• Background and Trouble Shooters Guide
• Micro-credit
• Skills training
• Leakage of benefits
• Excessive benefits
• Basic criteria for success

Excessive benefits

Excessive benefits can harm OVC by lifting their consumption above that of their peers. For example, many orphanages and group homes run by western NGOs keep high standards compared to what the child can expect later in life. Another example is the provision of housing for OVC-headed households that is of a quality superior to that of the surrounding community. Some programs for OVC pay secondary school scholarships (esp. 2nd cycle), in areas where secondary enrolment rates of the general population are very low.

Excessive benefits can lead to jealousy and hostility towards OVC among siblings and other non-beneficiaries, and even violence.

A high level of consumption in a residential institution can isolate the child and disrupt its links with its family and community. In such institutions, children adjust to an unrealistically high and unsustainable living standard.

However, it’s not always possible to limit assistance to OVC to the community standard because their peers are malnourished or don’t receive basic health or education services, and because aiding peers (all siblings, or the entire village) is not affordable within the available budget.

Unconditional cash transfers are perhaps the most dangerous form of excessive support because they can promote child labor. The transfers defray the costs, in consumption, of ‘fostering’ a child to obtain their labor. One result is the Cinderella syndrome: girls ‘fostered’ to do domestic labor.

Lessons:

• Willingness to bear part of the costs of fostering suggests that the household is fostering out of a sense of obligation to extended family.
• So, transfers should be limited so that fostering does not become profitable for the foster family.
• Moreover, transfers should be conditional on school attendance by the foster child.
• Support from social programs should not drive OVC consumption above the community standard, except where the standard falls below an acceptable minimum.
• Projects should provide some assistance that benefits the family as a whole, such as livestock, seeds & tools for gardening, a revenue generating project, or conditional cash transfers.