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Ep 55. Hayley Roffey & John Hecklinger, Co-CEOs Global Fund for Children: Young People as Agents of Change
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In the fight for children’s rights, the Global Fund for Children champions bold ideas that might otherwise go unheard. Global Fund for Children or GFC is a global nonprofit dedicated to discovering, funding, and coaching community-based organisations and individuals, who are driving change at the grass-roots, on issues like gender justice, education, and youth power.
What makes GFC's approach noteworthy is its commitment to shared power.
GFC holds that children and young people already know how to solve problems in their communities. They are innovators, problem solvers, dreamers, and leaders. What they need isn't rescue - it's belief, resources, and the space to lead.
In this episode, Global Co-CEOs of the Global Fund for Children, Hayley Roffey and John Hecklinger, talk about GFC’s model as an intermediary funder providing flexible, trust-based funding and support, sometimes to children as young as 10! And the impact of genuinely putting decision-making power in the hands of children and young people. We discuss the importance of engaging young men and boys, if we are to create a truly gender equitable world. And they share perspectives on co-leadership, and the importance of re-imagining development and philanthropy, and re-building for change.
Recorded December 2025.
Recommended
Transcript
Empowering Grassroots Organizations
00:00:00
Speaker
We really believe that giving unrestricted flexible funding to grassroots organisations, those that are unregistered, completely nascent, youth-led,
00:00:11
Speaker
is exactly what the world needs to create long-term change. One of our biggest breakthroughs in recent years is really developing the expertise to safely and directly resource young changemakers all over the world and to get beyond the typical kind of tokenistic, okay, let's give you a seat at our table to actually having the young people themselves create that table and we are just assisting them and and achieving what they would like to do, which is power shifting. It is giving up control. It is working through messiness and that's what it takes.
New Season of the Charity CEO Podcast
00:01:04
Speaker
Welcome to an exciting new season of the Charity CEO Podcast, where we bring you the stories and insights of remarkable leaders who are changing the world for the better. We talk to the movers and shakers who are driving positive social change, inspiring you to think big, act boldly, and make a difference.
00:01:20
Speaker
A huge shout out to our incredible global community of listeners spanning over 55 countries. Your thoughtful comments and feedback continue to fuel this growing movement, and we couldn't do it without you.
00:01:32
Speaker
To all of you who pour your hearts and souls into making the world a better place, especially those of you in the charity and nonprofit sectors, thank you for the tireless passion you bring to your work. This podcast is for you.
00:01:44
Speaker
I'm Divya O'Connor, and here's the show.
GFC's Approach to Supporting Change
00:01:48
Speaker
In the fight for children's rights, the Global Fund for Children champions bold ideas that might otherwise go unheard. Global Fund for Children, or GFC, is a global nonprofit dedicated to discovering, funding, and coaching community-based organizations and individuals who are driving change at the grassroots on issues like gender justice, education, and youth power.
00:02:10
Speaker
What makes GFC's approach noteworthy is its commitment to shared power. GFC holds that children and young people already know how to solve problems in their communities. They are innovators, problem solvers, dreamers and leaders.
00:02:25
Speaker
What they need isn't rescue, it's belief, resources and the space to lead. In this episode, global co-CEOs of the Global Fund for Children, Hayley Roffey and John Hecklinger, talk about GFC's model as an intermediary funder providing flexible, trust-based funding and support, sometimes to children as young as 10.
00:02:46
Speaker
And the impact of genuinely putting decision-making power in the hands of children and young people. We discuss the importance of engaging young men and boys if we are to create a truly gender equitable world. And they share perspectives on co-leadership and the importance of reimagining development and philanthropy and rebuilding for change.
00:03:06
Speaker
Enjoy the conversation.
Co-CEOs' Personal Insights
00:03:10
Speaker
Hi, Hayley. Hi, John. A very warm welcome to the Charity CEO podcast. How are you both today? Yeah, doing all right. Thank you. I'm doing great. Yeah. Thanks for having us.
00:03:20
Speaker
Oh, you're very welcome. I always start the show with a few icebreaker questions just to get the conversation flowing. And so I have three questions for each of you, if you're ready. Yeah, go for it.
00:03:32
Speaker
Hayley, perhaps coming to you first then. Question one, tell us something about yourself that people wouldn't typically know. oh when I was a teenager...
00:03:44
Speaker
I really loved ninety s boy bands and I didn't just love them, i really loved them and me and my friends would spend lots of Saturdays following them around the country.
00:04:02
Speaker
ah For the listeners in the UK of a similar age to me may remember Anton Deck used to be on a Saturday morning on a show called SMTV, which because me and my friends used to wait outside said TV studio, we ended up being in the audience of SMTV one week because they needed five extra audience members and there were five of us. But Yes, that was something that I think my brain likes to try and help me forget that I used to do but it is actually quite funny and definitely something that I don't even think John what knew about me.
00:04:36
Speaker
and And brilliant. And this may be showing my age here, Hayley, but were you also a fan of NKOTB? Yes, but not they were a bit ahead of me. Like even take that were a little bit ahead of me. But yes, I do remember them. new kids on the block. Absolutely.
00:04:53
Speaker
ah And John, how about you? Yeah, we were actually talking last night at Office Happy Hour about various reality shows that folks like. There are some big fans of Love is Blind and Love Island, which I haven't gotten into, but I'm an avid Survivor watcher. And I have this secret aspiration to be one of the old folks on Survivor who sneaks in and wins at the end undercover.
00:05:23
Speaker
But I watch Survivor pretty regularly with my younger son, Henry, who's who's really into it. And so I have this, i don't know, maybe someday I'll go for it now that we're co-CEOs and I could take a month and a half and Haley can cover for me. Maybe I can realize my my dream of going on Survivor at some point.
00:05:40
Speaker
Absolutely. Question two. And Hayley, coming back to you now, what would you say is your professional superpower? I think I'm really good at reading the room, even online.
00:05:53
Speaker
And I think that is a superpower in lots of ways, because when we moved to online in the pandemic, there was just such a different way of working that required, i think, a different level of attention. And I am just someone who I think in my gut, I just feel like the pulse check of the organization. i can kind of sense if there are worries brewing across an organization and, you know, I can log on to Zoom and I can immediately spot the person who looks like they've had a really bad day.
00:06:26
Speaker
Yeah, I can read the room. I think that's the easiest way to describe it. And the reason I know that that's a superpower is John has often, I've heard him describe it as one of my superpowers to others in the past as well. But it is definitely, I would say that that is one of my superpowers.
00:06:40
Speaker
Absolutely. Particularly in a leadership role, it's so important. And John, how about you? Reading the room is certainly not my superpower, which is one of the reasons why Haley and i are are so complimentary. I think I'm pretty good at connecting dots that others aren't seeing that create different kinds of possibilities.
00:07:01
Speaker
And I'm not sure if it's a superpower that's recognized as a superpower, but every now and then i come up with a a funny story. metaphor to explain the dots that in a truly global organization, you have to be careful with comedy and you have to be careful with metaphors because sometimes they can be bewildering to other folks. But once in a while, you hit one that really resonates with folks.
00:07:25
Speaker
Excellent. And talking about metaphors, for my final question, can you share with us a quote or a motto that is significant to you? And maybe to be fair, John, I'll come to you first this time.
00:07:37
Speaker
I think it was Oscar Wilde. You never know how much is enough until you know how much is too much. Love that. That's a good one. Hayley? Yeah, I mean, mine's easy. It's on the wall in our kitchen at home. And it's from the remake of Cinderella a few years ago. It's have courage and be kind.
00:07:55
Speaker
And I just think it it's self-explanatory. And it's just a brilliant way to live. And something that I talk to my children about regularly. Have courage and be kind. Lovely.
00:08:06
Speaker
And on that note, John, Haley, thank you so much for being here today. Let's start off by hearing about the Global Fund for Children and its work. Tell us the origin story of the organization and its mission.
00:08:19
Speaker
It goes all the way back to the early 90s when our founder, Maya Ajmera, was traveling in India as part of her Echoing Green Fellowship and She encountered a train platform school and was really, really interested in how that worked and discovered that it was running on a very, very modest budget, but providing basic education to hundreds and hundreds of of young people.
00:08:48
Speaker
And this was the her light bulb moment when she thought, well, certainly there are so many of these amazing initiatives happening all over the world and certainly other folks would be interested and funding those and supporting them in different ways.
00:09:04
Speaker
And that was sort of the moment that the idea for GFC popped into Maya's head and really crystallized. And yeah we've been kind of pursuing that idea ever since, knowing that people who are more proximate to challenges in their communities are absolutely better placed to address those challenges than you know people like me and and Haley.
00:09:30
Speaker
And that's what we've been pursuing ever since. Can you tell us more about your community-based program
Innovative Funding Models
00:09:38
Speaker
and model. You talked there about being proximate to the problem and the people who are proximate to the problem are indeed the ones who are actually best placed to solve those problems. Tell us a bit more about the model and how GFC operates in that space.
00:09:52
Speaker
Good question. So what i will start with is what we call our primary model, like the our primary grants, what they look like, is that our global team who live and work in the communities in the regions where they are supporting local community-based partners, they go and find our partners. So we believe very passionately that community-based organisations already have a really difficult job. It's really, really hard to be a community-based organisation in any part of the world and then to have to compete for funding or to go and find opportunity, write proposals, do all the things that the system requires of someone who may just simply see a problem in their community and want to do something about it. And I use the word simply without any disrespect to the incredible passion and
00:10:48
Speaker
determination to do that kind of thing. But essentially, just because someone has identified a need in their local community doesn't mean they know how to turn that into a registered organisation that can apply for funding and do all the things they need to do to meet the problem that they see and that they understand best.
00:11:06
Speaker
So Global Fund for Children, we pride ourselves on partnering with local organisations and sometimes they're unregistered, often they're youth-led They don't necessarily have a bank account, but they are incredibly passionate, motivated, kind-hearted people who want to change things for for children and people where they live. So we will come in, we'll find them.
00:11:35
Speaker
We'll meet with them, we'll build relationships with them and provide, you know, a lot of people in the sector call it like but capacity development, but essentially it's providing, you know, this catalog of skills or it's almost like business skills that they may need or coaching, leadership training, access to safeguarding training, policy development, or it could be as straightforward as guiding them through how to set up a bank account. And that's how the model comes to life.
00:12:05
Speaker
And I can speak a bit from experience. I was a grantee of Global Fund for Children, which was amazing. And we genuinely got this phone call from someone who said, hi there, we found you online. We're really interested in what you do We'd love to come and visit you, learn more about you and talk about potentially giving you an unrestricted grant.
00:12:25
Speaker
And at that point, I had never heard of the word unrestricted grant before. And that's exactly what happened. A staff member from Global Fund for Children and came to meet with us. They did all the work. All we had to do was kind of have a nice chat and then just fill in a couple of bits on a form when we already knew we were going to get the funding.
00:12:44
Speaker
And that's where we're different. And that's where we really add such a value into the ecosystem that is the non-for-profit space globally, because we feel this nifty gap that helps organizations go from completely nascent and many, many of the groups we fund with their first grantee, first funder, sorry, And nearly all of them were certainly a first international funder. And then we walk alongside them and get them ready for their next funder. And, you know, some of the grantees we had, gosh, from back in the 90s are huge national organisations now in their countries. And many of them cite GFC as being that first funder that took a real... shot with them, took a punt with them, and never forgetting it.
00:13:28
Speaker
There is so much debate in the sector about the real impact and value of unrestricted funding. And I know you refer to it as trust-based philanthropy or flexible funding, as you said there. So as I understand it, GFC plays the role of an intermediary funder. Where does your money come from?
00:13:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. I mean, and the the word intermediary is is a little contentious because it means a lot of different things. But I tend to embrace it because i think there's real value in helping funders that don't necessarily have the the capacity to do that really, truly local on the ground work that our program team does.
00:14:10
Speaker
but are feeling like they want to fund more locally and they want to fund in a more trust-based way. They want to fund more flexibly, but they can't always do it. So working with us helps them understand what it really looks like and can help them shift their own their own practices.
00:14:26
Speaker
But yes, we raise the money. Most of our funding comes from different kinds of foundations all over the world. Everything from big foundations, very sophisticated, like the Lego Foundation, which has been a big supporter of ours for several years, to very small and kind of anonymous family foundations that really appreciate the way we work and may have a very small staff.
00:14:50
Speaker
We also have a great group of major donors that kind of you know round out our funding and most of that funding comes in as unrestricted and and and flexible to us, which we appreciate. But I think The real magic trick that we do is taking this funding that comes from foundations that have their own processes that are pretty restricted. And so we take that funding as restricted.
00:15:18
Speaker
We hold a lot of that, those reporting and other obligations that our partners wouldn't yet be able to do on their own, or if they're not big enough yet to do that on their own. And we transform that into something that feels very, very flexible you to the organizations that we ultimately support.
00:15:38
Speaker
And that's hard work to be in the middle of that and to ensure that our funders are getting the reports that they need and the information and the accountability that they need, while we also provide that very trust-based relationship. We work hard to establish that relationship with with our grantees.
00:15:57
Speaker
That's so interesting to hear that the funding that you receive is restricted. And in some ways you are taking on that burden of managing those restricted funds, but ensuring that your grantees have the full freedom with unrestricted monies. And and in that context, I'd love to hear more about what you see are some of the the global trends and challenges in philanthropy, particularly with respect to shifting power.
00:16:25
Speaker
Yeah. and And in some ways, the vocabulary didn't exist when GFC was founded back in the early ninety s So trust-based philanthropy wasn't a thing. Hashtag shift the power didn't come into being really until 2016.
00:16:39
Speaker
There wasn't a lot of talk about know decolonizing anything. And most of global development and philanthropy in those days, and unfortunately still is, rooted in some of those very colonial ideas about where accountability should lie and how to establish trust.
00:16:58
Speaker
But fast forward, and the sector has been trying to come around to those ideas that GFC and others pioneered many years ago, but not enough of it is actually happening. And I think that's been part of GFC's success in recent years is that we've been doing this for a long time. We know how it works.
00:17:20
Speaker
And we can welcome other funders who are feeling this pressure to work more in this way. And we can help them do that. There's still a tremendous amount of work to be done. And I think you the recent months in particular have really exposed just how brittle, fragile and unfair, really, the the system that existed before was operating.
00:17:45
Speaker
And so the opportunity now is to do a lot of reimagining and rebuilding according to the principles that GFC and many, many others have been doing and advocating for for a long time.
00:17:59
Speaker
I think as well, just to add to that, one thing that I think could get lost in the word intermediary is actually that GFC works really hard to move money into the hands of young people.
00:18:10
Speaker
We really believe that young people have so many of the solutions for the issues that affect children and young people today. But it takes a lot of time, a lot of resources and a lot of expertise in things like safeguarding and the skills to talk to young people. You know, I think we shouldn't take that for granted, that it's really, really it isn't it is a skill to be able to talk to young people, help them translate their ideas.
00:18:38
Speaker
truly listen to them and not add your own input or summarize as an adult, you know, into the, into the conversation. And I think it's very easy to underestimate the power of what can happen when you put money into the hands of children and young people. And we really believe that that is worth the time, the effort, the advocating for children and young people at tables where people are talking about them, but they're not sitting there.
00:19:05
Speaker
And I really believe as someone who's worked with children and young people since I was 13 years old, they are critical to moving the world forward in the way that I think we will need it to go. and GFC has actually pioneered some global programs that aren't just inviting children and youth in as decision makers once adults have done all the work.
00:19:28
Speaker
It is bringing in children young people to design what the funds look like in the first place. And they own it from start to finish. And they challenge us. And, you know, we've had to get quite innovative in how we move those money into the hands of children, young people. You know, different countries have different tax rules and all all the things that take time and expertise on the back end. But what you see, you know, out there in community is just incredible innovation and a group of young people who maybe no one's ever taken a shot with them before or believed in them. having that sense of belief and yeah, just solidarity, I think. And I just think that's a really important part of what GFC offers the world, which is quite actually unique and different.
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's absolutely been one of our biggest breakthroughs in recent years is really developing the expertise to safely you know and directly resource young changemakers all over the world. And to get beyond the typical kind of tokenistic, OK, let's give you a seat at our table to go.
00:20:35
Speaker
actually having the young people themselves create that table and we are just assisting them and and achieving what they would like to do, which is power shifting. It is giving up control. It is working through messiness and that's what it takes.
00:20:55
Speaker
And talking about the Young Game Changers Fund and initiatives that you have, can you share a story or an example where this approach really created significant impact or outcomes that otherwise may not have been achieved?
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, Young Game Changers is a really cool example um in partnership with the Co-op Foundation and Restless Development, where Global Fund for Children is moving unrestricted grants into the hands of youth-led groups and young individual children.
Youth-led Impact Initiatives
00:21:25
Speaker
And there's a youth led steering committee who designed what the call would look like and then actually led the process of the funding with our team supporting them. Within the fund, it was actually a call for proposals, which is a bit different, which is why earlier I referred to like our primary model is we go and find. But sometimes when we get the opportunity to innovate in partnership with other foundations, where it actually is helping us hit an area of our work that we really, really want to do we often go for it and you know lean in and find different ways to reach people. children, young people, and actually children, young people often challenge our model of finding, because they're saying if the adults are always finding, you're not necessarily going to find us. So they like open calls and often actually ask us to do open calls because they believe we'll find the kind of programs that maybe we wouldn't find otherwise.
00:22:16
Speaker
And for this particular one, a ah couple of years ago, the age, minimum age to apply for funding was 10 years old, which just, if you think about anybody who has, is a parent,
00:22:29
Speaker
and you think about when your child was 10 or maybe is 10. Well, I have a 10 year old now. well they get Well, my Harper, she was 10 when this girl. up And I was like, my goodness. And this young 10 year old had been in foster care and she was adopted. And when you're adopted in the UK, much of the support that was around her and her foster parent disappeared. And she wanted to create a local youth club or support group and probably get in the wording wrong and probably get told off by the team. but they created a support group for other children like her in her community. And that's what she wanted to do with the grant. And the young people awarded her a grant. So that is just to me, just such a great example of doing things differently because you know it's the right thing to do.
00:23:17
Speaker
But that takes a huge amount of work, a huge amount of care, a huge amount of courage. You know, I often talk in the way we work about risk. and how risk is subjective. Like when I'm challenging other funders to give money to young people or to, you know, risk is subjective. You know, what you think is risk is not what I think is risk. What John thinks is risk is not maybe what someone else would think of as risky. And actually, let's reframe how we see risk and see this as an opportunity, an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to offer something that you might not have experienced
00:23:53
Speaker
ever thought you could to someone who really, really needs it and also may have never thought she would ever get. So it's just amazing. And our staff and one of our team went and met her and saw her project. And yeah, super cool. But Young Game Changers has got lots of stories like that, which I'm sure listeners would be able to find on the website and find out more about it as well.
00:24:14
Speaker
That's absolutely brilliant to hear. I'm curious though, Hayley, you talked there about challenge. And i was just wondering whether you face challenge from your funders who give you, as you said, restricted funding, and how you take your own funders on a journey to say, well, these are really innovative programs that work. tell Talk to us about that a little bit.
00:24:36
Speaker
That's a good question. John, have you got any good examples for that one? You know, when you're pioneering things, things will get messy and they don't always go according to the project plan.
00:24:49
Speaker
And that's where as much as we... And I think we've been very effective based on the feedback that we've gotten through various surveys and and studies in establishing very close, trustful relationships with our partners around the world that allow us to kind of embrace that complexity and those challenges that they have.
00:25:11
Speaker
We also have to do the same thing with our frienders. And so we're we're on both sides of that trust equation, which always has to be mutual. And you know not everybody within a funding organization sees things the same way.
00:25:24
Speaker
Our funders, that is. And you may have a champion who really is trying to disrupt a practice within a foundation of some sort. But you may have trustees who are skeptical and need you know to be brought along on that journey a bit more. And that's a lot of the the hard work that we do is establishing that trust with our funders, doing enough to sort of help those who are not already members of the the choir to kind of understand that, yes, this is rigorous. We're not just throwing money out the door and hoping for the best, that the amount of work it takes to establish that trust, to really get into those challenges with organizations, including us and you as ah our funder, that's a very different way of working. And we have worked through some challenging situations with our funders. When things have
00:26:15
Speaker
not been as aligned in the beginning as we would have hoped, but generally we're able to to work through them. And I think the rigor of our process, the rigor of our learning that goes alongside the initiatives that we undertake goes a long way to helping people along that journey.
00:26:38
Speaker
I think i talked a bit about before, just to pick up on that a bit, that that's how your career shifts, right? As you go from being maybe a youth worker or an activist the active the activism still stays but it shifts like as you grow in as a leader like I often think now like I say to some of my staff who were like you know it's just it's just so tiring just to get no's all the time or trying to convince people and I'm like but that's activism that's a like a different form of activism don't don't discount the impact of that work as being, you know, it's just as important as the work we do directly with our grantees, because there is, there will be a shift.
00:27:17
Speaker
We are contributing to a shift of minds or a shift of heart in people, in amazing decision-making opportunities and possibilities. So there's also a reframing, I think, about how you tackle that really hard work, because it is hard.
00:27:32
Speaker
Because it's, I think it's also helpful when you're someone who's come from the grassroots yourselves and it's like, the grassroots mindset still there and the they're still wanting to make a difference and like reframing what making a difference looks like.
00:27:44
Speaker
Yes, I love that framing, Hayley. It's not just about shifting power, but it's also about the shift of mind and shift of heart. And talking about rigor and impact, I understand that you recently concluded a major multi-year global impact study, which looks at the impact of your trust-based flexible funding model on your grassroots partners. What were the significant findings of that study?
00:28:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think what we were and trying to get at with this study is yeah to get beyond what I think a lot of actors in philanthropy have felt as kind of an ideological, almost religious conviction that working in a trust-based way is the right thing to do, but also to demonstrate what it really looks like in practice and how effective it can be.
00:28:36
Speaker
And also How can you do an evaluation that isn't a randomized control trial? Because a randomized control trial is fantastic in many circumstances, but it's like wildly inappropriate in others, including ours. yeah We can't isolate two populations of organizations and not serve one and then serve another and control for all the different complexities and variables in their communities and the variety of approaches, it's just too heterogeneous to really frame something like that up effectively. And so how can you conduct a rigorous evaluation that isn't simply um extractive and getting a lot of information from your subjects, taking it, saying thank you very much, and and just learning something yourselves? How do you make this truly
00:29:28
Speaker
developmental for everyone in the process. So we're simultaneously trying to demonstrate what these approaches look like, how effective they are, and how you can get at that in a truly collaborative and participatory way with the subjects of the evaluation itself.
00:29:48
Speaker
And so what that looked like was everything from selecting a ah sample of organizations around the world recruiting some of organizations within our network to become co-researchers, and even going so far as to engage very young people in play-based activities that actually generated some really strong insight.
00:30:10
Speaker
So the very top-line findings on the website, there's a small, medium, and large version of the of the report. But we found that There is something really important that takes place within organizations when they have this combination of flexible funding over a longer term and the highly tailored, highly trust-based, highly relational support that we provide to our partner organizations. And importantly, another breakthrough we had in recent years was in funding organizations together in cohorts.
00:30:48
Speaker
So it opens up more space for a lot of peer learning. And what we found that that mix contributes ah significantly to an organization's stability, to its well-being, to its ability to kind of advance its programs, and then also some promising findings that Now, those organizations are seen in their communities as more responsive and more rooted and actually delivering better for those communities.
00:31:19
Speaker
So the findings were very promising. And our hope is that those findings contribute to a growing body of evidence to support these approaches that I think many folks have intuited are effective and make sense. And we've seen in this anecdotal evidence that But we're hoping to start building not just ourselves, but in collaboration with others and acknowledging the work of others to get some more rigorous evidence to support more entities adopting these approaches as well.
00:31:51
Speaker
I think what was really interesting as well, just to add to what John was saying, is when we looked at the responses around flexible funding being crucial in sustaining organizations' activities,
00:32:02
Speaker
we found that that was a especially strong finding for unregistered small organisations and especially those that were women or youth led. So I think it's really important as well within the global impact study that we really pulled out those areas of funding that we are kind of holding ourselves particularly accountable to and then assessing, oh wow, actually, OK, this is coming out really strong anyway. But in the areas where GFC really wants to make sure we are targeting and making a difference, it's even more impactful. which I think is is a really interesting finding that I didn't necessarily expect to see.
00:32:44
Speaker
and I think the other part that was really positive, because it's the bit that's really hard to explain sometimes, this non-financial support package that we offer, is that 92% of research partners said that that was a hugely positive impact on them. And like John said, the magic of it being combined with flexible funding and a trust-based approach with a someone at GFC they can contact just creates that magical combination. But I just think, again, it's another reminder to the sector that non-financial support is often just as critical.
00:33:21
Speaker
sometimes more critical than the funding itself. Thank you. That is so interesting to hear. And Hayley, the last time we spoke, you were on your way to number 10 Downing Street to attend the launch of the UK government's first ever men's health strategy on International Men's Day.
00:33:41
Speaker
I have both a son and a daughter, and I believe that we can't achieve gender equality without addressing the needs of both young boys and young girls, and that it's really important to ensure that we are including boys and men in the conversation.
00:33:56
Speaker
Tell us about GFC's healthy masculinity work in this space.
Promoting Healthy Masculinity
00:34:00
Speaker
Yes, Global Fund for Children has actually been working in the healthy masculinity space for well over a decade. Our work started in Latin America.
00:34:11
Speaker
And in 2018, we launched Healthy Masculinities Work here in the UK. And we also have a Healthy Masculinities approach to some of our work in West Africa and a couple of our partners in India have worked in the space previously as well. But we've got two strong cohorts currently specifically focused on Healthy Masculinities here in the UK and in Latin America.
00:34:38
Speaker
And here in the UK, how it looks, just to give everyone a sort of example, we've supported 19 community-based organisations and provided over half a million in flexible funding.
00:34:50
Speaker
We're currently supporting seven, and they are spread out across England. And they include organisations... who are working with boys and young men of a variety of stages of childhood and adolescence and into young adulthood. They are all also working with girls as well. This isn't just boys organisations only, but they are organisations who believe in gender transformative approaches and they centre trauma as a driver for violence and poor mental health. You know, so they they integrate
00:35:26
Speaker
trauma-based approaches to ensure that they offer a really holistic approach that really centers boys and young men in a really positive way because I think so much you know a long time ago there was this phrase toxic masculinity which if you are a young lad and someone's talking to you about that could actually have a negative effect of what it's trying to do and drive you towards toxicity or drive you to where spaces where you're not being labeled something negative which then could mean all kinds of awful things as we saw in adolescence with the young boy Jamie earlier this year
00:36:06
Speaker
Our Healthy Masculinities work comes at the boy in a holistic way. you know, it's everything from mental health to helping boys not join a gang to helping boys not understand language around how to talk about how they feel.
00:36:27
Speaker
and we've just got this amazing cohort, as John said earlier, of partners who also support each other. You know, we've got a couple of partners who, before joining the cohort, didn't talk about themselves as a healthy masculinities person.
00:36:40
Speaker
organization They talked about themselves as an organisation responding to street violence, an organisation responding to youth crime or low levels of access to, you know, low levels of children in education.
00:36:54
Speaker
Now, you know, being part of this approach, you know, focusing on trauma informed practice, long term intervention, person centred methodologies. They realise actually we were doing all of that already. just didn't call it out as healthy masculinities. And I just think it's such an important part of ending gender-based violence and ending violence full stop you know Suicide is still the leading cause of death for men under 50.
00:37:24
Speaker
The unemployment rate is higher for men. The majority of homicide victims are men, but we also know the majority of people committing these crimes are also men So it's actually how do we have this conversation so that from a feminist approach, you know, we we take a feminist lens.
00:37:47
Speaker
This is not about boys or girls. This is about how do we create the world we want for our children to grow into, to feel healthy in their heart, in their mind, with their friendships, with their relationships, with the adults around them who care for them.
00:38:04
Speaker
And that's how we approach healthy masculinities. it's It's really, really important. that people here, that Global Fund for Children, you know, one of our pillars that we are aiming towards is a gender equitable world.
00:38:18
Speaker
But we firmly believe you cannot achieve that only by working with girls. Because a girl who goes to a program of a GFC partner somewhere in the world may still go home to a mum and dad who believe in FGM.
00:38:33
Speaker
So it has to be both community-based community-rooted, talking to to the community, as well as helping individual children and young people understand how gender plays such a role in how they grow up.
00:38:51
Speaker
It's such a polarizing debate sometimes, but it's such an important conversation and we need to have it. And just for context for some of our non-UK listeners, Adolescence was a TV drama that was shown in in the UK that dealt with this topic and particularly the impact on young boys.
00:39:10
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. It was really powerful, actually, and completely by chance came out at the same time we released our campaign, Boys Beyond Bias. And that's a really cool campaign. If anybody wants to go and check it out on our website, we created four very short 20 second videos with young boys.
00:39:28
Speaker
in Bradford to challenge stereotypes and norms around young boys. And they're really cool. And we got to release the campaign, launch the campaign, I should say, at the Marmalade Festival in April in Oxford. And we held a panel with some of our grassroots partners talking about the Healthy Masculinities Program, the way that we are working with young boys and young men across the UK, but also to launch these really, really amazing videos. So I definitely encourage people to take a look at that.
00:39:58
Speaker
And your website is globalfundforchildren.org?.org. That's the one. Yeah. And yeah, and it was just really great to be invited to 10 Downing Street. And I must shout out Movember who invited me to go along. And i think from that, I really took a sense that there is a moment here where people are leaning into young men needing a tailored approach, but not at the expense of women and girls, not at the expense of looking at this holistically with ending violence against women and girls, you know, almost at the centre, ending violence at the centre. And I was really pleased to hear that discussed in the room at 10 Downing Street, which I think was a really helpful framing for everybody there.
00:40:47
Speaker
Yes, that's so good to hear because it's not a zero-sum game. It's not girls at the expense of boys. Exactly, exactly. And yeah, I think one really encouraging example as well was four years ago now when we took on the responsibility after being asked by a group of adolescent girls who are part of organizations that we support in West Africa. You know, their vision was to do an adolescent girls summit to come together, be in solidarity with each other because they're all fighting gender based violence and harmful traditional practices in their communities.
00:41:23
Speaker
And the question was, should we invite boys? And the girls decided to invite the boys. They decided. Intuited, they knew that boys were going to be critical in the fight against gender-based violence in their context.
00:41:37
Speaker
And so this is something that just kind of makes sense to a lot of young girls that yeah we need to enlist the boys in the fight for gender justice. So that was encouraging. So it's still, it's the adolescent girls summit, but the boys are there. They're supportive. They're allies in this fight.
00:41:56
Speaker
Something we haven't yet talked about is co-leadership. And this is a model that fascinates me. You both are co-CEOs of your organization, but it's not a typical job share because I understand that you both work full time and you have distinct areas of responsibility.
Transition to Co-leadership
00:42:13
Speaker
Tell us what inspired the transition to a co-leadership model at GFC and how do you make it work in practice?
00:42:21
Speaker
John, you should probably take that. You were the CEO before me. Yeah, and actually it kind of dawned on me as I was in West Africa with our our colleague Ame and talking about leadership and shared leadership with our partners there and had a lot of deep conversations with leaders of organizations about leadership and how GFC has been on a journey of reinforcing that leadership isn't something that is tied to a role, but that it's ah an exercise and an activity that should be available to all.
00:42:54
Speaker
But that even in roles that have a certain degree of authority within the organization, and in our case, that meant our regional program leads, we had gone to a co-leadership, so co-directorship of those regions.
00:43:11
Speaker
And it struck me as I was talking about co-leadership and talking about shared leadership and what I had learned over the years in terms of exercise of leadership and sharing power.
00:43:23
Speaker
I had a colleague, Haley, um who had kind of progressed within the organization in a variety of roles and was now occupying a position of global managing director.
00:43:36
Speaker
which kind of dawned on me, she's she's really doing the job of a ah co-CEO and in many ways. And so here I am talking about this, why not why not me?
00:43:47
Speaker
And because I think it actually makes sense, because we're so complimentary, we've been kind of doing it anyway. It struck me as a ah bit unequitable. If Haley was sort of doing many aspects of this job, we should make it like more official. And so we started exploring with the board and then started exploring with Haley. and after several months of coaching and exploration and figuring out how it might work, when it might work, we decided to go for it.
00:44:20
Speaker
And we did a lot of research looking at other organizations and we knew several organizations, both partners and peers that had gone to this model, absorbed a lot of what they had learned.
00:44:32
Speaker
and then created a framework that was meant to be both clear to everyone within the organization because there's always a question, well, who do I go to for what and who's reporting to whom and this and that. So we tried to create a framework that really clarified, okay, who's it going to be in charge of what, but how are we also going to stay involved enough in each other's sort of spheres of like more formal authority?
00:44:57
Speaker
so that we can effectively collaborate. We can effectively step in when someone is out on leave or has some sort of other you know emergency. And then, so how do we communicate that to the organization? So there's enough clarity. And it was it was a lot of hard work, but eventually we got there and have continued to do joint coaching to give ourselves some space to think about it. We just, this week, redid our whole spheres of authority and document because we realized that we weren't being as comprehensive as we needed to be in clarifying what we're both actually paying attention to.
00:45:37
Speaker
So we're playing in each other's yards of authority quite a bit. But it really, what we found is it's effective because we are Number one, we're we're willing to take this on together. um We had enough trust built already where we could conceivably be effective together.
00:45:57
Speaker
And our interests and experiences and skill sets and areas of expertise were complementary. and So we didn't divide it in ways that other organizations have where you have someone who's more the external person and someone who's more of an internal person.
00:46:15
Speaker
We were pretty adamant about not just simply having ah someone who's a representative and someone who's an operations person, but we truly would be more integrated and able to be deployed internally and externally in different contexts and such.
00:46:30
Speaker
And so, yeah, it's an ongoing process of reexamining how we're working together. yeah How we can work together better. And as circumstances and the environment change, how do we need to shift our focus areas? Do we need to shift our formal areas of supervision and responsibility, which we have?
00:46:50
Speaker
And so it took some doing and took a lot of thought, took a lot of care to come up with the starting point. And it continues to take a lot of care to ensure that we're working smoothly together.
00:47:02
Speaker
We had a history of working smoothly together, which made it a lot easier than if we were both coming in separately to an organization, which I think I would find very terrifying.
00:47:12
Speaker
but Not that it couldn't work out, but it would it would it would be nerve wracking. But also, I think it's just a structural manifestation of how we want to operate in the world.
00:47:26
Speaker
I think it's effective to share power, to share leadership, to make it available to more folks. And I think down the road, we're looking at if we can establish this model within GFC, we can ultimately make this role available to different kinds of people when inevitably one of us goes on to something else.
00:47:48
Speaker
And you don't have to have one CEO who can do everything because Nobody can do everything. Nobody has the complete skill set. You talk with a lot of CEOs.
00:48:00
Speaker
I'm pretty confident that most CEOs, if they are being honest with you and themselves, are going to feel at times like they're not up to the job.
00:48:11
Speaker
And I think there's some... Truth to that, that it is difficult to be all things all the time to everybody internally and externally and to have any semblance of a family life at the same time.
00:48:27
Speaker
And that's a real struggle. And I think we've been able to help each other through various moments where it would have been very difficult for us to persevere alone. Yes, there's no doubt being a nonprofit CEO is is a tough gig. And you're absolutely right. It's very difficult for one person to embody all of the skill sets. But I'm curious to hear, how has the shared leadership structure changed the way you set strategy for the organization and make decisions?
00:48:56
Speaker
That's a good question. I think one thing that John didn't touch on is that we actually have shared leadership throughout the organization. So it's not just at the regional level. we have co-chairs of our board and we actually had co-chairs of the board before we had co-CEOs.
00:49:12
Speaker
And we also have our co-regional directors. So in terms of setting regional strategy, which is how regions are informed with the fundraising priorities for the region or what they want to do, that is set, those regional strategies are set by co-regional directors who both bring complementary skills to the region from the region and are able to really feed up from what partners are telling them and how we want to move within region for the strategy of the organization.
00:49:44
Speaker
We are actually coming up to a new strategic phase of GFC, which has come around really quickly. And I would say, whilst John and I are co-leaders, the shared leadership part of GFC goes beyond John and I. you know There are very few decisions John and I make in isolation of anybody else.
00:50:05
Speaker
And I think that could have been a natural worry for people that when John Paul brought me up to be his co, does that then mean that we become this hub of activity and decision making that then doesn't filter down to the senior management team? But actually, that doesn't really happen. You know, John and I check in every day for 30 minutes, make sure we're on top of things together. is there If there's anything the other wants a bit of advice on or just, oh, I just need to be up to speed with this just so you're aware of it, but I've got it covered. But the actual hub of decision making activity happens both at our strategic management level and also at our wider strategic advisory team, which is everybody who's a director and above. And we believe very much that in nurturing leadership and allowing space for others to lead within the organization. So what I would say about setting the strategy for the organization is incredibly collective.
00:50:57
Speaker
We really, really pride ourselves on taking the time to be collective and collaborative as an organization. So the last time we went through a strategic planning phase, of course, because we're a non-for-profit, we're not a foundation, we continue all other activity across the organization whilst also doing our strategic planning process at the same time.
00:51:18
Speaker
And we invite the entire organization to contribute to it, to feed into it, to share ideas, to help shape how we move that forward. And it's led actually within the senior management team, not necessarily from John or i And that really feeds into how we set strategy for the organization and where we want to go. And that's really, really important to both John and me, because whilst we might be a better team together in terms of John on his own and, you know, the additional skills I bring, we're even better with our senior management team and then even better when you bring in everybody else.
00:51:52
Speaker
And we really do believe that that's really critical to guiding GFC forward and how we want to go. and it's going to be a really interesting strategic planning process this one, because the world is so different from how it was when we did it nearly five years ago. And we need to give ourselves, I think, a bit of a moment take a breath.
00:52:13
Speaker
And think about what actually does GFC look like in this new world, in this world where it's not so straightforward to raise money. It's not so straightforward to send money. It's not so straightforward to...
00:52:28
Speaker
potentially challenge assumptions or different things out there in in the ecosystem. So, and we may need to work with others in a different way. And all of that is really exciting because it is exciting to change and adapt. And it's one brilliant thing that I love about running a public non-for-profit. We can move and adapt very quickly. And we do. And we did in the pandemic, we did when Russia invaded Ukraine, we we can move and adapt quickly and listen to our partners and act in ways that I think are really quite powerful.
00:53:01
Speaker
But then there's also the challenge of running a not-for-profit charity who has to raise all their income. So you get the flexibility to move and shift and take on new opportunities. Like we've just become the fiscal host for Girl Up, which is really, really exciting. But at the same time, there's also the challenge of you know bringing in that money and What we try and do very much is have the overarching strategic vision of the organization being fed up from those strategic priorities from the region.
00:53:28
Speaker
And then we move. So, it's you know, it's coming from our partners. How do they want us to move? And we've just had our latest grantee perception survey done, which we do every other year. and I think it's the Center for Effective Philanthropy. Am I right, John? Yeah. And we get that. And all that data also feeds into what are our partners telling us they need from GFC going forward? And how does that change the way we try and operate in the world?
00:53:52
Speaker
I do think co-leadership is such an effective model of leadership. And it's wonderful to hear that the spirit of collaboration really runs through everything you do down to really genuinely listening to what your grantee partners are telling you through this perception survey that you referenced. I mean, I think clearly there are so many benefits to being co-CEOs, but I'm curious,
00:54:16
Speaker
Is there anything that surprised you about becoming co-CEOs and perhaps can you reflect on any downsides? So I was the staff member that stepped up. So that was a shift for me.
00:54:30
Speaker
I joined GFC eight years ago as director in the programs team and I moved across to the development team. And for the four years prior to becoming co-CEO, I think it was about four years, I was a global managing director.
00:54:43
Speaker
So I was part of the senior management team working you know really closely with John, but John was my supervisor. So I think it's very fair to say that took a takes a minute. And even sometimes now I think, oh, am I bringing John this to talk about as my supervisor? you know And I have a little minute. I mean,
00:54:59
Speaker
I pride myself on being quite self-aware. so sometimes I'm like, oh, do I need, am I checking this with him as my co or my supervisor? So that definitely took a shift, but I don't, wouldn't necessarily say that was super surprising. But what I would say was surprising to me was how I suddenly really was questioning whether I was up to the job.
00:55:19
Speaker
Honestly, and the more I think about it, i don't think I did that as often as do now as global managing director. And I think it's because, i mean, I'm a recovering perfectionist. I hold my hand up to that. The team know that.
00:55:34
Speaker
John, for years, used to tell me I was setting such high expectations for myself that I never set for anybody else. And I think in this role, because the pressure is is bigger, it is, even though I was Global Management Director, and John says very kindly that he felt I was already doing the job, there's definitely a step change, 100%.
00:55:54
Speaker
hundred percent that I guess I underestimated the step change, how it would make me feel inside. And that, yeah, I can get really locked in on this thought of I'm just not good enough at this job.
00:56:09
Speaker
Years ago, when I was at my previous organisation, I got an email from Global Fund for Children's then CEO. And I remember sitting there in my grassroots community office thinking, oh, what a great job. And now I've got it. And then I'm like, this, am I good enough at it? You know, so there is this...
00:56:25
Speaker
Little girl probably who's like, oh, this was the dream. Like, I can't believe I actually have this job and I love this job, but I take the responsibility and pressure for it really seriously, but sometimes almost too far. you know And I think any CEO could relate to that, particularly in the non-for-profit sector. And again again, that's another shout out to co-leadership because when I feel like that, John's often not feeling like that. And then in the moments where John has his, you know, I'm really worried about this, I'm not feeling worried. And, you know, we can help almost recalibrate each other's irrational worries. Sometimes they're rational, but often they're not. So I think that was a bit of a surprise to me. Actually, i don't remember feeling like this this often as the global managing director, even though i still shared many of these
00:57:12
Speaker
things with John anyway, like the amount of things I've questioned myself over the past couple of years, I've always come back to, well, I would have it done that anyway as global management director, but I've almost put this extra pressure on myself, which honestly has not come from anybody else. It is me.
00:57:27
Speaker
It's, it's, you know, it's how I'm seeing. And I don't know if that's a bit about being a female CEO. And I, you know, when I talk to other female leaders, like we just put so much extra pressure on ourselves, you know, I'm a bit whisper whisper younger than John.
00:57:41
Speaker
Those kind of things. And he was doing a really good job before I became co-CEO with him. So i think a lot of that, I i underestimated that bit of it, I think.
00:57:52
Speaker
John, you reflected earlier that leadership is not tied to a role, but is an activity. It is something you do. It is a verb. And and I wonder if the sense of imposter syndrome that I think, Hayley, you were articulating there and is something that that men feel as well, because yes, it is something that a lot of women leaders talk about. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, men may be less willing to admit it.
00:58:19
Speaker
ah But this was my first CEO ship at Global Fund for Children. And frankly, it it was pretty messy when when I arrived. Haley arrived just before me and can attest to that.
00:58:32
Speaker
There were days and and weeks where I felt pretty out of my depth. But I also felt that I had the support from people within the organization and I had enough support.
00:58:43
Speaker
knowledge from previous roles to be able to navigate plenty of tricks up my sleeve tools in the kit to frameworks to to bring out to kind of crutch my way through. But as I started connecting with others in this particular role, quickly realized that nobody that I've ever talked with feels 100% comfortable all the time with everything men, women alike.
00:59:07
Speaker
But I now feel confident. I mean, you don't have to outrun the bear. You have to outrun the other camper who's running away from the bear. so yeah So as long as you're running and surviving and accomplishing some things along the way, it's never going to be perfect. It's never going to be exactly the organization you want it to be. But as long as there's progress, as long as there's learning, as long as there's impact, as long as the team is in the acceptable range of disruption and and conflict that always happens within any entity,
00:59:43
Speaker
family, a company, an organization, whatever it happens to be, just to do the next thing. And that's okay. But in terms of downsides, it surprised me just as it surprised Haley how much of a transition it would be because my perception was she was already mostly doing it, but it is different.
01:00:02
Speaker
And i that that surprised me a bit. It's not a downside, but something that surprised me that i I didn't anticipate with the calls and emails and questions I got, like, are you okay? Is this this Haley person trying to take your job? Are they trying to push you out? don't know.
01:00:19
Speaker
No, this is my idea. but it hadn't really even occurred to me before that you know people would perceive it that way. But it didn't take long to establish that that was absolutely not the case. And then, of course, there were worries that, OK, John's leaving and this is how he's doing it.
01:00:35
Speaker
And that was not the case either. At some point, I will leave. You can't stay with an organization forever. But that was not the the driver of this decision at all. And here we are.
01:00:46
Speaker
A couple of years later, almost. And we're still here and and still, yeah, I wouldn't say enjoying it all of the time. but We've accomplished some pretty amazing things together and we've progressed the organization in ways that I think are really positive. And I'm really proud of the work we've done.
01:01:05
Speaker
And I would just add, like for anybody thinking about this, I'd say some of the critical things that are so important is John and I are actually good friends. We know each other's families. We've developed a friendship over the years that I think it creates a real safety with each other. And I think we take safety for granted in leadership.
01:01:27
Speaker
And we don't realise we were safe until we were not. We don't feel like we are anymore. And I think our values are really, really aligned, really similar, but we have complementary skills, which John's mentioned earlier. We definitely think about things very differently, but ultimately what we believe to be true and what we believe the world should look like and what we believe we want to be as individual people and our commitment to learning, our commitment to learning,
01:02:01
Speaker
always trying to be better versions of ourselves, I think means that we are always, we just always ah trying to bring out the best in the other as well. And I think that that's just a really important thing that you can't measure. You can't write it on an impact form, like we're talking non-profit speak. But I do think that's really, really important, particularly for Global Fund for Children, because we are the Global Fund for Children's first co-CEOs. So it's not to say that an external person couldn't come in, not at all.
01:02:31
Speaker
But it I think to ground the model of shared leadership at the CEO level in an organization, doing it with two people who already had a workflow together, who already knew the things that they could bring to it.
01:02:46
Speaker
We're just helpful that we're also on different time zones. You know, the the organization has a CEO for longer, you know, in the day we can deploy ourselves. There's all the practicalities that come with it that are great. But I do know that even when he was my supervisor, I always felt safe with John. You know, I could be vulnerable. I could ask for help and I and i could admit, you know, i I don't know what to do here. Or, you know, if I text him and I'm really worried about this, he'd get on the phone and be like, look, cut this let's talk this through. And I know we we are able to be that for each other in a different way now as co-CEOs. And I just think that that is something I would really emphasize as being really important at the heart of co-leadership.
01:03:28
Speaker
Yes, I love that you touched upon that point of safety, Hayley, because the dynamic is completely different when you are a chief executive versus the board, for example. And it can often be quite a lonely space. And you do sometimes as a chief exec feel vulnerable or exposed and having sort of a partner in that space, a thought partner to to bounce ideas off of and to just be able to to grow and lead together. actually is ah is a real privilege. And you know kudos to you, John, for for having the insight to see this as a more progressive model and one that could actually benefit the organization. And I think it's fascinating that the initial perception was almost that, oh, something's wrong here. And that that's why you are embarking on co-leadership. John, I just want to touch very quickly on your founder, Maya, that you talked about at the the top of the podcast before we start to wrap up.
Navigating Leadership Transitions
01:04:25
Speaker
Is she still involved?
01:04:27
Speaker
She's a close friend, ally, and an advisor. She's not formally and involved on the board, but she's a tremendous champion for the organization. There's so much that she established during her long tenure creating the organization and That remains. And things have have changed inevitably. But I know she's, when she talks about us, she's very happy that we've been able to take care of her organization and bring it to a place that she really appreciates. And it's great to have her as ah as a friend and an ally.
01:05:02
Speaker
That is great to hear. i know that so many founder-led organizations sometimes struggle with that transition away from the founder. What do you think has been the secret to success in the case of Global Fund for Children?
01:05:16
Speaker
We did struggle. yeah I think inevitably when an amazing charismatic founder departs, there's going to be a time of transition. And as much care as you take with that transition,
01:05:28
Speaker
they're going to be difficulties. We see that among our partners all the time. I've seen that in organizations I'm close to. So there there was a time of of difficulty, but I think enough time had to go by and enough new people had to come in to sort of begin to reimagine the organization, still upholding the core values and ideas you know that still exist from Maya's initial moment of inspiration.
01:05:56
Speaker
But yeah, I think when Haley and our colleague Corey came in just before me and then I came in and we we found folks who were who had been internal change makers all along who were ready to kind of reimagine things, we were able to, i think, simultaneously uphold those traditions, those ideas, which are still central to the organization. But do them in in slightly different ways and open ourselves up to different kinds of of breakthroughs, which have really helped us progress.
01:06:32
Speaker
But yeah it's I think it's it's no shame because i think a founder transition is inevitably going to be difficult for an organization. John, Hayley, this has been such a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for your time, for your candor and your insights. and Coming on now to a final question, what is one thing you would like people to take away from this conversation?
Reflections on GFC's Mission
01:06:56
Speaker
Give us ah a final thought or reflection.
01:06:59
Speaker
Well, I guess for me, it's always that an organization like Global Fund for Children exists because we really believe that giving unrestricted flexible funding to grassroots organisations, those that are unregistered, completely nascent, youth-led, is exactly what the world needs to create long-term change.
01:07:23
Speaker
And that if you hadn't heard of us before today, i hope you've enjoyed hearing about Global Fund for Children and that you'll go and find out more about us because we sound like we're really big, we sound like an organization you've heard of, but you probably haven't. And I really do hope actually that's a big part of what the audience takes away is that Global Fund for Children exists, this is what we do, and please go and find out more about us.
01:07:50
Speaker
Yeah, as a compliment to that, i just wanna acknowledge the moment that we're in. the pressures on all kinds of civil society organizations all over the world, which uniquely affect young people who are on the move, who are in conflict, but who are also agents of real positive change.
01:08:12
Speaker
And just as a very broad sector, to just emphasize that this is a moment to have courage and to act and to reimagine and to have hope that you know we can rebuild not what was lost exactly, but we can rebuild something different that really truly is rooted in, however you think about it, a power shift or locally led development or a more decolonized way of of thinking about how global collaboration happens in a more community driven, equitable, fair and effective and efficient way.
01:08:54
Speaker
this is the time. So wherever you are in whatever organization, or do something and do something different and rise to the occasion. John Hecklinger, Hayley Ruffey, it's been a pleasure to have you on the Charity CEO podcast. Thank you.
01:09:14
Speaker
Well, that's a wrap on another inspiring episode of the Charity CEO Podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling empowered and uplifted. I know it did for me. If you loved what you heard, please share the joy by leaving us a quick review on your favorite podcast platform.
01:09:29
Speaker
Reviews really help us reach more listeners and grow this amazing community of change makers. Be sure to also hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And for even more inspiration and resources, head on over to thecharityceo.com.
01:09:44
Speaker
There, you can dive into our past episodes from the last five seasons and find valuable content to help fuel your impact. Thank you for listening. And remember, together, we're building a better world.
01:09:56
Speaker
See you next time.