Frederique Vallieres
Country: Canada
Background - BSc Psychology
Research Project: A Community based Participatory Analysis of Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Rongai Constituency, Rift Valley Province, Kenya
There exists a need to build reliable and consistent data within and across countries in order to improve policy planning, inform decision making and provide better support to the increasing number of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in sub-Saharan Africa. Community definitions of OVC however, tend to vary from the definitions employed by both national government and international agencies, putting children at an increased risk of being left out of government initiatives and policies aiming to improve the lives of OVC. One solution to this problem is to scale-up the capacity of already existing community-based interventions and allow them to define their own definition of OVC according to the needs of children under their care. By collaborating with a local community group in Rongai, we aimed to identify the needs of OVC in this particular environment in order to provide evidence-based feedback on how to best allocate resources and improve training of future community based OVC caregivers in this area. A community based participatory analysis of orphans and vulnerable children was employed to conduct 173 questionnaires and 2 focus group discussions with OVC in Rongai. Children were found to lack material resources as well as support programmes and counseling. Results also discuss a need to increase capacity building and advocacy training for community based care workers. A series of recommendations are made in order to better train community based care workers and efficiently direct care for the needs of OVC in Rongai.
Keywords: OVC, Kenya, Community-based interventions, Situational-Analysis
Word Count: 13,876