OVC-Related Organizations and Projects
Organizations
Better Care Network (BCN) is an international network of organizations committed to supporting children without adequate family care around the world. BCN works by fostering collaboration, research and information sharing on family strengthening and alternative care, and advocating for changes to national and global policies to improve children’s care situations. The website library contains research, theoretical and policy documents directly related to the care and protection of vulnerable children.
Child Protection in Crisis (CPC) Learning Network promotes innovative research, nurtures communities of learning, and builds the next generation of researchers and advocates for children and families. The CPC Learning Network’s website includes innovative tools and methodologies to better measure children’s care, protection, and welfare. These methods and tools range from program-level evaluations to broader research methods focused at the policy level.
Coalition for Children Affected by AIDS believes that children need to be made a higher priority in the international response to HIV and AIDS and brings funders and technical experts together to advocate for the best policy, research, and programs for children. The Coalition holds a biennial symposium prior to the International AIDS Conference.
Global Social Service Workforce Alliance promotes the knowledge, evidence, resources, and tools to mobilize political will and action needed to address key social service workforce challenges, especially within low- to middle-income countries. The website includes resources with a wide range of program and workforce themes along with a discussion board and regularly hosted webinars.
RIATT-ESA is a unique, multi-sectoral partnership of organizations focusing on the care and support for children affected by AIDS in eastern and southern Africa. RIATT-ESA promotes coordination and harmonization of policy guidance and planning through advocacy, supports evidence-based promising practices through research, documentation and dissemination, and promotes the development and sharing of technical and programming information through conferences, publications and their website.
REPSSI is a non-profit organization working to lessen the devastating social and emotional (psychosocial) impact of poverty, conflict, HIV and AIDS among children and youth across East and Southern Africa. REPSSI provides technical leadership in psychosocial support for children and youth. Their website includes resources, research, and information about training and certificate courses.
Childrenandaids.org is UNICEF’s resource devoted to ensuring that all babies, children, adolescents and their mothers are able to access life-saving HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. UNICEF engages with country-level partners around the world, and promotes rapid integration and expansion of HIV education and care into maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health services.
Projects
ASPIRES (Accelerating Strategies for Practical Innovation and Research in Economic Strengthening) project supports evidence-based, gender-sensitive programming to improve the economic security and related health outcomes of highly vulnerable individuals, families, and children. ASPIRES aims to accelerate the adoption of evidence-based practice by evaluating Household Economic Strengthening (HES) interventions and supporting program configurations most consistent with success in the evidentiary record. Where this record is thin, ASPIRES seeks to strengthen it through rigorous research efforts so that future programming efforts have a stronger base to build upon. ASPIRES also focuses on efficiently providing technical assistance to scale up high-quality HES interventions. ASPIRES is funded by PEPFAR and USAID’s Office of HIV/AIDS (OHA) and Displaced Children and Orphans Fund (DCOF), and implemented by FHI 360 and a consortium of 20 organizations.
The Economic Impacts of Child Marriage is a project managed by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and the World Bank to research the economic consequences of child marriage, and utilizing the resulting evidence, to strengthen the case for ending this harmful practice. Their website has the latest research publications and presentations.
The LIFT Project (LIFT II) aims to provide technical assistance to design and establish referral systems for economic strengthening, livelihood and food security services to enhance engagement, adherence, and retention of people living with HIV and other patients in clinical care and treatment. This project’s primary goal is to support evidence-based, gender-sensitive programming to improve household food security and resilience as a component of a continuum of nutrition and healthcare.
MEASURE Evaluation works to improve orphans and vulnerable children programming by facilitating the collection and use of data. Data is important to determine “what works” and to keep programming on track, ensuring positive impacts on children and families, reaching targets laid out in the PEPFAR initiatives – Accelerating Children on Treatment (ACT) and Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored and Safe (DREAMS) – and ultimately achieving the goal of an AIDS-free generation.