Save the Children partners meet to reflect and strengthen collaborations

Save the Children is facilitating an annual meeting of national humanitarian partners to strengthen the delivery of sustainable programmes for the children of South Sudan.

In her opening remarks, Pornpun Jib Rabiltossaporn, Save the Children’s South Sudan Country Director said:

“We want this venue to be a place to celebrate the success, as well as to learn and reflect on challenges. As the theme of this year says, “we can go fast if we go alone or we can go further if we go together. We often spend a lot of time running after deadlines, running after emergencies, running other urgencies, and it is rarely that we have time to actually reflect on things that we have done, what can we do better together.

Synergies is something that can only be created amongst partners when we are multiple, when we are together, when we put our hands together, we can definitely make a greater impact, more scalable, more sustainable to the children of South Sudan. Our programmes need to be participatory and we can only do it if we actually spend time to listen to you, to listen to the achievements, to listen to the challenges, the concerns, to listen to the ideas on how can we do things better.

This country has so much potential, you have so much potential, and the children of South Sudan deserve better – a better future. It is up to us to come together and build that for our next generations. We are so proud as Save the Children to be working with this many partners, and we look forward for even a better, bigger future with even more partners that we work with, and we can only do that with you, your support, and your contribution.”

South Sudan is facing widespread flooding combined with inter-communal conflicts and soaring food prices. This has driven the country into its worst hunger crisis since independence in 2011, with rising numbers of children at risk daily from malnutrition, disease, and snakebites.

The national partners are important stakeholders in ensuring Save the Children’s programme interventions reach people in need and guarantee that no child is left behind.

Some of the resolutions reached during last year’s Partnership Annual Meeting include; strive for the implementation of accelerated learning programs, support for people with disabilities and special groups, pastoralists mobile education, TVET, and the use of sign language tools and brails.

The partners agreed to collaborate and conduct joint advocacy to minimize the practice of individual partner doing its own advocacy. Their joint efforts will entail engaging line ministries, legislators, community leaders, state and local leaders to initiate peace and reconciliation activities among farmers and pastoralists.

They further resolved to push for the establishment of early warning systems and programme policies to protect farmers.

This year’s annual meeting is being attended by Executive Directors, Head of Programmes, and project specialists from across South Sudan.

The partners are expected to adopt new resolutions that will enhance collaborations and develop new mitigation strategies for achieving lasting impact on children in regards to education, health, nutrition, child protection and safeguarding, food security and livelihood, child rights governance, and humanitarian response.

Story: Daniel Danis/Save the Children