Supporting Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Belarus

Implementing Partner: Christian Children’s Fund

Funding Period: September 2005 - September 2012

Amount: $4,657,145

Purpose: Reduce the number of children in Belarus being institutionalized in state-administered orphanages and boarding schools.

Objectives

The project will focus on three major components:

• Protect children and prevent their maltreatment
• Ensure the sustainability of project activities
• Expand the project model throughout the country

Since 2005, USAID has supported the project, Supporting Orphans and Vulnerable Children. The project aims to prevent the institutionalization of children in selected Belarusian communities by supporting a cultural environment conducive to at-home family care and the movement of children living in institutions to less restrictive environments. Project activities enlist children, families, community-based services, regional and national government, and universities in efforts to ensure that alternative methods of care for institutionalized children are formulated as part of a clearly defined child welfare system.

The project began by focusing its activities in the three target communities of Orsha, Zhodino, and Kobrin. There, project-trained social service professionals worked to keep families and children together or to reintegrate children within their families. The program also strengthened the settings in which services could be provided. It equipped three training rooms in public schools to conduct trainings on effective parenting, health education, life skills education, and other programs; purchased special needs furniture for daycare and respite care institutions for children with disabilities; equipped two “social apartments” to train abandoned and orphaned children in basic domestic skills; and purchased equipment for two sewing workshops for a boarding school for orphaned children in Zhodino and one woodcraft workshop for a shelter in Kobrin.

The project also provide small grants to in-country organizations that develop models of alternative care for children in need, create self-help groups for parents who are substance abusers, and establish community-based consultation and rehabilitation services for children with disabilities and their parents.

In year four, the project has expanded components of the country’s developing child protection system. Although the objective of most project services is to respond to known instances of child abuse and neglect, those services also play a role in preventing future instances of child abuse. To ensure the sustainability of the system, the project continues to bolster community-based services by providing training and reference materials to local service providers and others working on behalf of children.

The project is also working to create a national plan of action or policy on the prevention of child maltreatment.