Marc Jenni: «And We Never Stand Still»

Child’s Dream is a Swiss-founded charitable organization and foundation, established in 2003 by former bankers Marc Thomas Jenni and Daniel Marco Siegfried, who left their careers to address the urgent needs of marginalized children in Southeast Asia. They are now planning for the next ten years to ensure that their life’s work rests on a solid foundation and continues to generate even greater impact 

By Marc Thomas Jenni

When Child's Dream was established over 20 years ago, it was Daniel Siegfried and my intention to make the organisation redundant during our lifetimes. We assumed we could sustainably and systemically solve the most pressing issues.

However, since progress and development are not a straight line, and the world currently presents more problems than ever before, we must admit that our organisation will very likely outlive the two of us and will continue to be needed. For well over 1 million beneficiaries, our many initiatives – managed by close to 100 colleagues in the region – are simply too important to be ignored.

More Impactful and Sustainable

Daniel Siegfried and Marc Jenni win 2024 Education Prize in Zurich (Image: PH)

Child's Dream remains our source of happiness, so, we have no intention of going anywhere else or stopping work. In the contrary, our motivation and level of energy are unchanged and run high. We will therefore use the coming decade to carefully plan for the future. We feel that the time is right to initiate steps to make our work even more impactful and sustainable.

Good Governance

Currently, Daniel and I hold dual functions, which are not always beneficial when it comes to 'checks and balances'. We both serve as board members in our various legal entities, and simultaneously, we remain heavily involved in the operational running of the organisation. This double function is not the gold standard when it comes to 'Good Governance', so it's one of the issues that needs attention over the coming years.

We have already started the process to bring our Good Governance in line with best practices for the non-profit sector. Andrea Kleinert, long-term board member of our Swiss legal entity, luckily agreed last autumn to join us as a consultant for one year to help with organisational development and bring us to the next level. That process is still ongoing, but it has revealed that our current management team, with five directors, initially needs to be enlarged by one person.

New Chief of Staff

We are very happy to announce that Andrea has taken up the challenge to become our Chief of Staff, starting 1 August 2025. She will be able to fill a void in our management structure and help Daniel and me in the coming couple of years to reduce our involvement in daily operational issues. To prepare Child's Dream for this, we need to strengthen our operational systems and procedures.

This will free up time for us to concentrate on our roles in the boards, on how to purposefully shape our overall strategy for the future, and on mentoring our management team and talents. Furthermore, we would like to engage more with our university scholarship students to connect and inspire them to build fairer and more just societies. And we will definitely also not forget about the fuel in our engine, our donors, and will happily be further engaged on that level.

Coming Years

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(Image: Child's Dream)

We are very excited in what lies ahead of us in the coming years. Thanks to an already strong and now enlarged management team, we are very confident that we will reach our goals in the next decade, making Child's Dream ready for the longer-term future.

Stay tuned, and we will keep you updated as usual as we walk along that road together.