1MillionHome is a campaign of Chosen & Dearly Loved, a 501(c)3 organization. 1MillionHome is committed to keeping children in families and working to transform systems of care in a way that prevents separation. 1MillionHome's mission is to transform orphanages into family reunification centers, transform over 5,000 orphanages, and bring 1 million children back home, where they have the best chance to thrive.
Where they operate
Contact this organization about:
Organization Size
Headquarters Location
Chosen & Dearly Loved 1MILLIONHOME HQ
200 Fillmore St., Suite #310
Denver, CO 80206
United States
Organization Type
Main Areas of Work
Residential Care Service Transition Support
Transition supports they have offered, or plan to offer, include:
- Introducing the importance of family care and reintegration to leaders in the organization
- Strategy and planning for the transition
- Donor and board engagement
- Community awareness raising and engagement
- Partnerships and/or connecting with others or building a network
- Government engagement and linking to systems reforms
- Social work or case management training or support
- Staffing adjustments or training
- Use of buildings and other assets
- Developing new programs related to:
- Family and community strengthening
- Alternative family care (including kinship care, foster care, adoption)
- Advocacy
- Street-connected children
- Children with disabilities
- Provide funding for the transition
- General coaching or consultation
- Onsite training, visits and meetings
- Online training
- Provision of standards and written guidance or tools for transitioning
National Accelerator Program
1MH's premier program connects small and large orphanages to regional transition support service providers. National Accelerators help residential facilities transition to alternative services like reunification centers or family strengthening sites while facilitating safe reintegrations.
Community of Practice Support
Built on the principle of radical collaboration, 1MH convenes, equips and builds capacity of small to medium sized non-profits in the areas of family reunification, alternative family care, staff training, trauma informed care, child protection, project management, advocacy, working with care leavers and monitoring & evaluation. Collaboration results in direct, contextualized support as well as tangible products that support the work.
Advocacy
Collaboratively supporting the efforts of returning children to family and publicly engaging in awareness for the cause of family reunification.
Workshops and Online Training
In-person training workshops in the Global South that help frontline practitioners understand the value and the mechanics of reintegration and child protection. 1MH’s online community learning platform JOURNEYHOME provides practical training for organizations globally.
We asked this organization to tell us a little more about their learning and knowledge sharing practices. Here is what they said
Our commitment to radical collaboration is what we are most proud of. Everything we do is a result of collaboration with other organizations and partners that provide excellent services in their respective fields. Collaboration through the National Accelerator program has led to hundreds and hundreds of kids going home so far. Collaboration on training initiatives has equipped practitioners in dozens of countries throughout the world.
Our first running of the national accelerator program highlighted the importance of partners working through indigenous, local leaders to affect the most change and reach the most organizations and hence children. We’ve seen a significant difference between emphasizing western leadership versus non-western leadership in regards to services rendered and children able to safely reintegrate back into the community. This approach has also been more cost effective. While there is a place for every form of transition support, advocacy, policy writing and so forth, if ultimately children aren’t going home and policies aren’t being implemented then as a sector, we’ve failed. Our most significant learning is the importance of indigenous leadership to actually affect that very change that we all want to see.
1. Invest in indigenous leadership to run programs and provide transition support. Quality indigenous leaders gain community buy-in quicker and lead programs that are more effective and cost efficient.
2. Be open to engaging programs and practices that are different from your own even if you disagree with them. If we close ourselves off from one another then we won’t move the child welfare sector forward, especially as even those with poor practice may have started with good intentions. Everyone needs help and an open disposition keeps us all moving forward for the betterment of children and families.
We are a learning community and have monthly meetings among organization leaders from around the world so that we can teach, support and resource one another. At the programmatic level, we’ve worked with an independent evaluator to assess core programming and are currently in the process of developing a monitoring and evaluation framework on reintegration that will be used across multiple agencies and countries.
Everything that we do is in collaboration with other organizations as radical collaboration is a core value of 1MILLIONHOME. Our role is to resource, coordinate and guide collaboration between the community of practice and our technical advisory board to better help children safely reintegrate into family care. In addition to the aforementioned evaluation and learning, we also engage with non-child welfare practitioners to find better ways to reach the general public and raise the awareness of separated children and their need for family.