The Four Pillars framework
Screening, Training, Policies and Accountability.
Global Child Safeguarding Network
GCSN Partnerships
For leaders ready to build a dedicated, independent child protection organization in their own community.
A GCSN partnership means you’re not starting from zero, and you’re not opening a branch of someone else’s organization either. You’re building your own, with a proven framework, curriculum and brand behind you, and full ownership of the organization you build.
What PPE Kids provides
Curriculum & training
Materials adapted to fit local law, culture and context.
The PPE Kids name
Use of the PPE Kids name and brand.
Ongoing mentorship
Technical mentorship and trauma-informed guidance.
Funding support
Hands-on help with grant writing and connecting with funders.
The GCSN
Continued connection to the network, including its Safe Response and Safe Communities work, so you’re never solving hard problems alone.
How our frameworks fit together
As a GCSN partner, you’ll work with two frameworks designed to fit together, not compete.
The PPE Kids Four Pillars are your organizational core. They make sure your own organization is safe for children: the people you hire, how they’re trained, the policies you follow, and how you hold everyone accountable. They also align closely with internationally recognized safeguarding standards such as Keeping Children Safe, so your organization speaks the same language as international funders and partners.
The GCSN Five Pillars are the broader frame. Many of the most serious threats to children, such as child marriage, female genital mutilation and child labor, happen in families and communities, not inside organizations. The Five Pillars reach beyond your own walls to how harm is responded to and how community norms change.
Where criminal records are incomplete or unreliable, screening relies on reference checks, community vetting, signed self-declarations, probation periods and supervision. Training is delivered in local languages, at appropriate literacy levels, with cultural sensitivity.
Policies are written to fit local law and custom, and clear about where your standard for protecting children is higher than local practice.
Where reporting to authorities may be unsafe, you build trusted alternatives, such as referral networks, health workers and partner NGOs, along with survivor support.
Leaders model safeguarding and answer to an independent local board, with a designated person responsible for child safety.
Work with families, religious leaders, elders and schools to change harmful norms. This is where GCSN members share what works across countries.
In short: the Four Pillars keep your own house safe. The Five Pillars, and the GCSN members working on them, help you protect children in the wider community.
What you’re building
A GCSN partner organization is its own independent, locally registered organization, not a branch office of PPE Kids USA. It has its own board and its own finances, accountable to your community and your own legal structure. PPE Kids’ role is technical and advisory (curriculum, brand and ongoing mentorship), not governance control and not ongoing financial backing.
The honest picture on funding
We want every leader considering this path to go in with clear eyes, because clarity up front makes a far stronger partnership than good intentions alone.
PPE Kids never asks a partner for payment or reimbursement. There are no partnership fees. Our support is given freely.
PPE Kids’ support is operational and advisory. We don’t fund a partner’s ongoing operations, salaries or programming. In some cases, at our discretion, we may help with limited one-time startup costs such as registration, but this is never guaranteed and shouldn’t be counted on when planning.
Fundraising is core to the role from day one. In our experience, the single most valuable early hire for a new partner organization is someone dedicated to grant writing and funder relationships, not a general administrator.
This isn’t a gap in the model; it’s the model working as intended. Many of the strongest funders in child protection fund only independent, locally led organizations, and won’t fund a branch or affiliate of an international nonprofit. Becoming a genuine local partner organization, with its own board, registration and accountability, is what opens the door to that funding and makes the work sustainable and truly locally owned.
Questions about GCSN partnerships? Email [email protected].