Over 100 million children are living or working on the streets of our global cities

This is an appalling indication of the priorities of the world we live in.

Toybox's strategy, quite simply, is to make the world a better place for street children.

“Our current strategic plan builds upon the organisation's successful growth and diversification over the last ten years. During this strategic period, we will continue to focus on children and young people in street situations by preventing those at the chaotic fringes of street life from fully entering it; supporting those living on the streets with practical means to meet their immediate needs; and walking alongside those who have left the streets to help reintegrate them back into their families, if appropriate, and their wider communities.”

Global plan 2026

Our vision

Our vision is of a just and fair world with no street children.

Our mission

Our mission is to reach 30,000 children and young people in street situations. With a focus on legal identity, we will register 5,000 children by September 2026.

Our core purpose

Our aim is to improve the life of each child we engage with, and to always be child centric.

Key goals

Our four key goals for 2023-2026

Change over 30,000 lives

To positively change the lives of over 30,000 children and young people in street situations through our locally led sustainable partnering model.

Grow our income

Grow our income by 2% more than the international sector average by the end of the strategic period.

A new approach

Find the quantum leap for Toybox in fundraising and a new programmatic approach.

A happy team

Have an inclusive, high performing and happy team as captured in an extended staff survey at the end of the strategic period.

Themes and commitments

Themes for 2023-2026

During this strategic period, we will continue to focus on the following meta themes and programme themes:

Our commitments

We will always strive to ensure that:

The child is at the centre of all we do.
Safeguarding is core to all our activities.
Children will be the guardians of their own stories.
Programme design and implementation is locally led.

Why will we be different?

We will always try to fully understand the needs of children and young people in street situations and respond with the most relevant solution, not a pre-determined model.
We are driven by a single value - to be Courageous.
Innovation, EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) and PPB (Power, Privilege and Bias) will be part of our DNA.

More about Toybox

Our values

At Toybox we have one core value, to be Courageous. Underpinning the core value our principles are:

To put street children and young people first.
To stand rooted against injustice.
To be ambitious for positive change in the world.
To innovate with curiosity.
To work as one team and be kind.

Our history

In 1991 the BBC aired a documentary about police officers shooting children living on the streets of Guatemala City. A British couple responded to this and Toybox was born - born out of a desire to challenge injustice and change the future for street children. Our unusual name, Toybox, was chosen to capture the visual representation that every child deserves a childhood free from harm in a loving, nurturing family.

Our today

During the intervening years, Toybox, with countless dedicated, skilled staff and the most loyal supporters, has expanded its work to reach as many street children as possible. We are working across Latin America, Africa and Asia alongside children who are:

living and/or working on the streets;
subject to physical and sexual violence; - exploitation and abuse
without birth certificates, unrecognised citizens with no rights or opportunities;
not in school or with no access to healthcare or a job and;
excluded from education and need support with employment
in need of well-being support and;
in conflict with the law

Today our passion, commitment and reliance on Christian ethos remains undiluted, we are a compassionate and determined people based organisation in Milton Keynes, who completely believe that one day soon there will be a world with no street children. We are spurred on by anger and compassion that today millions of children are hiding under newspapers, sleeping on pavements, cowering in doorways; desperate to find food, desperate to find a toilet and desperate to be safe.

Our tomorrow

We don't want to exist; we want to be unnecessary, irrelevant, as no child will be forced to survive on the streets.

Toybox Global Plan 2023-2026