• Introduction to targeting
• How should I approach targeting?
• Targeting by level of vulnerability: Who is most vulnerable?
• Geographic Targeting:  Where do you find more OVC?
• How do I set constraints on the number of children assisted?
• How identify eligible children at the community level?
• What if community-based methods are not possible? 
• What about children outside family care?
• Is there a role for (public) institutions?

This section of the OVC Toolkit will provide you with guidance for targeting OVC, and presupposes previous knowledge to targeting issues more in general. (Basic information on targeting can be found in the Safety Nets Primer.) Each particular targeting strategy will vary depending upon the following factors:

• the type of project you plan to implement;
• whether your objective is to prevent children from becoming OVC or to provide assistance to those who are already OVC;
• whether the OVC are geographically concentrated;
• whether the OVC are visible in the community (e.g., street children are, child domestic servants are not);
• whether the OVC are affiliated with an institution or organization.

As a rule, there are always more OVC than your project can afford to support. The two main questions thus become: how many OVC can your project assist, and who should be given priority. The number of beneficiaries depends on the cost-per-child of your potential interventions and the funding available. Often you will have the option of different intervention packages of varying price and quality, so you will have to find a compromise between the number reached and the services offered. Also, you will have to make a choice about the intervention priorities that will be reflected in your eligibility criteria: to reach those you can still prevent from falling into critical vulnerability, those who are already worst off, those who are easier to reach, or perhaps those for whom your project can produce the most significant life improvement per dollar. The first option would target a large group of children at potential risk but be relatively low cost-per-child, while the second option normally will incur high per-child costs for a smaller group of critically vulnerable children. The two latter options will probably give the best cost-benefit ratio, but may appear as "taking the easy way out".

 The selection criteria you choose for targeting should:

• be easy to understand by the communities;
• be easy to use by the project implementers:
• be low-cost to monitor and verify;
• strengthen OVC ties to their community rather than detach and isolate them;
• allow transparent selection processes;
• avoid stigmatizing the beneficiaries.

See also sector-specific suggestions for targeting in the sector chapters of the toolkit.

To learn more about some of the challenges and opportunities that interventions will encounter in trying to reach the most common OVC categories, click here.