Programs to Support Orphans and Vulnerable Children

2009: A Successful Year For Jali Watoto

The Jali Watoto team has had another interesting year. The greatest achievement has been reaching over 88,000 children with at least one support service thereby reducing the vulnerability of each of those children. The family or household unit has become a much greater focus for Jali Watoto’s support over this last year, with our partners’ volunteers providing support to all family members visited on a regular basis.

In this last year, we received recognition for the work we have done to improve quality (QI) in our program. In May last year, one of our Program Officers, Joyce Kivamba, had the opportunity to present our work to improve the quality and effectiveness of our program at the Global Health Council Meeting in Washington DC. An interesting exchange visit was also arranged in June 2009 between Pact, other representatives from OVC partners in Tanzania and the Ethiopian QI team. We were most delighted in this last year, to have our Jali Watoto’s guidelines for volunteers used as the basis for national guidelines for all implementers of OVC programs in Tanzania. Lastly on this front, our Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist was invited to co-facilitate a national level workshop to develop standards for working with orphans and vulnerable children in Kenya. Our influence has gone truly international!

The successes we see on an individual and group basis from integrating WORTH as a program for carers of most vulnerable children have been truly inspiring. The model has been further enhanced by funding from OAK Foundation, and through this additional funding, topics are being introduced to the groups, that will greatly improve the care and protection provided to vulnerable children by their families. We look forward to rolling out this new and exciting program in this next year.

In November 2009, Jali Watoto was pleased to be amongst the groups involved in successfully lobbying for the new Children’s Act in Tanzania to be finally passed by Parliament. Pact will be part of the process of implementing the Act to greater protect the children with whom we work.

We continue to support the coordination of the Tanzanian program for Most Vulnerable Children and the promotion of best practices through our role as Secretariat of the national level Implementing Partners Group. The scope of the Jali Watoto program has also increased this year so that we now provide support and services to families in a total of 24 districts in the Mara, Tabora, Mbeya, Kagera and Mtwara regions.

‘These Pigs Are My Children’s School Fees’

Leticia Rushona is 37 years old and lives in Kagera, Chato district in a village called Rubambangwe. Leticia married in 1991 and has four children, of whom three are in primary school and one is in secondary school.

Life was good for the family for a long time. They had cattle and a farm, and Mama Leticia encouraged her husband to work hard. The family was able to have 22 cows, 19 goats and be able to harvest thirty to forty sacks of rice per year.

However, a couple of years ago, Mama Leticia’s husband decided to marry a second wife. He left his family and moved in with the second wife. Mama Leticia tried to go to court to demand her rights, but it was too late as the husband had already sold all their cattle and the farm. The husband moved out of that village and nobody knows now where he is despite the village leadership trying to look for him.

The cattle and the farm formed the basis of their livelihoods, but now they were unable to carry on with those activities because everything had been sold.

Mama Leticia’s life got worse, to the extent that there were times when she and her family skipped a meal, and she couldn’t afford to buy school materials. The children had to drop out of school. She couldn’t even afford health care and there was a time when she decided to work as a laborer on other people’s farms. However, she had to stop this work outside of the family as her second eldest child was falling sick frequently.

In July 2006, Pact Tanzania selected RUDDO organization to provide services to Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC). The organization was to provide services in eight wards and 42 villages, one of them being where Mama Leticia lives.

During the process of carrying out the detailed needs assessment with the children identified as most vulnerable, Mama Leticia’s children had already dropped out of school. The family also couldn’t afford the health care services, and sanitary conditions in the home were poor. They also needed some counseling and psychological support as a result of the marriage breakdown and father leaving the home with no further contact.

Mama Leticia’s children have received support from RUDDO in terms of education materials, health care (with a Community Health Care Card and a volunteer visits regularly for psychosocial and other support. They are now being supported to clean up their surroundings and dig a toilet.

In late 2007, Leticia’s older child completed Standard VII and sat for his exams to join secondary education. RUDDO paid for his fees and the boy started Form I in January, 2008. It was something but not enough, because Mama Leticia didn’t have any means of income to continue to pay school fees.

In 2009 RUDDO, Jali Watoto introduced income generating activities to families. This included distribution of animals to families able to take care of them and without any other form of income generation. Mama Leticia was given pigs so that she could rear them. After receiving the pigs, Mama Leticia said: “From now on, these pigs will help me get the school fees for my children. These pigs are my school fees”

Her eldest son was overjoyed and very grateful, promising to take good care of the pigs. RUDDO offered the family a male pig to help in mating, and the female pig is now pregnant and expecting piglets anytime.

RUDDO is also working closely with veterinary officers from the government in educating the families how to take care of their cattle. Mama Leticia’s family is among those that have been trained on how to take care of pigs, and their pigs are healthy.

Maxmilian Julius is a RUDDO volunteer who visits Mama Leticia’s family on a regular basis. He talks of how life was very difficult for that family in the beginning, and how much things have improved since receiving the pigs.

“It’s a huge relief to Mama Leticia and her family, now that the issue of school fees is resolved,” he says.