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Supporting Families, Strengthening Futures: International Day of Families 2026

5/15/2026

The International Day of Families invites us to reflect on the essential role families play in the well-being of children and communities. At Helping Children Worldwide, this is more than a theme. It is at the heart of our mission. We believe children thrive best in safe, loving, permanent families. And we believe that when families have the support they need, children are more likely to grow, belong, learn, heal, and flourish.

This year’s theme, “Families, Inequalities and Child Well-Being,” reminds us of something we see again and again through our work supporting local allies: inequality is not only measured in income or opportunity. It shows up in the daily lives of children and caregivers. It shows up when a parent has to choose between school fees and food. It shows up when a caregiver wants to keep a child safe at home, but cannot access healthcare, stable income, childcare, or community-based support. It shows up when a family is doing everything they can, but the pressure keeps building faster than the help arrives.

Families Are the First Place Children Belong

Family care is not just a private concern. It is a foundation for child well-being, protection, identity, belonging, and equality. Children need food, education, healthcare, and safety. They also need attachment, stability, and connection. They need people who know their story. They need relationships that are not temporary. They need to grow up with a sense of who they are and where they belong.

That is why HCW supports local leaders, social workers, child protection organizations, churches, and community-based allies who are strengthening families before separation can happen, and who reunite children back into safe, loving and permanent families when it does.

This work may look like a case manager visiting a family and helping assess what support is needed. It may look like connecting a caregiver to health services, parenting support, savings groups, school resources, or emergency assistance. It may look like helping a family develop a plan, build stability, and move toward independence. It may look like training foster parents, strengthening kinship care, supporting reunification, or helping local organizations build stronger systems for monitoring and protecting children.

This work is often quiet, unphotogenic, and complicated to understand. But it is the best way to ensure that children receive the care and support they need for the long-term, because it helps create the conditions where children can remain safely connected to the people who love them.

Supporting Local Allies Strengthens Whole Communities

HCW does not believe lasting change comes from outsiders arriving with simple answers. We believe lasting change happens through local leadership, trusted relationships, and strong community-based systems. That is why HCW supports local allies who understand the context, the families, the barriers, the strengths, and the cultural realities of care. Our role is not to replace local leadership, but to come alongside it.

We help support the infrastructure that allows good child welfare work to happen: by helping local teams develop and implement training, case management systems, family strengthening tools, monitoring and evaluation, safeguarding, technical support, and resources that help local organizations serve children and families well.

This matters because child well-being does not improve through good intentions alone. It requires skilled people. It requires strong systems. It requires consistent support. It requires communities equipped to respond before a family reaches the point of crisis. And it requires donors and partners willing to understand that the work of protecting children is bigger than meeting a child’s immediate need. It is about helping build the conditions where children can remain safely in families and families can become stronger over time.

Strengthened Families Create Stronger Futures

When we support families, we do more than meet immediate needs. We help reduce the inequalities that make children vulnerable in the first place. Why? Because a child who can stay in school has a different future. A caregiver who can access healthcare can respond before illness becomes a crisis. A family with stable income has more choices. A parent with support is less isolated. A child who remains safely connected to family and community is protected not only from material hardship, but also from the deep loss that can come with unnecessary separation.

This is why HCW’s mission is not simply to help children survive hardship. It is to support the people and systems that help children thrive. That means investing in prevention, family strengthening, social work, community care, and local leadership. It means refusing to treat family separation as an acceptable answer to poverty. It means believing that families, when supported well, can become places of safety, healing, and hope.

Celebrating Families by Supporting Them

On International Day of Families 2026, we celebrate the parents, grandparents, kinship caregivers, foster families, social workers, community leaders, churches, and local organizations working every day to help children grow up safe and loved.

We recommit ourselves to the work of strengthening the systems around families, so that fewer caregivers are forced into impossible choices and more children can remain safely connected to the people and communities who know and love them.

Because when families are supported, children are protected.

When local allies are equipped, communities are strengthened.

And when children grow up in safe, loving, permanent families, they have the chance not only to survive, but to truly thrive.

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With Deep Gratitude: Honoring Reverend Olivia Fonnie’s Service to the Child Reintegration Centre

5/13/2026

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Today, we give thanks for Reverend Olivia Fonnie and her years of faithful service as Director of the Child Reintegration Centre in Bo, Sierra Leone. Rev. Fonnie began her leadership at CRC in 2019, bringing with her deep experience in children’s ministry and Christian education. Before joining CRC, she served as Director of Christian Education and Specialized Ministry to Children for the United Methodist Church, Sierra Leone Conference, a role she had held since 2011.

During her tenure, Rev. Fonnie helped lead CRC through an important season in its history. The Centre’s work continued to grow beyond its original rescue model into a broader vision of child reintegration, family strengthening, and community-based care. CRC’s stated vision is that every child should grow up in a safe, loving, and permanent family, and its work has included education support, access to healthcare, counseling, parenting education, economic support, case management, and family strengthening services. Rev. Fonnie’s leadership has been part of that unfolding story.

And she carried it through a deeply meaningful chapter in CRC’s story. The Child Reintegration Centre was founded by Bishop John Yambasu and the United Methodist Church in Sierra Leone after the civil war, with a mission to serve children who had been orphaned, abandoned, or made vulnerable by crisis. During Rev. Fonnie’s leadership, CRC celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary and honored the many children, families, and staff who had been part of that long journey of faith, courage, and love.

As Rev. Fonnie begins her new role as Lead Pastor of Charles Davies UMC in Freetown, we send her forward with our deepest gratitude and our heartfelt prayers. May God bless her ministry with wisdom, joy, courage, and peace. May the congregation she now serves be strengthened by her leadership, encouraged by her faith, and blessed by the same compassion and steady care she has shared so generously with the Child Reintegration Centre. We pray this next chapter brings abundant fruit, renewed purpose, and every grace needed for the work ahead. May she know how deeply she is appreciated, how warmly she is celebrated, and how faithfully she is held in prayer.

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Welcoming Ganda Bassie as Deputy Director of the Child Reintegration Centre

5/8/2026

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Helping Children Worldwide is delighted to join as committed allies of UMC SLAC and the Child Reintegration Centre (CRC) to welcome Mr. Ganda Bassie as their CRC Deputy Director, marking a deeply meaningful and full-circle moment in the life of the organization.
Ganda’s story is not only one of professional growth, but one that is deeply connected to the early history of the CRC. As one of the first children welcomed into the Centre in 2000, he spent part of his childhood in residential care during a time when systems for supporting children within families and communities were still developing. His journey reflects both the realities of that period and the progress that has since been made toward promoting and strengthening family-based care.

During his time at CRC, Ganda demonstrated early leadership and a strong sense of responsibility, serving as Children’s Voice President and advocating for the well-being and representation of his peers. These early experiences helped shape his lifelong commitment to service and to improving the lives of children.

Today, he returns not as a child in care but as a leader committed to ensuring that children are supported within families and communities whenever possible. His work reflects a clear belief that children thrive best in safe, stable, and nurturing family environments, and that systems must be designed to support and strengthen those families.

Ganda holds both a Diploma and a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Development Studies. Following his university education, he founded the Child Welfare and Development Project, an initiative dedicated to supporting vulnerable children with access to education. He has also volunteered alongside mission teams at the CRC and served with the United Methodist Missions and Development Office (UMDO) as a Community Facilitator on a three-year pilot project focused on strengthening gender-based violence prevention and response in Moyamba District, working closely with the communities of Mokorewa and Foya Lappia.

His leadership extends beyond individual programs. Ganda currently serves as President of the Child Reintegration Centre Alumni Association and leads the Sierra Leone Network of Care Leavers (SLNCL). Through this work, he champions the rights and voices of care-experienced individuals, including children who have grown up in residential care or without adequate parental care. His efforts focus on strengthening family-based solutions, preventing unnecessary family separation, improving policies and services, and ensuring that children are supported to grow up in safe, loving families within their communities. He is also committed to ensuring that individuals with lived experience play a meaningful role in shaping the systems and reforms that affect their lives.

In 2025, Ganda’s leadership was recognized on a global stage when he was selected for the highly competitive Community Solutions Program, emerging as one of just 65 participants chosen from more than 12,600 applicants worldwide. As part of the program, he traveled to the United States, where he completed a three-month practicum with the Youth Advocate Program in Houston, Texas, demonstrating exceptional performance and deepening his experience in community-based approaches to child welfare.

What stands out most about Ganda is not simply his accomplishments, but the perspective he brings. He understands the CRC not only as an institution, but as part of a broader journey of transformation—from a time when residential care was more common, to a future firmly focused on strengthening families and communities.

His leadership reflects this shift. While his own life was shaped in part by time spent in care, his vision is rooted in ensuring that children today grow up in families, not institutions. As Scripture reminds us, “Freely you have received; freely give” (Matthew 10:8). Ganda lives out this calling through his unwavering commitment to improving the lives of children and families.

As Deputy Director, Ganda will play a critical role in advancing CRC’s mission to protect children, strengthen families, and promote sustainable, family-based care solutions. His appointment represents not only continuity but progress, demonstrating what is possible when families are strengthened, communities are supported, and children are able to grow up in safe and loving homes.

We are encouraged by the passion, lived experience, and servant leadership he brings to this role. His journey is a powerful reminder that the goal is not institutional care, but transformed lives and strengthened families.
Please join us in welcoming Ganda Bassie and praying for wisdom, strength, and continued impact as he steps into this important leadership role.

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Supporting Families, Strengthening Futures: International Day of Families 2026

With Deep Gratitude: Honoring Reverend Olivia Fonnie’s Service to the Child Reintegration Centre

Welcoming Ganda Bassie as Deputy Director of the Child Reintegration Centre

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Supporting Families, Strengthening Futures: International Day of Families 2026

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