The public budget of a Government is the most powerful tool that can be used to address poverty. Indeed, the vast majority of investments in social services for children and their families are now funded by national governments. This emphasizes the importance of how national resources are distributed and the central role of the Ministries of Finance.

To ensure budgets benefit children and their families, its allocation and expenditure processes need to be participatory, transparent, accountable, sustainable, effective, efficient and equitable. The Public Finance for Children initiative thus seeks to make children visible in national budgets. This initiative is a response to the rapid decline in development assistance that middle-income countries are experiencing.

In order to effectively monitor the budget, citizens and policy makers need to understand the national budgeting process and its implications for child well-being and rights realization. To support the fruitful delivery of Public Finance for Children courses in Lesotho, SPRI Global is closely collaborating with Unicef Lesotho and Lesotho’s Ministry of Finance in preparing a training manual and holding a 3-day Training of Trainers course in October 2018. The aim of the course is to strengthen Public Finance for Children literacy among members of parliament and CSOs, among other stakeholders.

SPRI Global’s expertise and experience in the fields of capacity building, child rights realization, micro and macroeconomics, public finance management and social protection is essential for developing both the training manual and the Training of Trainers course. Training cycles are expected to be 2 or 3 days long, and a didactic approach that is content-oriented and interactive will be adopted.

Through this project, SPRI Global continues to contribute to strengthening linkages of policy and planning to budget allocations and thus to long-term beneficial outcomes for children.