Links for Children is a five-year project to improve services and support to OVC in four states: Kaduna, Kwara, Niger and Bauchi. The project will expand access to treatment services, and care and support for 23,120 orphans and vulnerable children; and training on care and support for 4,320 caregivers and 384 Child Protection Committee members. In COP 2010, project activities will focus on care and support for 1,200 OVC and training of 480 caregivers and 192 CPC members in two states, Kaduna and Bauchi, while establishing a presence in Kwara and Niger. This project will focus on one technical area of support: Support to OVC.

Key Project Outcome Indicators at end of COP 2010: 1) ARFH and 24 CSO partners (6 in each state) have completed an organizational assessment and development plan; 2) Initial baseline information will be compiled on all 3 project objectives. 3) 1,200 children will receive support in areas of education, economic, psychosocial, or protection; and 480 caregivers and 192 CPC members will receive training. 4) One training for state government agencies will be conducted in two states.

This Budget Code will include one cross-cutting program under Economic Strengthening, which will comprise the facilitation of Village Savings and Loan Groups for caregivers and HIV-affected households. This component will begin in Year 2, so is not included in the COP 2010 plan.

Save the Children will provide overall programmatic and administrative management, establishing a sub- grant with ARFH to implement activites in Bauchi and expanding to additional states in subsequent years. A Project Steering Committee (PSC) will give guidance on overall strategic direction and organizational arrangements.

There will be Project Manager and two Deputy Project Managers, one managing the SC state teams, and the other managing the ARHF state teams. An OVC Advisor will ensure overall technical quality; a Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor will manage all M&E systems; an Organisational Development Advisor will handle organizational assessments and development plans for ARFH and the CSO partners; and a Village Savings and Loan Advisor (starting in 2011) will coordinate this component. Technical Support includes a Health & HIV Advisors from SC and ARFH. An SC Grants Coordinator supports the management of project funds. An ARFH Finance Manager will manage the ARFH sub-grant.

The Project's State teams will be led by a State Team Leader. Four Project Officers in each State will guide the CSO facilitators and 3 support staff will support the offices.

The Performance Monitoring and Evaluation systems will assure a balance between systems that are sophisticated enough to help determine the success of the project and its impact on children, and systems that are user-friendly enough for the communities and individuals that are using them. The project is developing tools to capture valid and reliable data which can be used by community volunteers and CSO facilitators with basic literacy skills. A key component will be the Child Status Index (CSI), which will be used to assess the progress of children and families over time. Other tools developed for OVC programs in the Nigeria context and through SC's global experience will be used to complement the CSI. The project will also provide extensive training staff, partners, and communities in use of the M&E systems.

The Child Protection Committees-CPCs will serve as the basic team of service providers, along with CSO facilitators and project staff. The CPCs conduct a household survey in the community, during which each household is visited and assessed using the CSI tool. The household registers compiled from this survey serve as the "Baseline Assessment" for the household and community on which progress is measured. For each family documented on the register, a simple "case file" will be created and updated on a quarterly basis after home visits. The information from updated case files and household registers will be used to prepare progress reports for each community, and summarized for each state.

At the household and community level, caregivers and other household members will receive training to build skills in caring for their children appropriately in the context of what is already considered socio- culturally appropriate. Local leaders form an integral part of the committee formation and are asked to support all subsequent events. The community grants provided for the CPCs are implemented through a matching system, under which the CPCs are asked to raise portions of the grant's value. They are also linked with local government structures through advocacy visits.

Links for Children will match SC's expertise in using child-focused approaches with ARFH's expertise in providing sexual and reproductive health services to young people. Using a structured organizational development plan, ARFH will be able to meet the requirements to become a prime recipient of PEPFAR funding at the project's end. In the first year, ARFH will receive a sub-grant from SC to manage project activities in Bauchi. This will expand in Year 2 to include a second state, along with plans for subsequent transfer of additional states in the remaining years.

At state level, Save the Children has worked in partnership with 4 organizations since 2006: JNI, CAN, FOMWAN, and NRCS. The project will add two organizations with more experience in HIV/AIDS and OVC: AONN and NEPWHAN. Save the Children will not provide a specific sub-grant to each of these organizations; but the project will directly fund the field activities planned by the CSOs and CPCs. An organizational assessment and OD plan will be done for each CSO partner. By the project's end, at least two CSOs in each state will have successfully obtained funding to implement HIV & OVC projects, independent of this project. The project will also engage relevant government agencies in each state to further develop their OVC action plans through training, advocacy, and technical support.

At the community level, the CPC model demonstrates concrete results to the entire community of involving women and girls in problem-solving conversations and decision making processes. The process of bringing men, women, boys, and girls together to discuss issues of power, privilege, diversity, and exclusion in situations affecting their daily lives, helps address issues of gender roles and norms in a realistic, structured, and sustainable manner. In the area of economic empowerment, Village Savings and Loan activities have multiplier effects across individual, household, and community levels. Opportunities for participants include services to enhance small scale investments and asset building. All services provided in this project will ensure that age-appropriate and gender-appropriate interventions are provided, in particular focusing on improving access to services for older children in areas of sexual and reproductive health, HIV and STI prevention, and other life skills.

Legal protection for OVC will include such activities as birth registration and working with legal organizations addressing such issues as inheritance and property rights. CPCs will identify those households where children are required to work in hazardous labour to support their families; and work with the families to enable their children to attend school, while exploring alternative means for supporting the family. The project will work with communities to develop locally managed response systems that can link with the formal legal systems, but which also build trust and confidence for victims to report incidents in a supportive and confidential environment.

Extensive training is provided to all project staff, CSO facilitators, and CPCs, which includes a wide range of topics: child development, child protection and participation; gender equity, roles, and expectations;

diversity and exclusion; power, privilege, and discrimination; HIV/AIDS and other health/nutrition issues; M&E and reporting; and basic family assessment and psychosocial support. This will equip the staff and volunteers with skills to provide (or refer) age and gender-appropriate support and services for each child in each household, depending on the individual situation.

Each CSO facilitator works with the communities and CPCs through a mentoring system in which they are matched with project staff for purposes of mentoring and role modelling. Over time, the CSOs take on more responsibility for support to communities, while staff assume a monitoring and oversight role. CPC members do not receive any remuneration for the work that they do, as they are elected representatives of the community. CSO facilitators receive small monthly stipends to cover their local transport costs and other incidentals. By the end of the project, at least two CSOs in each state will have obtained small grants to support their work with CPCs and OVCs in the local communities independent of this project.

The project will use a community engagement model of Child Protection Committees that has proven effective in mobilizing communities in a sustained and relevant manner, and which has demonstrated significant success in Nigeria for reaching OVC and HIV-affected families. By supporting these groups, which also comprise children, to engage directly with families affected by HIV, the project will increase the number of OVC and families able to access testing, PMTCT, treatment, prevention, and care and support services. Through home visits, information will be provided on other key health and nutrition areas, such as maximizing the nutritional potential of local foods; breastfeeding and infant feeding practices; basic sanitation, water storage, and cleanliness practices; and other basic preventive health practices, such as malaria prevention, routine immunization, ORS solution for diarrhoea, etc.

A child-focused approach with child participation is fundamental to all work undertaken by Save the Children. SC has developed child participation models that have proven to be very effective, most recently in the development of the National Plan of Action for OVC. Child participation is built into the structure of this project, starting from the community level, where the Child Protection Committees are comprised of equal groups of men, women, boys, and girls.

The CPCs will work with other local structures to develop solutions for children and families that provide support through large-scale interventions. In Kwara and Kaduna States, the project will take advantage of SC's involvement in ESSPIN, a 6 year DFID-funded Education Program, to work with school authorities and School-Based Management Committees, to develop broad-based sustainable solutions to improve the access of large numbers of vulnerable children to basic education services

Links for Children is a five-year project to improve services and support to OVC in four states: Kaduna, Kwara, Niger and Bauchi. The project will expand access to treatment services, and care and support for 23,120 orphans and vulnerable children; and training on care and support for 4,320 caregivers and 384 Child Protection Committee members. In COP 2010, project activities will focus on care and support for 1,200 OVC and training of 480 caregivers and 192 CPC members in two states, Kaduna and Bauchi, while establishing a presence in Kwara and Niger. This project will focus on one technical area of support: Support to OVC.

Key Project Outcome Indicators at end of COP 2010: 1) ARFH and 24 CSO partners (6 in each state) have completed an organizational assessment and development plan; 2) Initial baseline information will be compiled on all 3 project objectives. 3) 1,200 children will receive support in areas of education, economic, psychosocial, or protection; and 480 caregivers and 192 CPC members will receive training. 4) One training for state government agencies will be conducted in two states.

This Budget Code will include one cross-cutting program under Economic Strengthening, which will comprise the facilitation of Village Savings and Loan Groups for caregivers and HIV-affected households. This component will begin in Year 2, so is not included in the COP 2010 plan.

Save the Children will provide overall programmatic and administrative management, establishing a sub-

grant with ARFH to implement activites in Bauchi and expanding to additional states in subsequent years. A Project Steering Committee (PSC) will give guidance on overall strategic direction and organizational arrangements.

There will be Project Manager and two Deputy Project Managers, one managing the SC state teams, and the other managing the ARHF state teams. An OVC Advisor will ensure overall technical quality; a Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor will manage all M&E systems; an Organisational Development Advisor will handle organizational assessments and development plans for ARFH and the CSO partners; and a Village Savings and Loan Advisor (starting in 2011) will coordinate this component. Technical Support includes a Health & HIV Advisors from SC and ARFH. An SC Grants Coordinator supports the management of project funds. An ARFH Finance Manager will manage the ARFH sub-grant.

The Project's State teams will be led by a State Team Leader. Four Project Officers in each State will guide the CSO facilitators and 3 support staff will support the offices.

The Performance Monitoring and Evaluation systems will assure a balance between systems that are sophisticated enough to help determine the success of the project and its impact on children, and systems that are user-friendly enough for the communities and individuals that are using them. The project is developing tools to capture valid and reliable data which can be used by community volunteers and CSO facilitators with basic literacy skills. A key component will be the Child Status Index (CSI), which will be used to assess the progress of children and families over time. Other tools developed for OVC programs in the Nigeria context and through SC's global experience will be used to complement the CSI. The project will also provide extensive training staff, partners, and communities in use of the M&E systems.

The Child Protection Committees-CPCs will serve as the basic team of service providers, along with CSO facilitators and project staff. The CPCs conduct a household survey in the community, during which each household is visited and assessed using the CSI tool. The household registers compiled from this survey serve as the "Baseline Assessment" for the household and community on which progress is measured. For each family documented on the register, a simple "case file" will be created and updated on a quarterly basis after home visits. The information from updated case files and household registers will be used to prepare progress reports for each community, and summarized for each state.

At the household and community level, caregivers and other household members will receive training to build skills in caring for their children appropriately in the context of what is already considered socio- culturally appropriate. Local leaders form an integral part of the committee formation and are asked to support all subsequent events. The community grants provided for the CPCs are implemented through a

matching system, under which the CPCs are asked to raise portions of the grant's value. They are also linked with local government structures through advocacy visits.

Links for Children will match SC's expertise in using child-focused approaches with ARFH's expertise in providing sexual and reproductive health services to young people. Using a structured organizational development plan, ARFH will be able to meet the requirements to become a prime recipient of PEPFAR funding at the project's end. In the first year, ARFH will receive a sub-grant from SC to manage project activities in Bauchi. This will expand in Year 2 to include a second state, along with plans for subsequent transfer of additional states in the remaining years.

At state level, Save the Children has worked in partnership with 4 organizations since 2006: JNI, CAN, FOMWAN, and NRCS. The project will add two organizations with more experience in HIV/AIDS and OVC: AONN and NEPWHAN. Save the Children will not provide a specific sub-grant to each of these organizations; but the project will directly fund the field activities planned by the CSOs and CPCs. An organizational assessment and OD plan will be done for each CSO partner. By the project's end, at least two CSOs in each state will have successfully obtained funding to implement HIV & OVC projects, independent of this project. The project will also engage relevant government agencies in each state to further develop their OVC action plans through training, advocacy, and technical support.

At the community level, the CPC model demonstrates concrete results to the entire community of involving women and girls in problem-solving conversations and decision making processes. The process of bringing men, women, boys, and girls together to discuss issues of power, privilege, diversity, and exclusion in situations affecting their daily lives, helps address issues of gender roles and norms in a realistic, structured, and sustainable manner. In the area of economic empowerment, Village Savings and Loan activities have multiplier effects across individual, household, and community levels. Opportunities for participants include services to enhance small scale investments and asset building. All services provided in this project will ensure that age-appropriate and gender-appropriate interventions are provided, in particular focusing on improving access to services for older children in areas of sexual and reproductive health, HIV and STI prevention, and other life skills.

Legal protection for OVC will include such activities as birth registration and working with legal organizations addressing such issues as inheritance and property rights. CPCs will identify those households where children are required to work in hazardous labour to support their families; and work with the families to enable their children to attend school, while exploring alternative means for supporting the family. The project will work with communities to develop locally managed response systems that can link with the formal legal systems, but which also build trust and confidence for victims to report incidents in a supportive and confidential environment.

Extensive training is provided to all project staff, CSO facilitators, and CPCs, which includes a wide range of topics: child development, child protection and participation; gender equity, roles, and expectations; diversity and exclusion; power, privilege, and discrimination; HIV/AIDS and other health/nutrition issues; M&E and reporting; and basic family assessment and psychosocial support. This will equip the staff and volunteers with skills to provide (or refer) age and gender-appropriate support and services for each child in each household, depending on the individual situation.

Each CSO facilitator works with the communities and CPCs through a mentoring system in which they are matched with project staff for purposes of mentoring and role modelling. Over time, the CSOs take on more responsibility for support to communities, while staff assume a monitoring and oversight role. CPC members do not receive any remuneration for the work that they do, as they are elected representatives of the community. CSO facilitators receive small monthly stipends to cover their local transport costs and other incidentals. By the end of the project, at least two CSOs in each state will have obtained small grants to support their work with CPCs and OVCs in the local communities independent of this project.

The project will use a community engagement model of Child Protection Committees that has proven effective in mobilizing communities in a sustained and relevant manner, and which has demonstrated significant success in Nigeria for reaching OVC and HIV-affected families. By supporting these groups, which also comprise children, to engage directly with families affected by HIV, the project will increase the number of OVC and families able to access testing, PMTCT, treatment, prevention, and care and support services. Through home visits, information will be provided on other key health and nutrition areas, such as maximizing the nutritional potential of local foods; breastfeeding and infant feeding practices; basic sanitation, water storage, and cleanliness practices; and other basic preventive health practices, such as malaria prevention, routine immunization, ORS solution for diarrhoea, etc.

A child-focused approach with child participation is fundamental to all work undertaken by Save the Children. SC has developed child participation models that have proven to be very effective, most recently in the development of the National Plan of Action for OVC. Child participation is built into the structure of this project, starting from the community level, where the Child Protection Committees are comprised of equal groups of men, women, boys, and girls.

The CPCs will work with other local structures to develop solutions for children and families that provide support through large-scale interventions. In Kwara and Kaduna States, the project will take advantage of SC's involvement in ESSPIN, a 6 year DFID-funded Education Program, to work with school authorities and School-Based Management Committees, to develop broad-based sustainable solutions to improve the access of large numbers of vulnerable children to basic education services