Partners collaborate to support orphans and vulnerable children

Improving Economic Stability for Orphans and Vulnerable Children

Throughout the world, the health and well-being of children depends largely on the strength of their safety nets: their families and communities. Problems such as armed conflict, drought, environmental degradation and infectious diseases—particularly HIV/AIDS—can weaken these safety nets and expose children to abject poverty.

One of the most important ways to improve the safety and well-being of orphans and children who are vulnerable to humanitarian crises is to support their families and communities so that they can better protect the children, and provide for their needs.

Recognizing this imperative, in June 2004 USAID’s Bureau for Africa called on the AED’s  Support for Analysis and Research in Africa (SARA) project  (under the AED Center for Health Policy and Capacity Development) to organize a regional workshop in Africa  to discuss ways in which economic strengthening can improve the well-being of orphans and vulnerable children and to determine how interventions can be effectively implemented on a wide scale.

The workshop, which was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania last June, brought together a diverse group of experts and policymakers from around the world.

“During the workshop the participants discussed what has been already been done in this area and how to bring successful projects to scale in order to reach more children,” said Agnieszka Sykes, HIV/AIDS Advisor for AED’s  SARA  project, which coordinated and facilitated the workshop.

From a Meeting to a Movement

During the conference the participants decided they needed a way to create an ongoing dialogue in order to effectively make change in the area of economic strengthening. As a result, the participants decided to form a network that would communicate and collaborate after the conference ended, which they dubbed the Children and Youth Economic Strengthening Network.

After the workshop AED took on a facilitating and coordinating role for the network, Sykes said. “One of the key activities SARA is working on for the network is helping them perform an inventory of who is doing what in the field of economic strengthening for orphans and vulnerable children,” she said. “Based on that information the network will able to identify the programs that have promising practices.”

Optimizing Micro-Finance

Network members are interested in discussing microfinance strategies, according to Sykes. One way microfinance can work to reach very vulnerable households is that a group of people—who are very poor and do not have the ability to get loans on their own—ban together to form a sort of association. Together the association is able to use their joint collateral to gain access to small loans for each member.

The loan can, for example, allow a woman to buy a piece of farming equipment that will allow her to grow more crops that she can sell at the market. The additional money the woman makes from the sale of her produce will strengthen the economic status of her household and any children who are living there.
 
“Targeted microfinance strategies are a key to keeping families from falling into states of vulnerability,” said Suzanne Prysor-Jones, director of the AED Center for Health Policy and Capacity Development. “In the end, the CYES network hopes to systematically document the direct effect economic strengthening activities have on orphans and vulnerable children to record the benefits it has on their lives.”

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A report with the conclusions and recommendations made in the June, 2004 meeting is available at http://sara.aed.org/sara_hiv.htm.

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