Project Goal & objectives

The Overall project objective was to o build the capacity of households and the community to provide support improving the livelihood of OVC and youth and prevent the future vulnerability through minimum package where their needs and rights will be sustainably met.
Specific objectives were:
1. To Improve community psychosocial support to Orphans and vulnerable children through community-based child mentoring;
2. To improve access to sustainable income generating opportunities for households to m economically and build survival capacity for poor vulnerable child headed households and female headed households through organic farming skills development;
3. To improve child rights protection, provision and child participation through community awareness creation on child rights and children capacity building.

Project main Activities
1) Identification of 52 poor female headed households, 94 child headed households and selection of their mentors
2) Organizing and building capacity of 240 OVC, mentors and caregivers to form their support groups.
3) Capacity building of 240 CHH, mentors and caregivers in child mentoring and home counselling techniques.
4) Capacity building of 240 new support groups members in basic nutrition skills, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and Family planning.
5) Linking new 240CHH, mentors and caregivers with OVC and mentors’ cooperatives at sector level and other institutions involved in related activities for longer-term support and services not provided by the project.
6) Strengthening capacity of umbrella committee and cooperative committee at sector level in cooperative management and formation of union of cooperatives at district level.
7) Capacity building of OVC and mentors’ support group committees, sector/umbrella committees and Bamporeze staff in child rights Approach.
8) Capacity building for 240 OVC, mentors and caregivers in child rights Approach.
9) OVC, mentors and Community members sensitization campaign on child rights.
10) Strengthening the collaboration between community psychosocial support structure for OVC and community policing committee and establish a reporting system and referral mechanism in case of child rights violation.
11) Reflesher 240 OVC, mentors and caregivers on a 3-days reflesher course in child rights, child mentoring and homebased counseling will be organized for OVC, mentors and caregivers.
12) Training 240 OVC, mentors and caregivers in organic farming and other sustainable agricultural practices.
13) Support 150 households with organic farming starters’ kits to apply the learnt skills on their own farm plots. The kit to be composed by small livestock (pig or goat) and seeds of promoted crops in the region (vegetable, beans, Irish potatoes) and mushrooms. The livestock and seeds provided to be disseminated within the community on rotational scheme with expectation that within the 3 years at least 450 households will be reached.
14) Applying learnt organic farming techniques on OVC, mentors and caregivers ‘farm plot.
15) Capacity building of sector /umbrella committee members in entrepreneurship and agribusiness.
16) Strengthening the support groups towards income generating projects.
17) Support OVC, mentors and caregivers’ cooperatives to shift from subsistence to market-oriented agriculture and agribusiness development.
18) Preparing orphans and community to take over the management of the OVC support initiative.

Expected results
1. Improved social support system for children within their own communities: The trained mentors and caregivers will support OVC through home based OVC counselling; they will improve their lessening skills to OVC, and provide OVC with psychosocial support as well as material support. Through this, the community will take responsibility of taking care of its own OVC through the community-based mentorship approach. The support group committees, sector committee and umbrella committees will play a leading role in advocacy for OVC related issues.
2. Improved economic and survival capacity of child headed households and poor female headed households taking care of OVC: the project will train child headed households and female headed households in organic farming techniques and support them with starters kit to apply the learnt skills on their own plots of land. This will enable them to produce enough food for household’s conception and earn income from selling the surplus and animal. Since the households will be able to fulfil their basic needs, they will be supported to shift from subsistence agriculture into market-oriented agriculture and agribusiness through cooperatives of organic farmers to earn more income.
3. Improved child rights provision: In addition to ignorance of child rights, the situation of poverty prevailing within the child/female headed households does not allow the sibling to enjoy their rights to education, health, nutrition and shelter. By empowering them social economically and training them in child rights, basic nutrition skills, health insurance scheme HIV/AIDS, reproductive health and reproductive health they will be encouraged to use the income generated from organic farming related activities to improve child rights provision in terms of education, health, nutrition and shelter.
4. Community members change behaviour as a result of community sensitization campaigns: he community awareness creation campaign on child rights will improve the knowledge of the population on child rights. So, child rights will be considered, violations stigmatised and all cases of child rights violations will be reported, through referral mechanisms and reporting system that will be established within the community. The community members, parents and local authorities will become aware of child participation rights within all child-related issues and policies.
5. Children are not engaged in child labour: For their survival, OVC living in child headed households and female headed households are often involved in certain kinds of work which disturb education or health. Child headed households and female headed households after being empowered socio economically they will be able to meet the basic needs of their siblings. As the elder OVC or vulnerable youth and woman heads of households will be sensitized on the principle of “the best interest for child” they will make sure that their siblings are just doing certain kinds of child work which don’t disturb education or health. But also the improved social economic situation for the households will limit the number of siblings leaving rural community of Rulindo district to seek the job in Kigali city, where they are engaged in child labour.

Achievements
• 141OVCs, 62 mentors and 47 caregivers were trained in group dynamics, saving and day-to-day management of the groups.
• 240 members in Support Groups trained on child mentoring and counseling techniques
• 240 members of support groups trained in basic nutrition skills, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and Family planning.
• 32 members of umbrella committee and cooperative committee trained in cooperative management.
• 141 OVCs, 62 mentors and 39 caregivers trained in organic farming and other sustainable agricultural practices.
• 150 vulnerable households provided with 150 pigs, 150 goats and seeds of Irish potatoes, beans, maize and vegetables.
• 32 members of umbrella committee trained in advanced entrepreneurship.
• 15 Support Groups supported towards IGA
• 286 OVCs, 262 mentors and 47 caregivers supported to shift from subsistence to market-oriented agriculture and agribusiness development.
• 18 OVCs, 18 mentors, 24 Umbrella committee members and 6 staff of Bamporeze trained in child rights Approach.
• 140 OVCs, 61 mentors and 39 care givers trained in child rights Approach.
• 12,471 people reached by community sensitization campaign on child rights
• 6 meetings conducted for strengthening the collaboration between community psychosocial support structure for OVC and community policing committee and establish a reporting system and referral mechanism in case of child rights violation.
• The end project assessment showed that 94.2 percent of trained CHH and 100 percent of trained mentors reported being involved in organic farming activities; 90.2 percent of CHH and 98.4 percent of mentors and reported increase in agriculture yield to the extent it has doubled; 68 percent of CHH and 56 percent of mentors managed to associate off-farm income generating activities to their farming activities while 5.8 percent of CHH resumed secondary education or were involved in learning vocational skills through apprenticeship.
• 65 percent of CHH and 52 percent of mentors affirmed that they income has increased more than 50% thanks to the combination of organic farming with other income generating activities.
• The percentage of beneficiaries owning livestock has increased from 9.8 to 100 percent for CHH and from 56 to 100 percent for mentors due to the training and support received from the project.
• 96 percent of CHH and 92 percent of mentors have been able to pay themselves mutual health insurance, which implies that the percentage of beneficiaries who can afford the annual subscription fees for mutual health insurance has increased by 85% for CHH and by 43% for mentors.
• 89% of the participants in the Focus Group Discussions reported positive change in their farming activities, the yield has increased significantly due to the utilization of organic manure and chemical fertilisers to the extent that they do not need to work for food like they did before the project.
From the perception of participants in the FGDs, not only the training in organic farming has been useful for them, but also the training they received in their support groups on small income generating activities, access and utilization of loan are equally important