Forum on Sustainable Child Empowerment (FSCE) previously named as Forum on Street Children-Ethiopia is an indigenous not-for-profit, non-governmental organization established at the end of 1989 by a group of social development professionals who thought and believed that they can make a difference in the lives of vulnerable children especially those who are forced to live and/or work on the streets of major cities and towns of Ethiopia due to various reasons.

FSCE, in its 25 years of service in promoting and implementing child protection work has accumulated an extensive expertise and experience that has helped the organization to evolve into one of the leading local child protection organizations in the country. Working on a wide spectrum of urban disadvantaged children’s issues, FSCE has enjoyed successful track record of success stories 

FSCE initiated the establishment of Community Based Arbitrators “Mekari shemagelies”, at Woreda levels which is an initiation and collaborative effort of selected sub cities, Addis Ababa Police commission and Save the Children-Sweden. As a result of this initiative, it has been possible to establish model child protection units in selected kebeles of Arada sub city in Addis Ababa. 

FSCE was also able to introduce Child Protection Units (CPU) in police station while also integrating child protection issues into the curriculum of the police training institutions. This has been a great help in having police officers that have enough knowledge on how to protect children. Currently, Child Protection Units (CPUs) are now fully accepted and are being scaled up at various levels by the Ethiopian Government. 

In the absence of a national child policy in the country, in 2007 FSCE felt the inevitability of developing institutional child protection policy and developed its own “Child Protection Policy”. This measure is a fundamental stride towards building consensus on the overall direction of the organization and setting minimum standard in service provision for children. As part of facilitating the work of police stations, the second effective collaboration has been established with the Ethiopian policy college of developing training manual On Child Right and Child Protection by the then “Forum on street children in Ethiopia” in collaboration with Save the Children-Sweden and Ethiopia Police College with the objective of enabling the police force to be trained on the wellbeing and protection needs and other related issues pertaining to children. Save the Children Sweden (SCS) and Forum on Street Children-Ethiopia (FSCE) are the pioneering supporters of the police child protection units (CPUs), and child friendly courts (CFC) in the country. 

Other peculiar achievements of FSCE include the establishment of Community Based Child protection/correction Centres (CBCC) in 2007, and development of multi-stakeholder approach in 2009-2010 that encompasses the active involvement of various government bodies, Community Based Organizations, communities, non-governmental bodies, and target children, which is very helpful in implementing the program and for ensuring sustainability. 

FSCE area based multi-stakeholder child protection interventions expanded its foundation and proved to be an effective way of addressing the problems of children and at the same time strengthen the establishment of Multi-stakeholder Child Protection Councils. Currently the multi-stakeholder child protection council based interventions are rolled out in all area programme offices of FSCE

Following the issuance of new Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) legislation issued in 2009, FSCE has redefined its Vision, Mission and program and reregistered as Forum on Sustainable Child Empowerment under the registration number 0064. The mission statement and FSCE programs is again rectified and revised during the evaluation of its fifth strategic plan (2010-2014) at its mid-term and the organizational development study conducted in 2013. 

Currently, we offer a continuum of child focused development works in five area program offices (Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa, Bahirdar, Dessie and Adama) located in two cities namely Addis Ababa and Diredewa, and two regional states Amhara and Oromiya respectively.