Terre des Hommes and the good life for all

• Current emergencies, wars, and crises in many regions of the world are violating children's and human rights. They are increasingly forcing Terre des Hommes and its partner organizations to focus primarily on providing basic services for children, young people, and their families, including health, nutrition, housing, and protection from violence.
• The goal is to empower young people in a comprehensive sense (socially, psychologically, economically) and to provide them with the opportunities and a safe space to empower themselves so that they can assert their rights. A key prerequisite for this is a comprehensive basic education, which must be promoted.

Based on a child rights-based approach Terre des Hommes , together with children, young people, and partner organizations, will work to counteract violations of children's rights. As part of democratic civil society, we will oppose anti-democratic and anti-human rights movements and so-called shrinking spaces. Together with partner organizations, we actively and constructively participate in building a strong, inclusive civil society 

• Climate change and biodiversity loss have already led to changes that, realistically, cannot be reversed in the foreseeable future. Local and temporary crises are increasingly becoming geographically and temporally boundless. Therefore, suitable strategies are needed to minimize the impacts of these unavoidable changes on people living today and future generations, for example, through measures such as adapted land use. Local communities are just as crucial in this regard as governmental structures and the international community.
• Terre des Hommes therefore advocates for climate justice, ecological integrity, intergenerational justice, and economic and social justice. These aspects must have a stronger influence on human and children's rights processes, as well as on all other political decisions.
• So far, Terre des Hommes cannot yet rely on legally binding international conventions, but must instead contribute to first winning socio-political majorities for a fundamental change in the global economic and lifestyle system and corresponding legal and international legal norms.
• Terre des Hommes will address the issues of sustainability and promoting resilience against unstoppable environmental destruction in its project, campaign and public relations work in Germany, the EU and in the project countries, and will work to put it on the international agenda.

• Especially in times when project partners are increasingly forced to prioritize securing basic needs such as health, nutrition, education, housing, and protection from violence, Terre des Hommes is called upon to work towards eliminating the root causes of poverty and violence and towards a sustainable, future-proof world. The goal of a good life for all people can only be achieved through a global transformation towards sustainability.
• Terre des Hommes will therefore strengthen projects and project components that develop and test elements of an alternative, and thus sustainable, way of life and can advance global change.
  With each project approval, Terre des Hommes therefore examine what contribution the project can make, in the specific local context, to sustainable global change and to alternative, future-proof forms of living and economic activity.
• The necessary transformation processes require strong civil societies. People must adopt new, common-good-oriented ways of thinking and practice the ability to actively participate in shaping social change, including children and young people. Terre des Hommes will empower and enable its partner organizations to take an active and constructive role in their communities, contributing to the development of a strong, inclusive civil society both within the project itself and beyond.
• Education is a fundamental prerequisite for change. Alongside comprehensive basic education, transformative education plays a key role. This critical and emancipatory educational approach aims not only at imparting knowledge about sustainability but also at fostering individual changes in attitudes and behavior. Terre des Hommes Terre des Hommes development education work in Germany and the projects it supports are intended to contribute to transformative education and thus to strengthening sustainable action. In particular, they aim to provide young people with experiences of their own self-efficacy, motivating them to act as multipliers and to engage as "change agents" for global transformation.
• The intended transformation is designed to counteract unequal power and decision-making structures, including, for example, global neocolonial patterns, national patriarchal structures, and individual gender-based discrimination. Accordingly, the global economy, which in its current form causes or facilitates violations of children's rights, as well as the reproduction of power asymmetries and dependencies through international cooperation, are starting points for this transformation.
• Comprehensive transformation must not remain an abstract future goal that could be achieved simply by flipping some imaginary lever. Rather, despite all the inherent conflicts of objectives, the goal is to rapidly and concretely address global transformation in Germany, the EU, and the project countries, taking small and large steps, placing it on the international agenda, and making it irreversible.