Being at the forefront of the child protection field since 2015, ChildHub supports the development of practices and policies and empowers professionals in South-East Europe through learning and networking opportunities both offline and online. With 13,000 registered members and more than 30,000 resources, this regional initiative turns six this month with a fresh look and new features.
Judit Nemeth-Almasi, Deputy Head of Terre des hommes Regional Office in Budapest, has been leading the initiative since its very beginning. Read an interview with Mrs. Nemeth-Almasi to discover what is ChildHub about and how it can be of help for you.
If ChildHub was a person, how would this person be like?
ChildHub would be a 37-year-old woman, living in Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina, working in a Centre for Social Work mostly on cases of children at risk, speaking Bosnian, and understanding a bit of English. She is a serious lady, who is committed to protecting children and improving her own knowledge and practices. She is outgoing, happy to meet other professionals she can learn from. She is full of innovative ideas of how she could improve her work environment or the way the Centre works.
What does ChildHub mean to you personally?
ChildHub is my passion, an initiative from which I learnt a lot about the online sphere and a project that always brings in new aspects of my work. Since I have been there from the beginning, I want to see it thrive further.
What is your favourite thing about ChildHub?
My favourite thing is the people: there is a network of professionals from all-over South-East Europe, that are intelligent, very professional, at the same time friendly and highly committed to the protection of children. We have become friends, and I can turn to them any time with anything, I know they would answer! If we meet, we hug, we laugh, we tell stories, but also work hard. I love this community, and I value how much work and time they have put in as volunteers to make it a success. Without these wonderful people, this project would not exist.
What makes ChildHub special?
For me, the specialty of ChildHub lies in its deep anchor in the region. Very few websites provide so much practical information in local languages, and materials that have been contextualised to countries. Also, it is much more than a website, as we have people in each country who are meeting and working together.
How can ChildHub be of help to child protection professionals?
ChildHub distils a lot of information around child protection that can be used by professionals who are looking for answers to their questions. It is always looking for the latest, the most innovative methodologies, learning and training resources, research, etc. and makes them available for people.
Is ChildHub also for parents?
While ChildHub mainly targets professionals, it does have an increasing number of materials that are useful for parents and can help parents improve their parenting skills. Our tagging system allows parents to look for these materials in a targeted way.
What does the new website bring to users?
The new site brings an air of freshness, after 6 years, and the functionalities were changed around to focus on user engagement. This means we wanted to promote the work of our volunteer network that has, by now, taken over a lot of the content management and translations, and by this example we would like to inspire others to join them!
How has ChildHub changed over the past six years?
While some things have stayed the same, ChildHub has changed quite a bit! We have added functionalities regularly, improving usability. We have listened to our users and offered newer and newer topics that were of interest to them. We introduced online courses, which now are offered in a blended way (until the COVID-19 pandemic). We developed a Library Galaxy that allows users to find resources that are similar in topic to one they know, and which visualises these relationships among resources. We also invested heavily into translations to make more resources available in the ChildHub languages (Albanian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croat Bosnian, Romanian, and Hungarian).
How do you see ChildHub in five years?
In five years, it would be wonderful to see ChildHub become more of a global site, with regional specific Hubs (in addition to the South-East European one): namely, having a West Africa ChildHub, an Asia ChildHub and a Middle East ChildHub, running based on vibrant professional communities of practice.
Become a member of the ChildHub community: https://childhub.org/en/user/register
ChildHub is funded by the Austrian Development Agency, Oak Foundation, and Terre des hommes Foundation.