Street Child Reviews

The CEO actively describes and treats staff as replaceable, and this filters down throughout the entire culture of the company, which at its worst is a Stockholm syndrome/siege type mentality. Discipline is sometimes delivered in aggressive and/or bullying personal emails rather than through any formal process. Staff have been expected to pay for his meals when visiting in-country when they have not even been paid on-time. People who challenge the CEO's ideas or faults are swiftly shut out or asked to leave, costing the organisation talent, diversity and skills it needs to deliver and fund its work. This has the knock-on effect on its industry reputation. Company-wide problems with culture, pay, recognition, morale, benefits, and structures are widely ignored in favour of a vision that seems focussed on expanding into as many countries as possible and raising funds, rather than realising staff are the pillars and boundaries of these efforts. The senior management largely enables this to protect their own positions and sanity, institutionalised to the CEO's personality. Staff have great solidarity as they need it to cope with the toxic trickle-down stress from rudderless, chaotic and demanding management trying to cope with his last-minute changes and need for control. There is sometimes some superficial concern for staff wellbeing but the lack of any HR department shows this for the lip-service it is, and how little real change happens. There are examples of this where health and safety have become an issue, but never dealt with in a thorough enough way. This is the major factor preventing Street Child from becoming a great charity. People are not genuinely valued from the top down and this creates a dissonance between its mission and its culture. The charity industry exploits young people and interns, and Street Child is no exception. Young unpaid interns are kept on for months past agreed terms. International volunteers are poorly recruited (ie without suitable qualifications) or poorly managed, left to navigate vague expense systems and complex team politics with little to no formal structures or support. Turnover is high as people leave for greener pastures; those that stay can experience chronic stress or mental health problems like anxiety or depression. Street Child is quick to champion its local teams verbally and at fundraising events, but in reality, it is telling that they are poorly paid and poorly supported by its comparatively well-paid leadership. Too often Street Child lauds itself for delivering cost-effective projects without acknowledging it is the staff who bear that burden with very low, breadline wages; the job itself is expected to be the reward, but leadership seems blind that the job needs to be well-supported and recognised to be rewarding. As a result, in some cases, instances of corruption and chronic in-fighting have developed. As often they are unable to find other opportunities in-country, some local staff can stay on for years disengaged and undervalued. This can affect the quality of work being delivered, as well as eroding any initiative to innovate and affect positive change. Promotions are made seemingly on goodwill rather than genuine qualification, leaving low morale that discourages staff from doing their best work. They are often expected to deliver very high standards from leadership who do not embody those standards themselves, and often this ask comes without the appropriate funds, recognition or suitable compensation. Those that can find better opportunities move on, again costing the organisation invaluable experience and skills. This is tragic as often these are passionate and well-qualified staff who care deeply about the work. Priority is sometimes given to high-profile donors visiting projects in-country rather than ensuring the capacity is supported in the first place.

The senior leadership do not care about their employees - there is a long-standing practice of hiring people straight out of university where people don't know any better about what to expect from the world of work, and pushing them to a point where they struggle and either quit, in which case they don't fit the "fast-paced agile culture" at Street Child (i.e. victim-blaming), or if they last for a few years, they are really rewarded for their loyalty, and there is a strong sense of favoritism for certain staff. If you come in mid-career, then you don't really fit into either of these camps, and they don't really know what to do with you. Street Child has no willingness to learn from what other organisations do well. This makes it very hard if you have ideas that originate from non-Street Child experience. It means that you have to do a lot of managing upwards if you want to bring in anything you've learnt externally - framing ideas in a way that appeals to senior managers, encouraging them to think it's their idea that you are just finding a way to implement, not mentioning sources for best practice in case it triggers a negative response. The executive leadership team is chaotic at best, and malicious at worst. They change their minds at random - or if it's not random, don't justify why they make certain decisions - and have been known to take significant programmatic decisions without consulting staff. They take a very long time to discuss anything around promotion or change in responsibilities, or change in work pattern, which is really frustrating, even if requested contractual changes are only to make sure that paperwork reflects reality. HR capacity is almost non-existent, so raising issues is extremely difficult. While having a married couple at the top of an organisation is not unheard of, there is absolutely nothing in place to manage this extreme conflict of interest - the Board should really look at this. How the Board has not raised severe concerns over the constant flow of staff out of the organisation and the short average tenure also calls into question their ability to effectively hold the organisation to account. There's also a lot that can be said about the lack of diversity and inclusion, particularly at board level, as well as a sense of white savourism that underlies a lot of Street Child's work.