THE WHOLESOME CHILD: HARNESSING TODAY TO SECURE TOMORROW
AN INTERGRATED LIVELIHOOD PROJECT FOR OVC AND ELDERLY CAREGIVERS
P.O. Box 1217-50100
Kakamega
Tel. +254-721815537
APRIL 2011
INTRODUCTION
In 2010, Elite Community Based Organization conducted a baseline study covering over 2,000 households to understand issues affecting orphans and vulnerable children, OVC in Kakamega County Kenya. The context of this OVC baseline study was based on the situation of children in the County and specifically children made vulnerable by different circumstances. The design of the study was aimed at all-inclusiveness of stakeholders involved in different aspects of orphans and vulnerable children in the project area.
The National Programme Guidelines on Orphans and Vulnerable Children definition states that “an orphan is a child who has lost one or both parents while a vulnerable child is a child living in high-risk setting”. From this and previous studies on HIV/AIDS Gender Relations and Culture, it was established that there exists a large percentage of the population being orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in the Kakamega community. Among these children are children who are caregivers to those who are ill or dying, do not have parents, do not have a family, do not have a home, live in an area with proximity to high risk behaviors, living on the street, have parents or guardians who are in prison with them, are exploited, are isolated and discriminated, live on their own in a child headed household, live in unsupportive or unhealthy environment, have inadequate medical care and/or are disabled. In the project area, there were other descriptions of children’s vulnerabilities among them children born out of wed-lock or out of incestuous relationship, children returning with the mother to her parents because the mother’s marriage did not work, children whose parents are irresponsible, among others. The study also considered children orphaned as a result of parents dying specifically from HIV/AIDS related illnesses.
In light of the poor status of orphans and other children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS and other circumstances, the government has been developing a national policy on OVC since the year 2005 and produced a draft which was shared by the public in June 2006. The draft policy seeks to support and promote child survival, child development, child protection and child participation within the framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Policy stipulates that the minimum OVC package for all OVC must have the following: 1) appropriate family based care, 2)proper housing, 3)all immunizations as stipulated by the Ministry of Health, 4)primary health services, 5) proper nutrition, 6) adequate clothing, 7) birth registration and 8) attendance and completion of primary school.
Kenya has an estimated OVC population of 1.8 million nationwide. Of these 900,000 are said to be found in Western Province alone, Children’s Department-Ministry of National Heritage: OVC Report: 2003. The projected number of orphans by 2010 is 2 million. Poverty is at the core of the OVC situation stalking the children, shrouded in food and nutrition insecurity among other dangers. Apart from having a bulky OVC population, Ikolomani and Shinyalu ranks third and fourth poorest after North Eastern with Ikolomani Constituency registering a poverty incidence of 71%!
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Both guardians and children are poor in health. Significantly elderly persons are looking after a significant number of OVC. The situation of all children in Kenya is poor. Thirty percent (30%) of children under five years of age are stunted and 6% are wasted. Infant mortality is 77/1000 live births and under five mortality is 115/1000 live births. Only 57% of children aged between 12 and 23 months are fully vaccinated. Malaria kills 26,000 children every year. Thirty-two percent (32%) of girls and women are circumcised. Only 58% of children live with both their parents. One quarter (25%) live with their mothers only and 3% live with their fathers only. Another 11% do not live with either of the parents and are considered fostered. Orphaned children suffer these conditions more. HIV/AIDS has torn down the family unit, thus robbing children of parents and extended family system which in Africa, were the source of children’s security and well being. HIV/AIDS has not only robbed children of their parents, uprooted them from their familiar homesteads and communities; left many hungry and starving, anxious and emotionally unstable, it has robbed children of their childhood; the right to be children. Children have been forced to become care-givers for their ailing parents if not altogether forced into responsibilities meant for adults. They have been forced to abandon education if they ever started schooling; forced into child labour and are increasingly sexually manipulated, harassed and abused. As parents die or fade away from the scene of parenting and custodial responsibility, children’s vulnerabilities increase.
Traditionally the family unit in Kakamega County is a patriarchal extended structure with mechanisms for care and support for orphans. Children were rarely placed in a situation of vulnerability. But the family as a basic unit of society has been undergoing profound change, a phenomenon with far–reaching social and economic consequences that affect development. The nuclear family defined as consisting of father, mother and their children is gaining dominance over the extended family system, which has been an important source of care and support for orphaned children. Among other families emerging as a result of social transitions are single parent families, child-headed families and families headed by the elderly; mostly grandparents in their geriatric stage. As the family structure changes parents and care givers continue to be pre-occupied in making a living or meeting their social obligations at the detriment of the fast emerging OVC.
While NGOs provide the thrust of care and support in other part of Kenya, there is nothing being done here in Kakamega. Tracking OVC care and support and reporting between the implementing organizations is a problem. For example, quantifying the inputs given to a specific OVC is difficult as this is done on “as needed or on as funds-are-available basis”. This means that those children receiving support may get only basic needs on and off and not in adequate quantity or quality.
JUSTIFICATION
The following statements from the baseline study provide justification for the project:
1. For more than 90% of OVC in Kakaega, the most pressing problem is hunger and anxiety related to inadequate food at household level. Children aged below 8 years suffered most in as afar as they were plagued with hunger.
2. For all children, poor health status was recorded for more than 80% of studied households. The biggest health problem for all children is malaria followed by Acute Respiratory Infections (including pneumonia), Diarrhea, and skin infections including wounds, worm infestation and infection by jiggers due to poor hygiene. Malaria was also very common in adults.
3. More than 80% of children in the studied households and who are eligible for nursery school are not in school due to lack of school fees, school uniform and due to hunger caused by lack of food in the house. These were followed by sickness, stigma and pregnancy
4. 20% of children are heads of households
5. Of sibling OVC care givers, boys constitute the majority. This corresponds with the finding that boys were more than girls in the studied households
6. There is high incidence of child labor
7. 30% of OVC sleep on floor without a cover
8. 72% of the households have at least one orphan; the household with the highest number of orphans was 16 followed by 11, 9, 8 and 7. The average number of orphans in a household was 5.
9. The negative impact of HIV/AIDS on orphans starts long before the death of a parent in this region according to the data.
Some unexpected findings emerged from the study. It was felt that these further justify the need for the proposed project.
1. Lower cases of child sexual abuse including OVC were found
2. High incidences of children with disabilities
3. The majority of respondents who are widows fall between the age bracket of 31-40 years.
4. The children said they do not like to be referred to as “orphans”; this project offers an opportunity to stop calling them orphans.
Other general but important findings include the fact that the policy regulatory enforcement mechanisms are weak at the grass-roots level. Government officials at the divisional level have not seen or heard about the OVC Policy or National Plan of Action.
PROPOSED PROJECT
The baseline data on the situation of OVC and their care-givers has been established for the Division Lurambi of Kakamega Central district in Kakamega County. Some of the opportunities for improving OVC programming as derived from the key informant, leaders’ and children’s forums named and quantified the household and child specific needs. The second opportunity is the knowledge and collaboration with over 100 local leaders and 2 CBOs working on OVC related initiatives in the study. There is need to build institutional strengths and capacity needs of these stakeholders for OVC programming. The following recommendations from the study are being considered under the proposed project.
1) There is need for a well structured and targeted OVC program initiative in Lurambi Division of Kakamega Central.
2) The program initiative should target the same of the over 2,000 households and the children in those households
3) Multi-stakeholder interventions should target among others, care-giver and other local institutions working with OVC’ empowerment and capacity building on OVC including faith-based CBO and community based organizations identified within the study. Capacity building programs should form a component with quality assurance, and results tracking and quantification. Major focus areas will include school feeding
4) Program initiatives and strategies to develop elaborate plans for supporting collaboration and networking between and amongst stakeholders
ACTIVITIES
The following will be developed remove households from the circle of vulnerability) among them:
Plan basic and strategic needs while the parent is still alive to remove households from the circle of vulnerability.
Curtail negative practice by developing a well concerted and sustained human rights approach to secure OVC and widows’ property and assets thus contributing toward psychological stability and healing
There is need to target the households with appropriate measures for ensuring that the OVC in those households do not suffer additional loss to a series of care-givers.
There is need to recognize, appreciate and manage OVC transition.
Strengthen the capacity of care-giver to gain life skills such as confidence building in becoming comfortable in discussing HIV/AIDS related matters and measures for their own protection, care and support.
Keep children in school as a motivation in itself but also as a source of helping them build a positive self image as achievers in school.
Work strategically with foster care families and the community leadership and the children themselves in coining a different term to refer to children who have been orphaned due to HIV.
Strengthen family coping systems and finding ways for reconstructing strong social values for supporting “OVC”.
METHODOLOGY
A well concerted and sustained human rights approach to tackling OVC and widows property and asset loss could mean additional resources for educating OVC. This milestone strategy could contribute toward the psychological stability and healing for widows and orphans knowing they belong to their homes and have a right to their properties and assets. Such an achievement would build the OVC’ and widows’ confidence about their future.
Both guardians and children are poor in health as established by the baseline data. At the same time, significantly elderly persons are looking after a significant number of OVC. This data provides opportunity for the partnerships to specifically target the households with appropriate measures for ensuring that the OVC in those households do not suffer additional loss to a series of care-givers. Strategies for enhancing communication between siblings and care-givers within household level on each others’ needs/feelings will be devised.
Issues concerning the need to recognize appreciate and manage OVC transition has already been extensively discussed within the Shinyalu section of Kakamega County. It suffices to reemphasize that in Kakamega OVC transition from one developmental stage to the next will be planned and will constitute one of the major programmatic areas of intervention.
Concerning the household capacity to effectively look after OVC, Elite Community Based Organization will elaborate an integrative approach that concomitantly addresses care-givers’ own health and welfare needs. As some other reports have noted, the best thing one can do for an OVC is stop them from becoming orphans in the first place. This means that Elite CBO will invest more in strategies for keeping the living parent/guardian alive longest while rebuilding the broken family environment to become more friendly and responsive to the needs of the children. This baseline demonstrated the need for such a long over due intervention as strengthening the capacity of care-giver to gain life skills such as confidence building in becoming comfortable in discussing HIV/AIDS related matters and measures for their own protection, care and support.
Special mention is necessary of the need to keep children in school as a motivation in itself but also as a source of helping them build a positive self image as achievers in school.
The data has validated the need to nurture and strengthen collaboration that has been established between stakeholders among them care givers and other service providers
EXPECTED OUTPUTS
· Sustainable food and nutrition
· Visionary education
· Sustainable health
· Security and asset building
· Programme coordination
EXPECTED INPUTS
Inputs will include a cross section of resources among them: finances, land, agricultural inputs, relevant government support including commitment from schools, Ministries of Education, Health, Agriculture, Office of the President, Gender and Children’s Department, Justice and constitution office.
SPECIFIC REQUEST
Elite CBO specifically requests you as the development partner for financial and other resources support to implement the proposed project.
PROPOSED LONG AND SHORT-TERM PROJECT OBJECTIVES | |
LONG TERM (5+YEARS) | IMMEDIATE (STARTING NOW) |
Sustainable food and nutrition | Reliable food supply |
Use of traditional nutritious food | |
Establishment of school feeding programmes | |
Visionary education | Universal school feeding programmes |
Provision of social amenities (basic clothing and shelter) | |
Capacity building for teachers | |
Monitoring OVC progress till exit from school | |
Institutionalization of OVC guiding and counseling in schools | |
Education of OVC on their rights | |
Sustainable health | Access to medication |
Institutionalization of health support | |
Outreach to OVC in isolated areas | |
Timely administration of ARV/ART | |
Provision of psychosocial counseling | |
Awareness raising on use of VCT | |
Provision of HBC to OVC infected with HIV/AIDS | |
Security and asset building | Mapping of OVC security needs |
Mapping OVC resources | |
Lobbying policy support for OVC rights | |
Utilization of OVC resources | |
Programme coordination | Oversee programme design and implementation |
Build capacity of stakeholders | |
Monitor and evaluate | |
Provide linkages | |
Impact assessment |
PROPOSED 5-YEAR STRATEGIC INTERVENTIONS
YEAR 2011 WITH INCREMENTAL SCALING UP OF 100% ANNUALLY TILL 2016
BASELINE RECOMMENDED OBJECTIVE | GROUP RECOMMENDED INTERVENTIONS | |||
LONG TERM | IMMEDIATE | PROPOSED ACTIVITIES | PROPOSED STRATEGIES | PERCEIVED CHALLENGES |
SUSTAINABLE FOOD AND NUTRITION | Reliable food supply | Mobilization and awareness campaigns Food needs assessment OVC site-training Enterprise management M&E Capacity assessment Increase income levels | Planning workshops Barazas Formation of common interest groups (CIG) Demonstration Introduce loan scheme Introduce revolving fund | Ownership and sustainability Adopting technologies Timely release and adequacy of donor funds High demand and expectations Loan defaulters Limited land for 4-K Clubs Natural disasters |
Sustainable school feeding programmes | Training and empowerment Capacity building in livestock, horticulture and root crops Increase financial resource base | Nucleus production OVC centers Schools Fundraise through alumni and others | ||
Use of traditional nutritious food | Awareness raising Research and technology in bio-farming techniques Introduce value addition to food Formation of marketing groups Guardian and OVC exchange visits | Demonstration in Barazas Mass media Use of certified seed Adapt relevant technologies in packing, milling, rationing and utilization Tours to Central platforms | ||
Introduction of farming activities in schools | Introduction of 4-K clubs Training of schools in agriculture Establish plots in schools Conduct exchange learning | Schools Demonstration Tours | ||
Establishment of school feeding programmes | Training and empowerment Supply input Capacity building in livestock, horticulture and root crops | Guardian groups Nucleus production OVC centres | ||
VISIONARY EDUCATION | Universal school feeding programmes | Community mobilization Allocation of farming responsibilities Management of harvest In-service training on feeding programmes Increase food supplies | Use OVC available land Donations Parents, guardians Teachers Conduct food drives Expand acreage | Resistance Poverty lack of resources Illiteracy and ignorance Teachers’ workload |
Provision of social amenities (basic clothing and shelter) | Purchase and distribute school materials Purchase and distribute basic materials Construct classrooms | Project initiators School management committee Teachers and caregivers | Poor quality Ad hoc and short term | |
Capacity building for community | Sensitize community on children’s rights Conduct exchange learning | Meetings dissemination of documented information Children rights clubs Platforms for exchange | ||
Monitoring OVC progress till exit from school | Daily records Daily close supervision | Stocks Performance | Lack of capacity in record keeping | |
Institutionalization of OVC guiding and counseling in schools | Training in guiding and counseling Rapid response sessions | Teachers Counselors Some OVC | Teachers’ workload | |
Education of OVC on their rights | Formation of clubs Organized discussion forums | Child-rights clubs Organized platforms | Negative attitudes towards children knowing their rights | |
SUSTAINABLE HEALTH | Access to medication | Sensitize community Lobby health personnel | Community members MOH | Sustaining motivation and commitment Adequacy of health services to meet demand Denial about HIV/AIDS Stigmatization Retaining capacities built High expectations |
Institutionalization of health care support | Maintain OVC databank Train health personnel on VCT/DTC Conduct refresher-training in all fields Equip schools and programme with health kits for OVC | Local level health institutions Referrals | ||
Outreach to OVC in isolated areas | Conduct mobile clinics Establish model facility Conduct home visits | VCT Immunization Monthly home visits | ||
Timely administration of ARV/ART | Training | Health personnel | ||
Provision of psychosocial counseling | Training | Support groups | ||
Awareness raising on use of VCT | Training | Community Schools | ||
Provision of HBC to OVC infected with HIV/AIDS | Training on HBC | Community in meetings Caregivers | ||
SECURITY AND ASSET BUILDING | Mapping of OVC security needs | Review baseline report | Local level leaders Navigation map to HH KII, FGD | High expectations Political interference Financial limitations High initial costs for micro-finance project Natural disasters Poor infrastructure Marketing Extension services |
Mapping OVC resources | Mobilization of community | Local level leadership Relevant policy experts Other stakeholder e.g. family | ||
Lobbying policy for OVC rights | Identification and training | Paralegals at sub-location | ||
Utilization of OVC resources | Mobilization of community support through provincial administration | Groups: youth, women and others to provide labour Line ministries for policy | ||
Provision of basic support to OVC | Skills training for caregivers | Local poultry and goat keeping, beekeeping, banana or organic farming Tree nurseries Cereal banking Micro-finance (table banking), and revolving fund | ||
Monitoring and Evaluation | Conduct mid-term and end term review Scale up the program | External consultants Initiators to re-plan | Positive impact for further up scaling into the province | |
PROGRAMME COORDINATION | Operationalize strategic plan 2010-2015 (programme design) | Develop proposal Develop M&E framework Prepare implementation schedule for year 1 Recruitment of staff Track activities | Baseline report Strategic plan report Implementers | Political environment Community participation: Contribute land, time and other resources Attitude of other implementers in OVC programmes Government’s response in implementation Donor funding levels and timing |
Build capacity of stakeholders | Capacity needs assessment Identify resources for training Provide space for activities | Assessment reports Workshops Seminars Conferences | ||
Provide linkages | Mapping of potential partners | Partners records Partners programmes | ||
Monitor and evaluate | Conduct PM&E | Field visits Briefings and debriefings On-the-job assessments | ||
Oversee programme | Document, disseminate and feedback | Maintain continuous flow of information between all partners | ||
Impact assessment | End-of-phase 1 assessment | Coordinate external evaluation | ||
Prepare for next phase | Prepare project areas for next phase | Project reports and plans |
ELITE CBO BOARD MEMBERS
NO | NAME | GENDER | AFFILATION | |
WOMEN | MEN | |||
1. | Ezekiel W. Mpapale | * | Chairman | |
2. | Kevin Miima | * | Staff | |
3. | Mildred Wanjala | * | Secretary/Staff(Kakamega) | |
4. | Kennedy shimaka | * | Treasurer/ Staff | |
5. | Gertrude Shinali | * | Board member | |
6. | Thomas Khasiani | * | Vice chair |
7.6.7 Details of the CBO bank account
Bankers: EQUITY BANK
Branch: KAKAMEGA
Account Name: ELITE CBO
Account No: 0500296593769