How Should the Covenant Fund Navigate Its Teenage Years? 

How Should the Covenant Fund Navigate Its Teenage Years? 

As someone who has spent years researching military-connected children and young people, and working alongside Covenant Fund-backed programmes, I’ve developed both ground-level intimacy and strategic distance with this work. I’ve watched the fund reach its tenth year, the threshold of adolescence. Like any young person entering their teenage years, it faces a pivotal question: what kind of fund does it want to become? 

Finding Identity Beyond Expectations  

Childhood has been about establishing the basics building trust, understanding needs, learning what works. The fund has developed its core identity: building trust, understanding needs, creating infrastructure. But adolescence demands something different. It’s a time for questioning inherited assumptions, for testing boundaries, for discovering purpose beyond simply meeting expectations. 

For military-connected children and young people, adolescence is already complex marked by frequent moves, parental deployments, transitions between schools and communities. They navigate identity formation while carrying the invisible weight of military life. The fund, entering its own teenage years, must ask: are we brave enough to be authentic, or will it just meet expectations safely?  

The Courage to Take Risks 

Teenagers learn by trying, failing, and trying differently. Yet institutions often calcify as they age, becoming risk-averse precisely when they should be most adventurous. The fund’s teenage years should be characterised not by caution, but by calculated courage. 

What would risk-taking look like? Funding approaches that seem unconventional. Investing in projects led by young people themselves (with support), not just designed for them. Supporting grassroots initiatives that lack polished applications but demonstrate genuine community connection. Creating space for failure as a learning opportunity rather than a funding flaw. 

The military community understands calculated risk: it’s fundamental to service life. The fund should embrace this ethos: the willingness to back innovative approaches that might not succeed, because the potential for meaningful change outweighs the comfort of predictable outcomes. 

Listening to Voices, Not Just for Them 

My research consistently shows that military-connected young people know what it feels like when a parent deploys during exam season. They understand the social isolation of arriving at a new school mid-year, again, or their friends moving on without them. 

The fund’s teenage years must be defined by authentic participation. Young people on funding boards making allocation decisions. Veterans who’ve navigated broken systems designing the programmes meant to fix them. Research questions shaped by those whose lives depend on getting answers right. This means the lived experience on decision-making boards, not just advisory panels. Funding allocated based on need and projects, research and evaluation designed with, and not done to, the community. 

Navigating the Transition Ahead 

The fund stands where every adolescent eventually stands at the crossroads between who others want you to be and who you need to become. It can consolidate into a stable institution that does good work safely within established parameters. Or it can embrace adolescence fully: messy, brave, sometimes uncomfortable, but authentically transformative. The covenant is about promise across generations. The fund’s teenage years will reveal whether that promise is bold enough to match the courage of those it serves. 

The Covenant itself is about promise and responsibility across generations. As the fund enters adolescence, it must ask: are we keeping that promise boldly enough? Are we listening to those whose lives depend on getting this right?  

Adolescence isn’t about rebellion; it’s about navigating the uncertainty ahead. How the fund handles its teenage years will determine not just what it achieves in the next decade, but what kind of adult it chooses to become.