Our approach

The Children’s Rights Innovation Fund is a collective challenge to reinvigorate and transform the global children’s rights field by building power with youth activists and their allies. We are a grantmaking fund and donor learning community.

In partnership with funders, youth activists, practitioners, and allies, we cultivate innovation and collaboration to dismantle the root causes of children’s vulnerability and strengthen the root drivers of their well-being.

As part of our work, CRIF is committed to:

Mobilizing resources and moving money to youth activists

Catalyzing new investments in the power of youth activists and their allies—organized around a series of thematic containers to drive action and new thinking.

Shifting philanthropic practice

Centering and trusting in the dreams, lived experience, visions, and leadership of children and youth, through participatory grantmaking and other innovative practices.

Driving narrative change

Sharing more nuanced stories about the impacts of systemic violence, oppression, deprivation, and poverty on young people’s lives.

Strengthening accountability to children and youth

Building a dynamic funder community dedicated to solidarity and learning, rooted in a powerful constituency of children and youth, and working courageously at the intersection of youth power, organizing, and children’s rights.