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Welcoming David Titus Musa as Director of the Child Reintegration Centre

4/30/2026

Helping Children Worldwide is pleased to congratulate David Titus Musa as he takes up the mantle of leadership as Director of the Child Reintegration Centre on May 1, 2026.

We also want to take a moment to thank Rev. Olivia Fonnie for her years of service at the helm of CRC. We are grateful for the leadership she has offered in a significant season of CRC’s history, and we wish her all the best as she steps into her new role leading Charles Davis UMC in Freetown. Transitions like this mark both an ending and a beginning, and we honor the work that has brought CRC to this point.

This is an important moment for CRC. Leadership matters in any organization, but it matters especially in child welfare services, where the stakes are high and the work demands both courage and care. As Bishop Boye-Caulker has emphasized, the UMC in Sierra Leone is not only continuing its work on behalf of children and families during 2026, but stepping more fully into national and global conversations about care reform under the leadership of someone already recognized as a strong voice in that space.

David comes into this role with more than a decade of progressive experience in child protection, reintegration, program management, training, monitoring and evaluation, and partnership engagement. His work has consistently focused on advancing safer, stronger, family-based solutions for children, reflecting the kind of practical, field-tested leadership this season requires. He recently completed a Master of Public Administration and a Post Graduate Certificate in Care Transition Acceleration through the Christian Alliance for Orphans Care Transition Accelerator Academy. His training in child protection and safeguarding, case management, emergency foster care, and transition frameworks demonstrates a clear commitment to continued growth.

Because of his long role welcoming mission allies and taking on leadership roles and planning the future of the CRC, David understands both the day-to-day realities on the ground and the broader vision needed to lead the Child Reintegration Centre into the future of national and global care reform. Over many years at CRC, he has served in key roles, including Co-leader to manage programs in the absence of the CRC Director, the Child Support Program Manager and, more recently, Senior Reintegration Consultant in the Transition Coaching and Mentoring Department. In these positions, he has developed operational tools and case management systems, established SOPs aligned with international child-rights frameworks, trained social workers and frontline staff, coached and mentored institutions in safe reintegration planning, and worked alongside government ministries to strengthen national care reform efforts.

He also brings credibility beyond CRC itself. David has represented CRC in the Sierra Leone Coalition for Family Care, engaging government ministries at regional and national levels as well as international partners, including the UK High Commission and Irish Embassy. He is connected to broader networks shaping care reform through both the 1MILLIONHOME and Rising Tides communities of practice, the Christian Alliance for Orphans, the Better Care Network, and Transform Alliance Africa. He has contributed to key global conversations through presentations at the CAFO Summit in 2024 and 2025, work on issues related to orphan trafficking with World Hope International, and co-hosting an international convening of care reform experts at the 2025 Helping Children Worldwide Rising Tides conference. He also serves as the featured lead in the forthcoming documentary Firmly Rooted.

If you have traveled to Sierra Leone to the CRC, you will recognize David Musa and the impact of his quiet and thoughtful leadership over the years. What encourages us most is not simply the breadth of David’s experience, but the kind of leader it reflects. His work demonstrates a consistent pattern of strengthening systems, building capacity, and supporting institutions as they move from outdated models toward more effective, family-based approaches. He operates at the intersection of policy and practice; training teams, improving documentation, and helping create the pathways that make sustainable care reform possible.

We are grateful for David’s willingness to lead in this season and encouraged by the expertise and respected voice he brings to CRC. We look ahead with confidence that, under his leadership, CRC will continue to grow as an organization committed to protecting children, strengthening families, and advancing thoughtful, locally grounded care reform in Sierra Leone, while contributing to the broader national and global movement for change.

Please join us in congratulating David Titus Musa and praying for wisdom, strength, and steady leadership as he begins this new chapter.

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Radical Courage Looks Like Telling the Truth About What Really Helps Children

4/22/2026

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At Helping Children Worldwide, we have been learning an important lesson over many years of walking alongside children and families: the things that make donors feel most connected are not always the things that help families heal and grow strongest. That is not easy to admit.

Traditional child sponsorship has long been one of the most familiar and emotionally compelling ways for people to support children. It offers a simple, personal connection. A donor sees a child, learns a name, gives faithfully, and feels linked to that child’s future. For many people, it has been a meaningful expression of compassion and commitment.

But as HCW has grown in our understanding of child welfare, family strengthening, and what it really takes to help children thrive, we have also had to face a harder truth: the most effective help is not usually delivered through a long-term financial relationship between one donor and one child. Real, lasting change rarely happens because a child remains tied to outside support year after year after year. Real change happens when families are strengthened, risks are reduced, protective adults are equipped, and skilled professionals walk with families toward stability, healing, and independence.

That is why HCW has been courageously pivoting away from a traditional sponsorship model and toward a Family Empowerment Advocacy approach. This shift is not cosmetic. It is not a rebrand of the same old idea. It is a deeper alignment between what we know and how we invite donors to participate.

And now, HCW is continuing to refine that model even further. Rather than linking dedicated Advocate donors to an individual child, we are moving toward linking Advocates to the work of skilled social workers and case managers who are directly serving children and families. We believe this is the most appropriate, honest, and child-centered way to connect dedicated donor support to the kind of work that truly changes lives.

Why?

Because children do not thrive in isolation. Children thrive in families that are growing stronger, safer, and more capable of caring for them well. A child’s needs are rarely just about school fees, uniforms, food, or one visible material gap. Those needs are often connected to a much larger picture: family stress, poverty, trauma, illness, unstable caregiving, lack of income, unresolved conflict, grief, weak support systems, or child protection concerns. Meeting one material need can be helpful. But meeting one material need is not the same thing as strengthening a family.

That is where skilled social work is critical.

A trained local case manager does much more than identify a need and help fill it. A good case manager learns the full story of a child and family. They assess risk. They listen. They identify strengths. They help families make plans. They connect them to resources. They walk with them through setbacks. They monitor safety. They support reunification where appropriate. They help families build capacity over time so that the goal is not endless dependence, but increasing stability moving toward independence. In other words, case managers do the work that actually helps children and families move forward.

That is why HCW believes our Advocate donors deserve to be connected not to a simplified sponsorship story, but to the truth. Advocates deserve to know that helping a child well often looks less like paying the same school bill every year and more like supporting the skilled local professional who is helping a family solve the deeper issues that put that child at risk in the first place. They deserve a window into the real work of care: the wisdom, persistence, and dedication of local case managers who are serving children and families every day.

They deserve to see the kind of support that protects family dignity instead of quietly undermining it. Traditional sponsorship models can unintentionally keep the focus too narrow. They can train everyone involved to think in terms of maintaining support to one child rather than strengthening the whole family system around that child. They can also create a pattern where support must remain visible and ongoing in order for the relationship to continue. Over time, that can make dependency feel normal. It can make it harder to celebrate when a family grows stronger and needs less outside help. And it can place subtle pressure on programs to preserve the sponsorship connection rather than help a family build toward independence.

That is not what HCW wants for children and families. We want children to grow up in families that are able to care for them. We want caregivers to gain strength, stability, and confidence. We want support to be meaningful, targeted, and responsive to what is actually needed. We want local professionals to have the tools and backing they need to do their work well. And we want families, over time, to need less outside intervention because they are standing stronger on their own.

That is the heart of Family Empowerment Advocacy.

It is a model that honors donors by inviting them into something more truthful and more transformational. It says: your generosity matters deeply, and here is how it can matter in the way that is best for children. It says: your role is not to sustain dependency, but to help make stability possible. It says: the real heroes of this story are not distant sponsors, but children, families, and the skilled local professionals who walk with them toward healing and strength.

This is where HCW’s value of radical courage becomes so important. It takes courage to move away from a model that is familiar, marketable, and emotionally satisfying. It takes courage to tell supporters that what feels personal is not always what is most helpful. It takes courage to redesign donor engagement around what truly serves the best interests of children and families rather than around what has traditionally been easiest to explain. And it takes courage to trust that donors can handle the truth. At HCW, we believe our Advocate donors are capable of more than sentimental connection. We believe they want to invest in what truly works. We believe they can appreciate the professionalism of local case managers, the complexity of family strengthening, and the dignity of a model that does not keep a child’s hardship on display year after year to sustain support. Most of all, we believe children and families deserve that honesty from us.

If our goal is not just to relieve hardship for a moment but to help families become stronger, safer, and more self-sustaining, then our funding model should reflect that goal. Our donor engagement should reflect that goal. Our storytelling should reflect that goal.

That is what HCW is choosing. Not because it is easier, but because it is truer.

And because radical courage means being willing to leave behind what is familiar in order to build something more faithful, more dignifying, and more aligned with what actually helps children and families thrive. HCW’s Family Empowerment Advocacy model is an invitation to do just that. It is an invitation to support the work that really changes lives. It is an invitation to honor families by preserving their dignity. It is an invitation to stand behind local skilled professionals whose casework helps children not only meet today’s needs, but move toward a stronger tomorrow. And it is an invitation to believe that the best support is not support that lasts forever, but support that helps a family one day no longer need it at all.

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Children Are Safer in Families: Why Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Must Include Family Care

4/17/2026

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On a day when we pause to reflect on the prevention of child sexual abuse, healing for survivors, and the pursuit of justice, we need to be willing to tell the truth about risk.

Children who are separated from family care are often placed in circumstances that make them more vulnerable, not less. When children are disconnected from the daily protection of safe, loving family relationships, they can become more exposed to exploitation, abuse, neglect, and systems that are harder to monitor and easier for offenders to manipulate. That is one reason Helping Children Worldwide believes so deeply in family care, family strengthening, and the careful, professional work of preventing unnecessary separation whenever possible.

This is not a sentimental claim. It is a child protection claim.

UNICEF states clearly that children who are deprived of parental care and isolated from family and community are at greater risk of violence, abuse, and neglect. It also notes that the harmful effects of family separation and inappropriate alternative care are well documented.

That does not mean every family home is safe. Some children face real danger in their families, and protecting them may require removal. Child safety must always come first. But in general, the evidence points in the same direction: children do best, and are usually safer, in safe family care than in residential institutions or other forms of impersonal group care.

Residential care settings can create the very conditions in which abuse thrives. Children in institutions are often more isolated from the broader community, more dependent on adults who control access to food, movement, affection, and information, and less likely to have a consistent protective adult whose first loyalty is to them. UNICEF has warned that children in institutions are vulnerable to violence, neglect, and abuse, and has repeatedly called for stronger investment in family-based alternatives.

Research on child sexual abuse in institutional contexts adds to that concern. The UK Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse has identified common dynamics in institutional abuse, including power imbalances, grooming, isolation, dependency, and institutional tendencies toward denial or concealment. In other words, the problem is not only the offender. Sometimes the setting itself helps hide the harm.

Reviews of out-of-home care have also found troubling rates of abuse. Literature examining residential and congregate care has reported higher levels of sexual abuse and other maltreatment than in family-based settings, with residential environments often carrying particular risk.

Why are families so important to prevention?

Because prevention is not only about screening bad actors. It is also about making sure children are surrounded by protective relationships. A safe, engaged caregiver is often the first person to notice a child’s fear, behavioral change, withdrawal, or signs of grooming. A child who has secure attachment to a trusted adult is more likely to disclose harm. A family that is supported rather than fractured is better able to protect.

That is why child sexual abuse prevention and family care reform belong in the same conversation.

If we are serious about prevention, we have to be serious about reducing unnecessary family-child separation. We have to strengthen families under stress. We have to invest in social workers, case management, kinship care, foster care, trauma-informed support, and community-based protection systems. We have to stop treating institutional placement as a protective default when, too often, it introduces a new set of dangers.

For the global child welfare sector, this matters deeply. Children do not become safer simply because they are removed from poverty, placed in a building, or absorbed into a program. Safety is not created by distance from family alone. Safety is created by stable, loving, accountable relationships and by systems that know how to protect children well.

That is why HCW continues to advocate for family-based care. Not because families are perfect. Not because reunification is simple. Not because every child can safely remain at home without support. But because, in general, children are safer when they are known, loved, and protected in families — and because the alternatives too often carry risks of their own that the child welfare world can no longer ignore.

If we want prevention, healing, and justice, then we must build child protection systems that do more than respond after harm is done. We must build systems that reduce children’s exposure to harm in the first place.

And that means keeping children in safe families whenever possible, and moving heaven and earth to help make those families strong enough to care well.

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