A Whole Child Approach 

Speakers represented a cross-section of sectors, including nutrition, education, online safety, health, child protection, trafficking, and child labor, and leading organizations such as ChildFund International, World Vision US, International Justice Mission, Global Campaign for Education-US, Futures Without Violence, First Focus on Children, Georgetown’s Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues, and Humanity United. Together, they painted an honest picture of the ongoing, multifaceted challenges facing children in low- and middle-income countries, along with concrete solutions grounded in a whole child approach. The whole child approach is common sense: recognize the critical, interconnected needs of children and youth everywhere. By addressing education, nutrition, health, and livelihoods across all life stages and engaging families, schools, and communities as vital support systems- we can ensure children reach their full potential. Applied to U.S. foreign assistance, this means integrating programs, policies, and funding around the whole child’s life, not just one piece of it. Throughout the briefing, speakers drew on real stories of real children to make the policy case visceral and clear. Held at the height of the congressional appropriations season, the briefing underscored how little federal funding has traditionally reached programs for children and what’s at stake when that investment disappears. Speakers connected child-focused programming directly to current U.S. Government priorities: statecraft, locally-owned development, and partnership agreements. Investing in children, they argued, is not charity. It is strategy. The event was intentionally bipartisan because the well-being of the world’s children is not a partisan issue.