Case studies >>Having an identity and a future - Zimbabwe's orphans and vulnerable children


First published: 2009-08-01

SDDirect's Lesley Adams recently contributed to the annual review of Zimbabwe's multi-donor-funded Programme of Support (PoS) for the National Plan of Action for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC). DFID and a number of other donors have been supporting this programme since 2006.

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More than three in ten children in Zimbabwe have been orphaned or made vulnerable due to HIV/AIDS, and the majority of them are adolescents. In Zimbabwe this translates to 1.3 million children who have lost one or both parents. The Programme of Support helps these children, plus those who are vulnerable because of other factors (such as abuse and neglect, economic hardship, displacement).

Over a million children in Zimbabwe have lost one or both parents.

A new strategy was launched in 2006 to expand coverage of support to vulnerable children in what had become an extremely challenging operational environment because of political and economic instability. After a difficult first year, the situation was worse in Year 2 - the year under review: there was political instability and violence during the election period (and a ban on NGO operations); schools closed; school fees rocketed; inflation was almost immeasurable (UNICEF reports that it reached several quintillion per cent before the US dollar was introduced as legal tender); there was a major cholera outbreak; there were price controls on goods (which were difficult to come by) and markets collapsed. However, despite this, NGOs did manage to achieve some impressive results.

One area of achievement was birth registration. In Year 2 nearly 2,000 children were issued with a birth certificate under the programme. Girls in five secondary schools in Rusape (two hours east of Harare) scored this project activity as the most important in the OVC programme. One consortium (FACT Rusape and its partners) have worked hard in this area with the office of the Registrar General to bring its services to rural communities who previously faced barriers to getting their children registered at birth. Transport had been a constraint, but also limited knowledge of how the system worked particularly among elderly carers.

Many carers are grandmothers - truly the heroes of the programme - playing a critical role helping these children reach adulthood as safely and securely as is possible.

Education support is another critical area which was seriously hit by the recent crisis. This was affected by a massive increase in school fees, as well as the NGO ban. While nearly 40,000 children were reached last year this was less than 20% of the target. Next year the outlook is favourable, and PoS partners voted to rapidly scale-up education provision through BEAM - the Basic Education Assistance Module. This system pays the school fees direct to schools- thus helping the school deliver good quality education. Whilst targeting may be an issue (many hard to reach children may be "invisible" to school-based registration committees) the BEAM system offers such potential to scale up support that it is currently the best solution to getting large numbers of vulnerable children back to school quickly. In the future it may be possible to develop a system of direct cash payments (known as social protection) which will cover school fees.

Greater attention is also needed to make education more inclusive. Disabled children are known to be disadvantaged when it comes to schooling. This is often because of stigma and prejudice.

Whilst the programme has developed an impressive set of information, partners need to capture what they have learned about new areas of work - such as care for children in penal institutions, and the reintegration / reunification of orphans from orphanages into family structures. The new families, and the children who go to live with them, need to be supported through this process.

The Child Protection Society has focused its attention on children in penal institutions. This includes children who are there because their mothers are incarcerated. These children often miss out on schooling and have poor nutrition. There are also those who have got into trouble and where the judicial process is slow, they miss out on education. Part of the programme is working with the Zimbabwe prisons system to address these previously unrecognized problems.

One example of an innovation which addresses a major operational constraint is the VSO and FACT Rusape initiative of placing volunteer health professionals in health centres to deliver medical care (including anti-retroviral treatment). While this is a new area of intervention where guidance is needed, it is often the absence of medical staff which prevents a child getting life-saving drugs. This initiative manages to address the two problems at once.