This activity builds upon and extends FY07 activities that aim to provide better health, social protection, and

education services for OVC in western regions of Côte d'Ivoire that were severely affected by the country's

politico-military crisis and remain largely without functioning government services.

With FY07 plus-up funding (not yet received as of September 2007), Save the Children UK Cote d'Ivoire will

begin to build capacity of four local partner organizations to link communities to available services, train 100

community caregivers and 100 government service providers, and provide direct care for 2,000 OVC in and

around Toulepleu, Bloléquin, Guiglo, and Duékoué.

With FY08 funding, Save will reinforce FY07 activities and expand them to the Tai (far West) and Odienne

(far Northwest) areas, filling significant gaps in PEPFAR and national OVC coverage and providing direct

care for 5,000 OVC. Specific intervention sites around these towns will be selected in consultation with local

NGOs, service providers, and the National OVC Program (PNOEV) to ensure that the project reaches the

most underserved zones. Save will also strengthen the capacity of the social center in Man through material

and technical support.

With the expected gradual return of government services to zones previously controlled by the Forces

Nouvelles, Save will ensure that project activities are well-coordinated with relevant social-service structures

and the PNOEV to ensure that activities contribute to national strategies and objectives. Save will

participate in relevant technical working groups and will work in coordination with other PEPFAR partners

and other donors to avoid duplication and maximize synergies. Project activities will also complement

Save's non-PEPFAR-funded work in health, education, and child protection in western Côte d'Ivoire, which

includes rehabilitation of health and school facilities, training of health workers, free essential medicines for

children under 5 and pregnant women, sexual and reproductive health awareness-raising, and support for

vulnerable youth, including youth formerly associated with fighting forces.

With PEPFAR funds, Save will implement a multi-tiered approach designed to assist OVC individually and

at the systems level by:

• providing core priority services to the children

• training and supporting community caregivers who will monitor children's progress and refer them to

appropriate services

• strengthening health, social protection, and education systems that provide services to OVC

At the service-delivery level, Save will train community caregivers to identify OVC, assess their needs using

the Child Status Index, provide regular home visits, refer OVC to appropriate support mechanisms, and

monitor their well-being. Community caregivers will serve as essential links between Save, local partner

organizations, service providers, and the children. These caregivers will be selected by the communities -

with input from vulnerable children - and will receive a monthly stipend for their work.

Training will be conducted in collaboration with the PNOEV and will use nationally approved materials and

trainers. The 100 community caregivers trained in FY07 will help train 150 more community caregivers in

FY08.

Caregivers will link to local partner NGOs - four in FY07 and two more in FY08 - that will ensure proper

follow-up of referrals. The project will create links between local partner organizations and state services so

that referrals occur smoothly and in the best interests of the children.

Community caregivers will identify OVC in a variety of ways, including:

• Direct identification in the community, in consultation with community leaders and village-level

associations

• Links with HIV CT centers, ART sites, and hospitals

• Identification in schools

• Identification through social centers

After assessing children's needs, caregivers will focus on ensuring that OVC receive four of the seven core

OVC services, as needed: health care, protection, psychosocial support, and education. Save will also

pursue wraparound nutritional support from the World Food Program, which has expressed its willingness to

support this OVC program, and in the future, given adequate funding, will explore the possibility of

economic-strengthening activities.

1. Health care - Save's local partners and community caregivers will link OVC with appropriate health

services. Save will oversee coordination between these partners and health centers to ensure smooth

referrals. Save will train health-care personnel on working with vulnerable children and will provide essential

drugs free to OVC. The project will also advocate with the Ministry of Health to abolish user fees for OVC,

building upon Save's ongoing work to abolish user fees for pregnant women and children under age 5. The

project will support vaccination campaigns, in collaboration with the national vaccination program, for OVC

who are at least 1 year old. Save will encourage HIV testing for children of HIV-positive parents (as well as

for all family members of HIV-positive children) and will ensure appropriate referrals, including for ART, and

follow-up.

2. Protection - Working in zones with large immigrant populations, Save will collaborate with the

International Organization for Migration to establish identity papers for children up to 13 years old. The

project will also advocate with the Ivorian government to attend to vulnerable adolescents in the country's

upcoming series of legal hearings ("audiences foraines") on individuals' citizenship status. Save will train

local partners and community caregivers to identify and report cases of child abuse, especially sexual

abuse. Save will also encourage local partners and community caregivers to sensitize their communities

about acceptance and support of OVC. Community caregivers' regular home visits will also serve as a

protective factor for OVC. All people involved with the project - government actors, local partners,

community caregivers, OVC - will engage with Save the Children UK's Child Protection Policy, which seeks

to minimize protection risks for children.

3. Psychosocial support - Social workers, local partners, and community caregivers will receive training in

listening skills and other basic psychosocial support mechanisms. They will provide support through needs

Activity Narrative: assessments, referrals and follow-up, and regular home visits.

4. Education - Save will advocate with the Ministry of Education (MEN) to ensure that all school-age OVC

have access to school. In the schools where Save already works, OVC who are enrolled will benefit from

school kits provided to all schoolchildren with funding from SIDA. The project will support the MEN's

initiative to incorporate HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention into the national curriculum by training

teachers and education authorities on the use of the MEN's life-skills materials. Save will also include

teachers in trainings about non-discrimination and psychosocial support for OVC.

To provide better OVC care and build sustainability, a crucial element of the project will be to strengthen the

capacity of the ministries of Health, Education, and Family, Women, and Social Affairs (MFFAS, which

includes the PNOEV) to provide needed services. By the end of FY07, the project will have trained 100

service providers representing these ministries in identifying OVC, working with vulnerable children,

providing psychosocial support, and improving social inclusion of OVC. In FY08, the project will train 100

more service providers in Odienné and Tai. More specific support to ministries will include:

• Material and technical support to social centers in Guiglo, Duékoué, and Man to ensure proper follow-up of

cases referred to them and to help them build the collaborative coordination "platforms" envisioned by the

PNOEV's national strategy. The form of the material support will be determined after proper needs

assessments have been performed.

• Assistance to the national vaccination program

• Provision of essential drugs for OVC to the Ministry of Health

• Training assistance to the MEN

The six local partner NGOs will form a crucial link between community caregivers and state service

providers. They will be required to participate actively, along with Save, in building PNOEV-supported

"platforms" to coordinate all OVC activities in a given geographic area. They will be selected using a

process that Save has developed for assessing local partners' capacity in eight domains of organizational

management. Although Save does not currently use a sub-granting system, the project will work with local

partners to identify in-kind and technical support that will help them to develop their capacities. Possible

areas for support include capacity building on issues related to OVC (identification, psychosocial support,

casework, and others); in-kind support for managing their offices; training support on financial management,

procurement, and logistics; and material and technical support for monitoring and evaluation. Save will also

assist the NGOs to build their capacity to supervise the community caregivers.

A hallmark of Save the Children UK is its commitment to children's rights, and in implementing this project,

Save will work with children not as "beneficiaries" but as "rights bearers" whom it is helping to realize their

rights to education, health care, protection from abuse, and non-discrimination.

Save will put in place an M&E system that will send timely, accurate reports to national authorities and the

USG strategic information team. To help build a unified national M&E system, Save will participate in

quarterly SI meetings and will implement decisions taken during these meetings.