Orphans and vulnerable children

Five of the Alfredo children, Mozambique. Their grandmother looks after another 17 orphaned grandchildren. © 2004 Gideon Mendel for International HIV/AIDS Alliance

The Alliance aims to reduce the spread of HIV and its impact on children, their families, and the communities they live in. This means, for example, supporting children who have been orphaned by AIDS, children living with HIV, children who may be currently caring for sick parents, and children who are in families that have taken in orphans.

Children affected by HIV and AIDS suffer trauma and hardship, especially through the illness and death of a parent. Children living with HIV need appropriate treatment and support. Children and their families need urgent support to overcome the economic, social, health and security challenges posed by HIV.

There is global consensus that families and communities are the foundation of an effective, scaled-up response. The Alliance helps community groups, and the government and non-governmental agencies that support them, to help families cope. This may mean direct financial or material support – for example, school expenses, food and clothing. It also means providing emotional and social support, or helping with legal issues such as inheritance and adoption. The Alliance helps with funding, and also by sharing advice and guidance about what works best.

The Alliance is currently supporting children in: Burkina Faso, Cambodia, India, Mozambique, Senegal, Uganda and Zimbabwe. It is anticipated that work will also start in Nigeria and Zambia.

Our work

Since 2000, the Alliance has been supporting communities to provide assistance to orphans and vulnerable children, working mainly in Burkina Faso, Mozambique, India and Cambodia. The Alliance’s contribution is and will continue to be:

  • to integrate care, support and prevention activities for children into existing prevention, care and support programmes, including home care programmes, and ensure that children’s needs are recognised in efforts to improve access to treatment more generally
  • to mobilise and strengthen the quality of programmes providing psychosocial support to vulnerable children both directly and through their communities
  • to facilitate and strengthen the capacities of children, their families and communities to develop their own responses
  • to share the experience we are gaining in work with children both between Alliance partners and more broadly in order to advocate for effective approaches
  • to create an enabling environment to support community-based approaches to work with OVC.

Here are some examples of the work the Alliance has been doing:

  • 'Building Blocks' resources (Briefing Notes and PLA Tools) to support community-based programmes for orphans and vulnerable children
  • training church-based initiatives in Zimbabwe on children's participation
  • training community-based organisations in Mozambique on psychosocial support
  • developing online collection of resources with FHI at: www.ovcsupport.net

For more information about the Alliance’s work with orphans and other vulnerable children contact Kate Harrison.