Lessons Learned: Key Findings from OVC Evaluations

The purpose of the evaluation was to understand the effect on outcomes of the different strategies employed by organizations to meet the needs of children and their families made vulnerable or orphaned by HIV.

MEASURE Evaluation organized a special event in Washington DC on September 3, 2009 to present key findings and lessons learned from recent evaluations of OVC programs in East Africa, to discuss emerging issues and future directions for improvement of OVC programs, and to inform future OVC evaluations through consideration of additional informational needs and appropriate methodologies.

MEASURE Evaluation appreciates the program partners who participated in this study: Catholic Relief Services, Pathfinder International, and Integrated AIDS Program in Kenya and The Salvation Army, Allamano, and CARE in Tanzania.

The purpose of the evaluation was to understand the effect on outcomes of the different strategies employed by organizations to meet the needs of children and their families made vulnerable or orphaned by HIV. It was not the intention of the evaluation to evaluate the performance of these organizations.

At the onset of PEFPAR, OVC programs were implemented as an emergency response to the crisis, and there was very little evidence available to guide program implementation. The results of this evaluation will provide insight into how to improve programs, will provide donors the evidence they need to be able to advocate for programmatic resources and to be able to do so with urgency, and will help target those resources to areas of OVC programming that need the most attention.

MEASURE Evaluation also thanks the local research partners Population Studies Research Institute from the University of Nairobi in Kenya and AXIOS Foundation from Tanzania, and the volunteers and local leaders for their support and commitment to the study in both Kenya and Tanzania. We extend our deepest appreciation to the children and guardians who participated in order to help increase our understanding of their circumstances.

To view the presentations, you may need to install the free Adobe Flash Player.

  1. Introductions by Siân Curtis, MEASURE Evaluation Project Director, and Krista Stewart, USAID AOTR
  2. Targeted Evaluation of 5 Programs Supporting Orphans and Vulnerable Children Background and Methods
  3. Key Findings & Programmatic Implications
  4. Analyzing the Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions to Benefit Orphans and Vulnerable Children: Evidence from Kenya and Tanzania
  5. Dissemination and Use of Results from OVC Program Evaluations
  6. Lessons Learned from OVC Evaluations for Future Public Health Evaluations
  7. Question and Answer Session

 

Filed under: Orphans and Vulnerable Children , Sub-Saharan Africa , HIV/AIDS
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