Street-Connected Children and Adolescents Socio-Economic Inclusion Project

pipeline

The project pilots an innovative wrap around approach specific to children and adolescents living in street situations by focusing on select core areas for support. The proposed project has three components: Component 1: Improving quality and access to services in shelters; Component 2: Economic pathways for street-connected adolescents; and Component 3: Project Management, Administration, Monitoring and Evaluation, and Knowledge Dissemination. The projects three components reinforce each other and are designed using the logic that improving shelter services stabilizes children’s immediate environment, enabling successful reintegration efforts or efforts to support the economic empowerment of street connected adolescents. Economic inclusion addresses structural poverty and reduces the risk of children returning to the streets. Strengthening institutions ensures sustainability and scale. You may want to add that the project’s logic is built on the understanding that improving shelter services stabilizes children’s immediate environment, enabling successful reintegration efforts. Economic inclusion addresses structural poverty and reduces the risk of children returning to the streets. Strengthening institutions ensures sustainability and scale. Under Component 1, the project will provide children between the ages of 4 to 18 years, a set of integrated key services in select existing shelters in Bujumbura in turn strengthening the program design, quality and capacity within existing shelters. The services will include basic literacy and numeracy; soft skills through sports, music, arts; psychosocial support services, GBV prevention and response services and access to health. There are other approaches already underway in Bujumbura that focus on school and family re-integration, legal aid support, etc. and where a specific additional service not directly provided by the project is needed, the project will refer children to government and CSO programs offering the required support. Referral pathways will be further supported through activities under Component 3. Under Component 2, the project will support adolescents, between the 15-to-18-year age group by offering hands on mentorship, tailored skill building and pathways to earn an income, in order to support their transition away from street life. The target group will be adolescents who are identified through and already benefitting from Component 1 activities. The crux of the pilot is to go beyond services and programs and to have each child paired with a select team of child experts, who remain the consistent focal points and stable adult figures for the child throughout the duration of the project. The design of this component is further informed by lessons learned from international experience with programs targeting at risk youth. Trained and motivated adolescents will also be able to benefit from start-up capital (financial grants) offered by the World Bank Skills for Jobs Project, if they have viable new business ideas, but need initial capital, hands-on experience and mentorship in business practices to succeed. In this way Component 1 and 2 intend to provide holistic services to each child and adolescent and create linkages to other CSO or government programs when additional specific needs are identified. Under Component 3, capacity building for social workers, and for other government and CSO staff relevant to project intervention areas will be provided, as well as institutional strengthening support to the inter-Ministerial coordination structure and project management support. The project takes an approach in each component to strengthen and build on what already exists by delivering through existing shelters in Bujumbura, contributing to longer term sustainability.