The OVC Toolkit is a resource guide on how to support Orphans and other Vulnerable Children (OVC) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It is primarily developed to support World Bank project designers from different technical sectors, but could also prove useful to non-World Bank practitioners. Although developed with sub-Saharan Africa in mind, much of the content of the OVC Toolkit can be useful for professionals working on other continents.

Start by asking yourself the following questions:

1. Can my project cause an increase or decrease in the number of OVC?
2. Might my project have a negative or positive impact on children who are already OVC?
3. Could my project produce a positive outcome for OVC by adding special features?

If the answer to the third question is "no", then you don't need this toolkit. If it is "yes" or if you are uncertain, please read on.

If you are working on a multi-sector project (e.g., Social Fund, Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program (MAP), or Poverty Reduction Support Credit), the answer should certainly be "yes".

The attached table indicates which OVC categories may be relevant to which sector; when rolling your mouse over the word "yes", a brief explanation will appear in a pop-up window. Of course, each situation is different and we encourage you to ask yourself the three questions listed above, and to involve people who are knowledgeable about the situation of children in your project country and OVC issues in general. In doing so, be sure that your analysis captures any additional context-specific OVC group, such as albinos, talibés (child beggars in Muslim areas), or child "witches", who were not included in our analysis. Also, keep in mind that many children fall into more than one category of OVC.

The toolkit contains sector-specific recommendations on the basis of the attached table. Therefore, what follows only covers the sectors and OVC categories that have a "yes" to the question "Does the project need special features to achieve a positive outcome for OVC?". For example, in our analysis of projects in the Water and Sanitation sector, we concluded that a project could have a positive impact on a number of different OVC categories without requiring any special measures to ensure that it benefits OVC in particular (although specific measures may be needed to ensure that vulnerable groups in general benefit from the project). For this reason, the toolkit does not make any recommendation specific to the Water and Sanitation sector.