CSI SIX CORE PROGRAMMING PRINCIPLES ARE:

• Women rights: We believe that all women have certain inalienable rights that cannot be legitimately withheld under the guise of religious or cultural “laws” or “traditions”. We believe in the saying that “If you educate a man, you simply educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a nation. When a girl is educated, her income potential increases, maternal and infant mortality are reduced, her children are more likely to be immunized, and the birth rate decreases, and HIV infection rates are lowered. She is more likely to acquire skills to improve her family economic stability, and she is more likely to ensure that her daughters also receive an education. Educating girls pays dividend after dividend to the whole community.
• Non-discrimination: women and children have rights, regardless of their social status, disability, ethnicity or other factors. We therefore analyze whether there are particular groups of women and children who are especially at risk, and we aim to ensure that our interventions tackle discrimination so that all children can realize their rights.
• Sustainability: We believe that we will only achieve sustainable improvements in the fulfillment of children’s rights if our interventions improve the capacity of duty-bearers to meet their obligations, and if they can be replicated, taken over and scaled up local and national partners. We therefore think carefully about exit strategies. We seek to develop solutions that can be carried forward with the level of resources and support that are likely to be available in the country, while striving to influence and maximize the flow of available resources. We strive to reduce children’s future vulnerability to disaster, as well as to meet their immediate needs.
• Value for money: We believe in being accountable and transparent about the way we use the resources entrusted to us. We use those resources to change the lives of as many children as possible. We therefore seek to shape what we do in such a way that it provides excellent value for money, in terms of both immediate and long-term impact on children’s lives. We try to assess the costs of our work against the number of children and women we reach, directly and indirectly, and against the extent of change they are likely to experience because of our work.
• Using learning to influence change: We can only maximize our distinctive strengths as an NGO and our contribution to the realization of women’s and children’s rights if we use lesson learned to influence change at all levels- local, national and within CSI, and externally, with other actors. We therefore try to ensure that all of our work builds on and contributes to our own experience, as well as the experience of other organizations.

  Improving our capacity to assess both direct and indirect impact on our target group lives will be a key requirement for their implementation. We will carefully consider decisions about where we can work to have the greatest impact on the largest numbers of women and children, bearing in mind our special commitment to the poorest, most vulnerable and marginalized women and children.

• Working in conflict situation: The humanitarian Code of Conduct in conflict situations, we can only operate successfully if we are perceived to be impartial and responding to legitimate humanitarian need. Humanitarian agencies have defined their work in accordance with the principles of independence, impartiality, neutrality and humanity.