How Value Chains Can Help Orphans and Vulnerable Children and their Caregivers

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How Value Chains Can Help Orphans and Vulnerable
Children and their Caregivers
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Project Information

• Project Name and location
• Community Based Orphan Child Protection and
  Empowerment (COPE) Project, Tanzania, Uganda,
  Rwanda and Mozambique
• Organizations
• Africare Prime Contractor
• Emerging Markets Group, Ltd.
• Project Duration 2005-2010
• Donor USAID
• Project Goal To reduce the socioeconomic impact
  of HIV/AIDS on about two million orphans and
  vulnerable children (OVC) and their caregivers.

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Project Strategic Objectives

• Enhanced community capacity to coordinate care
  and support services for OVC and caregivers
• Enhanced Life Skills training, peer education and
  psychosocial care and support to OVCs and their
  families
• Increased access to educational support services
  to OVC
• Increased Access to health care and nutritional
  support to OVC
• Increased access to income generation
  opportunities to OVC and caregivers

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OVC and Caregiver Livelihood

• OVC and their caregivers are among the rural
  poor, but often in a worse situation
• Most caregivers and older OVC are engaged in
  various micro-enterprises
• A need to promote access to better markets and
  facilitate access to resources and skills

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Value Chain Approach

• Definition of the Value Chain Approach
• A tool to create wealth in poor communities and
  for promoting poverty-reducing economic growth.
• To ensure that the poor are not left out of
  economic growth strategies, this approach focuses
  on linking micro and small enterprises (MSEs)
  into larger regional and global firms global

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Methodology and Interventions

• Sector focused projects follow a specified
  methodology
• Identify an industry with potential for growth
  and a large number of micro-enterprises
• Undertake a Value Chain Analysis
• Develop specific interventions to address
  constraints along the Value Chain in the
  specific areas

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Linking Caregivers and OVC to Value Chains

• Facilitating linkages with larger firms is a
  critical step in providing microenterprises with
  access to better markets
• Like other microenterprises, caregivers and older
  OVC need support to effectively work with larger
  firms
• Support given to caregivers and OVC
  microenterprises needs be tailored to the stages
  of their vulnerability and local reality
• Caregiver and OVC microenterprises must be
  focused on meeting the business needs of the
  larger firms
• Larger firms must be committed to having
  micro-enterprises as part of their core business

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Linking Caregivers and OVC to Value Chains

• Microenterprise cooperation is often required for
  microenterprises to contribute to and benefit
  from relationships with larger firms
• Cooperation may be in the form of formal or
  informal groupings of MSEs
• Cooperation should be focused on a joint
  constraint (s) that require joint action

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High impact income generation activities through
linkages to high growth markets

• Caregivers in Uganda now selling their dried
  fruit in the UK
• Caregivers in Rwanda now selling their baskets to
  Macys
• Caregivers in Mozambique now selling their
  vegetables every week to a local college

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A Pilot Program in Uganda

• Target Group
• A rapid needs assessment was conducted in 15
  sub-counties of Ntungamo District, and a total of
  10,591 caregivers of OVC identified
• Which Income Generation Activities (IGA) should
  the project support?
• Undertook an inventory of all IGA being
  undertaken by the caregivers including their
  current and prospective higher value markets
• Identified opportunities with larger firms using
  a pre- identified criteria

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A Pilot Program in Uganda

• Organized Caregiver into producer groups
• 10 caregiver clusters were formed, with a total
  membership of 466 caregivers taking care of more
  than 1000 OVC
• Each cluster is comprised of 5-10 smaller groups
  of 5-6 caregivers
• Each cluster is trained on importance of savings,
  group management, financial management and
  business management
• A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed
  with the export company

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A Pilot Program in Uganda

• COPE assisted the groups to analyze the viability
  of fruit drying IGA
• The export company trained 311 caregivers in
  fruit drying
• Dryers were constructed by the export company and
  paid for through a cost share agreement between
  the company, the project, and the caregivers
• Caregivers produce and supply fruit for export
• Follow up and additional support is being
  provided by the company

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Production from 148 Caregivers (2007)
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A Caregiver filling out the groups savings
records
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Challenges and Lessons Learned

• Group development is time consuming
• Larger firms are businesses and relationships
  with them must be developed with this
  understanding
• Producer groups formed to support caregiver
  microenterprises could serve other social needs
• The willingness of the market to integrate
  microenterprises into their core business is a
  critical element of this activity
• Targeting of caregivers and OVC may cause
  conflict

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Thank You

• Contact Information
• Jacqueline S. Gayle
• jgayle_at_africare.org
• Thomas Ingvoldstad tingvoldstad_at_emergingmarketsgro
  up.com