ACE TRANSITION PARTNERS
We are the consulting arm of Alliance for Children Everywhere that guides institutions transitioning to family-based care.
We launched ‘ACETP’ in 2020 to guide institutions toward family-based care for thousands of children in Southern Africa and beyond.
Our consulting team provides services to organizations during their transition to family-based care, with custom plans tailored to the specific institutional, social, and political contexts in which our partners operate.
In each partnership, the wellbeing of children defines our our success. We envision every child, everywhere has a safe and strong family within a sustainable community.
Our partners are living proof that family-based care works in many contexts.
OUR IMPACT
ACE Zambia is our original proof of concept.
ACE Zambia began in 1998 as a partnership between Americans and Zambians responding to the urgent needs of orphaned and abandoned children in the capital city of Lusaka. We opened a crisis nursery called the House of Moses that has since provided temporary shelter to over 1,000 children.
We found that many children had living family who loved them but couldn’t provide for them adequately. We relied on the expertise of local leaders, pastors, and families to identify hunger and social exclusion as root causes of child abandonment.
In response, we expanded our programs to prevent disruption and empower communities. Today, ACE Zambia is fully led and run by Zambians who serve more than 3,000 children and their families every year.
That model became a movement.
Our family-based care model prioritizes child safety and permanency in a secure, loving family. Our recent study shows that family-base care results in more effective operations and better outcomes for the children we serve.
We preserve a mother or caregiver’s bond with their child through emergency food relief to protect them both from the trauma of disruption.
Protect Families in Crisis
We work to identify a secure, loving, and permanent family for every orphaned and abandoned child through reintegration, fostering, and adoption.
Restore Children to Family
We provide education to children and caregivers in order to build self-sustainability and break the cycle of social exclusion.
Strengthen Communities
OUR SERVICES
We guide organizations through the transition process from institutional to family-based care that may include preservation, empowerment, reintegration, fostering, and adoption programs.
Technical Support
Our team provides insight from lessons learned in over twenty years of direct programming through our proof of concept in Lusaka, Zambia; as well as globally-recognized best practices in child welfare.
Consultation
We help organizations develop a trajectory of growth in order to live out their mission and purpose as successfully as possible through monitoring and evaluation, strategic planning, and organizational change.
Capacity Building
Our consultants are globally-recognized leaders in the family-based care movement.
We bring diverse backgrounds in social work, program development, and public policy to our consulting partnerships.
In recent years consultants for ACE Transition Partners have presented at conferences organized by The United Nations, World Without Orphans, Global Washington, and Christian Alliance for Orphans.
Within Zambia, we are members of GHR’s Children in Families Initiative, convening with governmental and non-governmental organizations to build family-based child welfare policies in Zambia. Over the past twenty years we have built a reputation of excellence and serve as the sole approved adoption training organization with the Ministry of Community Development and Social Welfare.
TRANSITION RESOURCES
Hear from expert practitioners.
The ACE Zambia team has built a strong proof of concept and restored thousands of children to family since 1998. Below, the team addresses common questions from institutions that are considering a transition.
Daisy Muzukutwa, former Executive Director ACE Zambia, addresses the following questions:
Financial viability of reintegration
Future of institutional staff after the transition
Where to begin when considering a transition
Institutions and Reintegration
Chilala Shilimi Nyendwa, Manager of the Family Preservation and Empowerment Program, ACE Zambia, addresses the following questions:
Social stigma facing reintegrated children
Ability of families to financially support their children; and how organizations might respond when families cannot
Child safety outside of institutional care
Families and Reintegration
Simon Kanyembo, Director of Social Services, ACE Zambia, addresses the following questions:
Why child welfare organizations should prefer family-based care to institutional care
Response to children who are abandoned or unable to be reintegrated
Adoption and Foster Care
ACE TRANSITION PARTNERS TEAM
Chantry Mweemba
Country Director
Lusaka, Zambia
Simon Kanyembo
Director of Partnerships and Program Quality
Lusaka, Zambia
Chisangalalo Ntonio
Country Director
Lilongwe, Malawi
Gabriel Walder
Chief Executive Officer
Portland, OR
Interested in learning more about transitioning to family-based care? We’d love to hear from you.
CONTACT US
PHONE
Call: 1 (206) 420-6689
P.O. Box 1568
Ridgefield, WA 98642
