Africa KidSAFE is a network of national and international organizations in Zambia working with children who are found on the street (commonly referred to as “street children”) and children who are at risk of moving to the streets as a result of social and economic pressures. The network’s 22 member organizations operate autonomously, but work together in a spirit of collaboration, with common objectives, and under a set of shared guidelines. The network covers Lusaka, Copperbelt, Central and Southern Provinces. With support of the Displaced Children and Orphans Fund and PEPFAR, Project Concern International (PCI) provides coordination, technical support, training, and limited financial and material assistance to the member organizations.

As part of its prevention strategy, the Africa KidSAFE network engages in activities that include street outreach, mobile health, reintegration, residential care, and economic empowerment initiatives. The economic empowerment approach Africa KidSAFE employs focuses on caregivers, with the intent of strengthening the households into which street children are being reintegrated. This includes, but is not limited to, economic strengthening. In target areas, community capacities also need to be strengthened regarding prevention of unnecessary family separation, the identification of child neglect and abuse, and monitoring and support for reintegration.

PCI works in collaboration with, and has provided resources to the Christian Enterprise Trust of Zambia (CETZAM), leaders in microfinance for the poor in Zambia, in order to improve access to microcredit for an estimated 2000 volunteer caregivers who receive support from PCI and/or its partner organizations in the Lusaka and Copperbelt Provinces as part of Africa KidSAFE. Caregivers assist orphans, at risk youth, and people living with HIV/AIDS, and their work is critically important to the country’s public health infrastructure. Moreover, because caregivers are volunteers, finding affordable ways to motivate and incentivize them is crucial to their success and retention within the program.

PCI has identified the lack of microcredit and business training as major impediments to the livelihood security and retention of caregivers, many of whom are widows or women of otherwise limited means, who strain under the financial burden of caring for large numbers of children and/or HIV+ friends or relatives. Most caregivers currently undertake some informal microenterprise activity or small business, and PCI recognizes that there is a tremendous unmet need for microcredit lending among these individuals. With this need in mind, Africa KidSAFE is beginning a savings-led economic empowerment initiative in October 2008.

Project Concern International
info@pcizambia.org.zm

January 2005 to September 2010