technical capacity through peer support and knowledge sharing, provide first-line technical guidance to national and local actors, and support the contextualisation of global guidance so that it can be effectively applied in practice.

Piloting Technical Hubs in Six Countries: 

The six-month pilot is taking place in… 
🇧🇩 Bangladesh: Association for Community Development (ACD)
🇨🇲 Cameroon: Cameroon Development and Education Foundation (CADEF) 
🇨🇴 Colombia: Red PaPaz
🇮🇶 Iraq: Kurdistan Save the Children
🇱🇧 Lebanon: Mouvement Social
🇳🇬 Nigeria: Rise to Inspire Africa Initiative

Technical Focal Points within each hub will help connect practitioners with child protection in humanitarian action technical knowledge, resources, and support while identifying opportunities to strengthen collaboration and learning within their contexts. The pilot will also provide an important opportunity for the Alliance and participating organisations to learn together about how locally rooted technical expertise can be better recognised, connected, and resourced.

Bringing the Technical Hubs Together in Nairobi: 

At the end of July, the Alliance brought together 11 child protection practitioners from the six Technical Hubs for their first face-to-face workshop in Nairobi.

Over three days, participants strengthened their shared understanding of the Alliance, the Technical Hubs Initiative, and the CPMS. They exchanged experiences across countries, identified organisational capacities and learning needs, explored how the CPMS can be applied within their own operational realities, and developed action plans to guide the next stages of the pilot.

The workshop was also an opportunity to hear directly from the Technical Hub Focal Points about what the initiative means for their organisations and reflect on lessons learned from the workshop.

🎥 Watch the video below to hear directly from some of our Technical Hub Focal Points.

The workshop in Nairobi marked the beginning of a wider process of collaboration, peer learning, and locally led technical support across the six hubs. Over the coming months, the Alliance looks forward to learning alongside the participating organisations and sharing insights from the pilot as we explore new ways to strengthen locally led technical capacity for child protection in humanitarian action.