Development of vulnerability criteria and minimum standards for care, support and protection of OVC

AVEDIS, in a consortium with Social Impact Assessment and Policy Analysis Corporation (SIAPAC), is developing vulnerability criteria and minimum standards for care, support and protection of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) for UNICEF in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to the 2007 Demographic and Health Survey, there are approximately 8,400,000 OVC in the DRC,
as a consequence of war, HIV&AIDS and the resulting extreme and chronic poverty.
However, the response to this crisis is marked by lack of a strategic framework and is consequently supply-driven, ad hoc and fragmented. The project aims to improve the service delivery for OVC by assisting the UNICEF office in Kinshasa, as well as the stakeholders dealing with OVC in the country to develop a strategic framework enabling a shift to demand-driven service provision and a coherent scaling-up of current interventions. The framework consists of a set of vulnerability criteria and quality standards. The project also serves to design a
tool and guidelines that will assist service providers to put the criteria and quality standards into practice. All of the project's outcomes are evidence-based, as they are built on the findings of a child-centered assessment in three provinces of the DRC (East, Centre and South). The AVEDIS/SIAPAC consortium provides a team of four experts for this project. The team will carry out a review of academic literature and policy documents; conduct a qualitative assessment and field work; test the tool and guidelines through a validation exercise; engage in a participatory process with the OVC stakeholders in the DRC to build consensus on the strategic framework for OVC and enhance local ownership of the projects outcomes; facilitate a stakeholder conference in Kinshasa.