Children First is a whole-family, multi-pronged approach to protecting the most vulnerable children in both Haiti and Guatemala. Through targeted training activities and parent-child interventions, this program works to keep families together, protect children from harm, improve the knowledge base of caregivers regarding health and nutrition, and strengthen parent-child relationships through a host of support services.
All adults including caregivers, parents, and community leaders share in the responsibility to protect all children - especially female heads-of-households. Children across the world - especially those born into extreme poverty, lacking adequate parental support, and/or living in orphanage care - are vulnerable to abuses of their rights and exploitation in various forms, including child trafficking.
Our extensive experience working with children at high risk of mistreatment, abandonment, and exploitation (as well as with their families and communities) led HRI to make Child Protection a priority in our work. Our Child Protection programs are primarily centered around women's empowerment initiatives. HRI has prevented the abandonment and trafficking of more than 500 children in 2020!
HRI's Children First Program is working to prevent child abandonment, abuse, trafficking, exploitation, and domestic servitude in high-poverty rural and urban communities. We accomplish this by Building Stronger Families, Deinstitutionalizing Children in Orphanages, Reuniting Families, Building Resiliency, and Increasing Self-Sufficiency through Women's Empowerment services.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
