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• We let the local community groups to take the responsibility of identifying orphans and vulnerable children as well as the households that are most vulnerable in their communities.
• These groups are also able to identify and integrate children who had slipped through the safety net. Once these sets of people are identified, members of the community based organisations make regular visits to the homes in-question.
• VOCORI steps in by offering the necessary training and support to enable them to provide quality care for the orphans and vulnerable children.
• HIV/AIDS has caused deaths in so many homes, that the once popular extended families has lost it’s place in the society. In most villages there’s a tendency to find only children, the very young and the very old. As a result there’s not many primary caregivers for orphans and vulnerable children. The surviving extended families do disperse orphaned siblings among different households to share the cost of their care.
• VOCORI favours the idea of finding ways to keep these siblings together, help them recover from their loss, as they support each other and remain in their own communities rather than trying to split them into different institutions such as foster homes or adoption.
• In cases whereby there’s a family or a community to care for them, but are faced with financial problems we try to give the funds required so that the orphans can easily be integrated into the families without being a burden to their caregivers.
• In situations whereby the eldest child is of age, we encourage child-headed households.
• And if none of the above are favourable then we would go for foster homes as a last resort, adoption is not a common practice in villages.
• To deal effectively with the problem of the orphans and vulnerable children, we must deal with the wider context in which they live. This implies investing in communities, in schools, in health clinics, in self-help and income generating projects.
• No single policy can reduce child poverty. Health is for example dependant on water, sanitation, education and economic policies. And economic policies are not just in terms of adequate finances, but are related to income generating activities, controlling inflation and encouraging genuine pro-poor growth.
•  Thus we aim to improve nutritional status to prevent irreversible damage, engage community health workers to interact with mothers of vulnerable children under VOCORI’s care and ensure at least 8 years of basic education, life school training for both children of age and women, encourage VOCORI beneficiaries to form groups for reasons of empowering them in access to basic services and credit.

The foregoing are the core elements of our strategy.