What are its Strengths and Opportunities?
The strength of community-based orphan care is that it can cover the needs of a large number of orphans and vulnerable children for relatively low cost in a culturally appropriate way. When it is done well, it uses strong community participation to identify the needs of the orphans and to develop long-term solutions to their problems. Generally it is flexible enough for each orphan family to choose what activity is most appropriate for them to address their needs. Examples of this might include: establishing an income generating activity, or covering education expenses. The principal objective of this approach is to empower the family unit to function effectively. Another strength of this approach is that children are raised as a family and are more likely to receive love and affection when kept with siblings and relatives than those who are institutionalised or separated.
What are the Challenges?
There are situations when the community-based approach alone is insufficient to cater for the wide range of child and family needs. Sometimes the care programmes are not comprehensive enough to meet the overwhelming needs of orphan households. Programmes that focus on only one or two activities leave the family vulnerable. If the program is not linked or networked with other social programmes, it can leave gaps in the necessary care for orphans.
Even though the advantages of community-based orphan care are evident to those involved in orphan care, most organisations – including FELICA - are having trouble raising funds. This is because the best programmes are decentralised, and have low capital investment - donors hence do not “see” the impact of their donation.
Photo: Orphans and vulnerable children in the N’Zérékoré area, who will be beneficiaries from a grant given to FELICA by UK’s Kitchen Table Charities Trust.
