Sustaining 50 Reunified Children in Rural Ethiopia

We have been able to make an incredible progress with the caregivers of our re-unified children. In the past few months we have initiated income generating activities for 18 caregivers of children who were re-unified with their families almost three years ago.

Our first step has been to remind the families about the fact that our three year follow-up & support agreement will come to an end, but at the same time we inform them about this special opportunity that we will offer to them. THe caregivers always are understanding that the agreement will come to an end but are very surprised with the additional support we offer them through income generating.

We give them a one day training in small business skills after which they let us know what kind of activity they want to do. The caregivers in the country side usually want to increase their sheep and goats, in the towns caregivers want to do small scale trading or open up a small teahouse. We leave the choice of business to the beneficiaries. If they are already doing some business we encourage them to expand that. We provide them with the seedmoney and we do close follow-up to make sure that they spent the money wisely on their income generating activities. Our next step will be checking if they are improving their income. We have had excellent feed-back about our project from all the government stakeholders. The way we have set it up and do follow-up is highly appreciated. We were already a model for our tracing and family re-unification activities and this has been added to us being a model.

Together with our social worker I have done several home visits last month, the children are well adjusted in their families and cared for in a good manner. The caregivers were very thankful for the support and for the social worker who is always available to them.

We really appreciate the donations towards this project so we can continue to help these families to become self-sustained.