Global Network Online Forum - May 2025

Dear all, 

Thank you so much to all those who made it to the latest Global Network Online Forum. It was great to see so many of you and to have the opportunity to discuss the Child-Friendly Church programme and tools, as well as the upcoming Cutting Edge conference. 

We were really pleased to hear from Ishmael and Samson of the Together For Children network in Kisumu, Kenya, about the Child-Friendly Church programme that they have been running for the past several months. It was remarkable to hear of the changes that many of the network’s member churches have already made, even in a short space of time. Churches have introduced age-appropriate activities and safe spaces for children, encouraged child participation in church activities such as ushering, and recruited qualified children’s workers. While there have been barriers to overcome (such as a reluctance to make changes because of hierarchical church structures, financial constraints, and traditional views of children’s roles in the church), church leaders are slowly beginning to recognise the value of children in the church, and to prioritise their wellbeing, safety and spiritual development. 

We then had some time to try out some sample questions from the Child-Friendly Church assessment. If you did not get an opportunity to do this yet, the link is here: Child-Friendly Church Assessment: Sample questions. 

If you would like to explore the Child-Friendly Church programme in more detail, the overview Powerpoint is here, and the link to download the full programme materials on Viva Learn is here. Note that at the moment, these resources are in English only. However, since there has been a lot of interest in running the programme across the networks, we are working on getting them translated. If you are interested in having the tools translated into your language, or if you know someone who could help with this, please do get in touch to let us know. 

Finally, we spent some time thinking about the main topics which will be featured at the upcoming Cutting Edge conference which will take place from Tuesday 1st – Thursday 3rd July. We will focus on one main topic on each of the three days of the conference: Family strengthening, Trauma-informed care, and Online safety. If you have any more thoughts about what specific aspects of these topics you would like to hear more about, please do get in touch to let us know. And please sign up to attend the conference!  

Please don’t forget to share your feedback on the Forum by completing this quick survey. 

You should have received an email this week letting you know that next month, we will be using the Global Network Online Forum time slot as the third in our “Shaping Viva” series of network conversations. It would be really helpful to get an idea of numbers for each of these meetings, so please do accept or decline the meeting invites if possible. 

Thank you, and see you soon!