Photo: Richard Munyaneza When shelling damaged homes and disrupted vital services, we worked with Ubumwe Community Center in Rwanda to provide counselling, family assessments and practical support. Our Advocacy, Communication and Safeguarding Coordinator Richard Munyaneza reflects on how conflict near the Rwanda–DRC border affected children with disabilities and their families. Conflict spills across the border […]
When a child moves from an orphanage back to their birth family, into kinship care, foster care or adoption, a fair question follows: does it last? In the UK, placement breakdown is a well-documented and serious issue — so it’s natural for supporters to ask whether the same risk applies to the children Hope and […]
Every year on 12 July, the United Nations marks the International Day of Hope — a day dedicated to hope as a force that bridges divides and drives progress. This year, we’re marking it with a story about what hope looks like when it moves from feeling to policy: a European Parliament round table where […]
The Ghetto Kids, Shakira, and what a billion viewers aren’t being told When Shakira announced that Uganda’s Ghetto Kids would join her on stage at the FIFA World Cup final halftime show at MetLife Stadium on 19 July, the response was almost universally joyful. A billion people will watch. The story writes itself: children from […]
More than 5.4 million children around the world are locked away in orphanages — and over 80% of them are not orphans. In Ghana, 250 delegates from 13 countries came together to address that crisis. HHC’s Regional Advocacy Manager Stephen Ucembe was there. Here is what he heard — and what it means for the […]
In 2001, Hope and Homes for Children arrived in South Africa with four local partners and one conviction: no child needs to grow up in an orphanage. Twenty-five years on, South Africa has committed to ending institutionalisation of children by 2030. This is how it happened. What we found: South Africa’s hidden crisis When Hope […]
by Mark Waddington CBE, Chief Executive, Hope and Homes for Children I’m currently in Ukraine. Kyiv is under sustained aerial bombardment. And in the middle of it all, I’m seeing something that has stopped me in my tracks – the extraordinary courage of families who are choosing to protect children. What conflict does to children […]
The Summer 2026 issue of Alliance magazine, one of the world’s leading philanthropic journals, asks a question the sector has long avoided: whose voices actually count? Hope and Homes for Children’s Victoria Olarte and Stephen Ucembe guest edited the special feature on youth, philanthropy, and radical accountability. Here’s what they found. Stephen Ucembe is a lived experience professional; he […]
Nepal’s first foster child placement. Photo: The Himalayan Innovative Society / Forget Me Knot / Hope and Homes for Children
On International Missing Children’s Day, a powerful art installation at the heart of European politics asks us to look at what we already know — and act on it. In a bedroom, football shirts hang on the wall, school books sit open on the desk and clothes are discarded on the floor. It’s a room […]
