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Background
Fifteen percent of the orphans in SSA are under 4 years old, and 35 percent are between 5 and 9. Young orphans thus represent almost 22 million children, and are only some of the critically vulnerable young children on the continent – those most at risk for a negative outcome as a result of shocks. They all require particular attention and also special interventions. Many initiatives for OVC are school-based, but because the youngest children are preschool age, schools cannot be used as vehicles for interventions as they are for older OVC.
The youngest OVC are most often found within some sort of household environment, as they are generally incapable of surviving elsewhere (e.g., in the streets, in hazardous types of child labor, and relatively useless for armed groups). Besides, there seems to be a higher threshold for abandoning younger children, and a lower threshold for taking in the youngest who are orphaned or abandoned.
An important group of the youngest OVC is found among orphans although not all young orphans are critically vulnerable. Vulnerable young orphans are found in:
- households headed by elderly caretakers or children,
- households where the remaining parent or caretaker is ill, living with a disability or traumatized,
- households where the child is “unwanted” (e.g., by a step-parent) and therefore neglected, abused or exploited,
- streets, institutions and extreme work places (but this last group is relatively small for this young age group).
Other young OVC still live with parents or relatives who are:
- widowed or divorced,
- disabled or sick,
- traumatized or in other ways affected by war, conflict and other shocks, or
- dysfunctional due to social conditions like alcohol and drug abuse unable to properly care for their special needs, as in the case of children living with severe illness, trauma or disability.
Overview of possible interventions
OVC Category |
Intervention type |
All young OVC |
- Campaigns to fight stigma, in the community, in schools, to traditional and religious leaders and through the media
- health and nutritional support
- Conditional transfers to improve access to ECD programs and health services
- Psycho social support/Counseling
- Cognitive stimuli
- Support and training of caretakers
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Project Design Features by OVC Category |
Young orphans |
- When orphanhood is predictable, support memory book/memory box initiatives
- Support the identification of other family caretakers or community-based foster care arrangements in advance of the death of parent, if possible.
- If the above proves impossible, support development to of community based group homes (but beware that this much more expensive)
- Consider conditional transfer programs related to health and nutritional check-ups
- Support and train caregivers (in particular older relatives and children head-of-household)
- Set up monitoring/ home visit program
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Young children affected by HIV/AIDS |
- Prolong the life of seropositive caretakers of young children, offering anti-retrovirals and other primary health care services
- Prevent mother-to-child transmission
- Promote the inclusion of seropositive children in regular ECD activities and services
- Consider waivers or conditional transfer programs related to health and nutritional check-ups
- In communities heavily affected by HIV/AIDS, support community based daycare services
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Young children affected by armed conflict |
- Include atypical communities, like displacement and refugee camps, in regular ECD activities
- Protect and shelter unaccompanied young children in crisis areas
- Strengthen psychosocial and conflict prevention aspects of ECD programs
- Support therapeutic components/interventions like drawing and role play
- Support counseling for primary caretakers living with injury and trauma
- If many war orphans, support family reunification initiatives, identification of family care takers and community foster care arrangements
- When the above is not possible, consider supporting the development of community group homes (but beware that this much more expensive)
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Young children living with a disability |
- Support efforts to actively include children living with a disability in ECD activities
- Combat stigma at the community level
- Combat stigma among other children
- Support and train caretakers with young children living with disabilities
- Include children living with disabilities among the prioritized beneficiaries in any targeted conditional transfer program (school, health)
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For general information on Africa ECD portfolio characteristics and country examples of these characteristics, see this comprehensive list from the Directory of Africa ECD interventions.
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