July 8, 2009

Introducing Orphan Impact: The Theory behind the Project.

Orphan Impact is the result of several ideas that have been running around in my mind for years. But the actual steps of implementation all took place over the past 18 months. It started in November 2007 when my wife and I sold our condo, put our furniture in storage, and prepared to move from Portland to Vietnam. We arrived January 2008 not knowing how long we would stay, but committed to our goal of building a program that would truly make a meaningful impact in the lives of orphan children.

Knowing where to begin was not an easy first step. For 9 years I have worked with orphan children and orphan care projects in countries like China, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Russia, Ukraine, and Vietnam. During these years I have seen successful attempts to reunite orphan children with their birth families, and I have seen attempts to reunite children with birth parents who are not in a position to provide adequate care to their children. I have seen examples of adoptive placement that have successfully provided a permanent family for the child, and I have seen attempts at adoptive placement that have failed to end with the permanency plan that was intended. I have seen orphanage support projects that have addressed crucial needs of orphan children, and I have seen orphanage support projects that have completely failed to provide for any meaningful needs of the children. Despite the known challenges in each of these areas - all of these examples are important components of providing well-rounded care for orphan children.

Most people seem to agree with me that orphanages do not provide the best setting for children to grow up. These same people, however, rarely seem to agree on what steps should be taken to provide proper care for the children who are living in these institutions. This problem is not unique to orphan care - we see it everyday in a variety of common social concerns: unemployment, poverty reduction, government-funded foreign aid programs, HIV/AIDS programs, state welfare programs, etc. It's difficult for us to reach consensus on how exactly to help people who have gaping unmet needs they are struggling to overcome.

When it comes to helping orphaned children, what can we be doing to meet their needs and prepare them to live healthy and well-adjusted lives? Is there such a thing as sustainability when it comes to orphan support programs? Or will orphan programs generally be dependent on ongoing and continuous financial aid? We all know that every child requires food, clothing, shelter, security, health care, and education. But is it possible to also help institutionalized orphan children develop the emotional security necessary for healthy self-esteem and self-confidence?

These are not questions that have an easy answer. There will always be significant debate when we discuss how to best provide support to orphan children. And Orphan Impact certainly falls well short of meeting all the needs of the these vulnerable children growing up today in state-run orphanages. But the project does demonstrate a starting place that I believe highlights some crucial components that should be represented in orphan care projects.

Setting a Clearly Defined Target Group. The term "orphan" is generally defined differently by different people. But for purposes of this project we are targeting Vietnamese orphan children (13,000) living in state-run orphanages (153). During this first year Orphan Impact is focusing on 390 institutionalized orphans living in 5 orphanages. Though some of these 13,000 children may have living parents, the children have still been placed into an institutional setting and are suffering as much as the institutionalized children with no living parents. Orphan Impact is set-up to serve these children.
Knowing What We Can Do and Doing it Well. It was crucial for us to know the areas we could be strong and the places we would likely be weak. We knew that we couldn't address all of the needs for all of the orphans in all of the orphanages. So we were faced with the decision of pouring all of our energy into helping 1 orphanage as much as we could versus picking 1-2 projects that we knew we could replicate and repeat in multiple orphanages. Knowing that we wanted to address high need areas and that we wanted to be fully prepared to actually address the needs, we gathered orphan/orphanage statistics, interviewed orphanage directors, met with government policy-makers, queried grant providers, and drafted and re-drafted our project vision and goals. After carefully choreographing the plan for the 2009 Orphan Impact pilot program, we elected to initially target 5 orphanages with a 2-part program. The first component would target an area of basic, or survival-related, care. The second component would target an area of extra-curricular, or more creative, care. We decided that in selecting 2 primary projects we would be able to concentrate our efforts and vision in these areas - hopefully expanding the scope of what we could accomplish while deepening the impact.
1. Basic Care Component. We're defining "basic care" as care pertaining to food, clothing, shelter, security, and access to health care. Sadly, within these parameters there are far too many orphanage projects that are sorely needed. Just seeing children walking around barefoot, battling dengue fever, scratching scabies, and fighting malnutrition, makes project identification easy. We chose to target the unmet need of childhood vaccinations. Though Vietnam has made great strides in increasing the percentages of children vaccinated (just above 90%), the statistical successes do not extend to institutionalized orphan children - with approximately 1%-5% receiving vaccinations.
2. Creative Care Component. While it is almost impossible to ignore the most basic of needs in orphanages, it can also be well argued that if we aren't encouraging children to develop self-esteem, motivation, aspirations of higher education, and creative and independent thinking, we are failing to equip these children with the tools they require to be successful adults. There are many sobering statistics highlighting the substantial rates of suicide, crime, and prostitution among orphans graduating from orphanage facilities. We realize that these are issues that often involve a history of neglect or abuse requiring months or years of ongoing counseling and support. It is not realistic to expect that we can simply swoop in and solve the problems with a so-called "creative care component". With this limitation in mind, we chose to target Intel Classmate PC use, internet connectivity, and collaborate e-learning as our creative care component. The computers are used as part of a supervised after-school learning program where the children have the opportunity to use modern day web tools to interact with other students/classrooms throughout the world. The kids are learning to share, developing confidence in communicating with students in Australia, use the web to research about Vietnam and Australia, share their stories with each other, and develop the interpersonal skills that go along with this type of project.
Leaving a Lasting Impact. We didn't want to simply do a project that would be short-lived and cosmetic - all but forgotten within several months. Instead, we had the following goal: To set-up a program that would make an immediate and lasting impact for each child. Within our basic care component, we chose vaccinations and skin treatments (primarily scabies and eczema). The orphanages reported that only 4 of the 390 children have received any vaccinations. Though the coordination with the Vietnamese government - as well as the follow-up scheduling - for vaccination shots has not been a breeze to coordinate, the impact will be significant. Can you imagine if we are successful in vaccinating 390 children? What if all of the 13,000 institutionalized orphans in Vietnam were to receive vaccinations? The tech component is also seeing success in achieving our goal of making an immediate impact. The initial "wow" factor does not seem to be wearing off as the kids continue to use the computers and participate in the internationally collaborative "Who We Are" project on ePals. Our goal is simple: To encourage and inspire these children to begin thinking and dreaming about their futures beyond the orphanage. Of course, we realize that action must follow these dreams if we are to see an increase in university enrollment among graduating orphans - and this part is not so simple. But we are excited to be taking the first steps in 5 orphanages.
Enabling Measurable Benchmarks. Results are crucial. Donors, grant providers, and corporate sponsors all want to know how we are measuring progress and what impact is being made. Though not all impact can necessarily be statistically evaluated - we certainly can learn a great deal about some of our project success by monitoring the data. Orphan Impact was set-up with result monitoring in mind. This is a project that we hope to scale to include many more orphanages in the coming years and the results will play a key role in allowing us to expand the project scope. Results, budget, and statistics will be updated on a regular basis and will always be posted to our website.
Ensuring Project Accountability. Two parts of this project are heavily dependent on ongoing cooperation and participation from the partner orphanages: 1) The scabies project requires active participation from the orphanage staff in following the 1-week treatment plan and truly implementing the new policy of regularly washing and changing clothing and sheets in the orphanage; and 2) The "Who We Are" project with the Intel CMPC units, ePals, and Flip Camcorder requires a minimum of 2-days per week participation from each child. To better encourage accountability and ongoing participation, Orphan Impact built-in 8 points of accountability for each orphanage. None of these points make much difference individually, but, collectively, the 8-points have been effective in encouraging the ongoing orphanage participation that the program requires.
1. Contract. Each orphanage that was selected was required to sign a contract. (The 1 orphanage that refused is not participating).
2. Hygiene Plan. As part of the application process orphanages were required to submit, in writing, their current hygiene practices, as well as a new plan that they will implement following the scabies treatments.
3. Weekly CMPC Usage Reports. Each Friday the participating orphanages email computer usage reports outlining the hours used, the number of students using the computers, and how the computers were used.
4. Parent's Carefree Usage Monitoring. The CMPC units come pre-loaded with monitoring software that tracks the usage, websites visited, and applications used.
5. Monthly Site Visits. Participating orphanages are visited by the Orphan Impact team on a monthly basis following program implementation.
6. "Loan to Donation" Agreement. Each orphanage receives the CMPC units, Flip Camcorders, and Crayola Digital Cameras as a temporary 6-month loan, subject to meeting ongoing usage requirements. Though it would uncomfortable to actually withdraw the units from the orphanage, all parties (People's Committee, DOLISA, MOLISA, and orphanage) were made aware of this requirement during the orphanage selection process.
7. On-site Program Volunteer. Eventually, each orphanage will host an on-site project volunteer that will help to oversee and implement the CMPC and hygiene programs. All participating orphanages have agreed to host a volunteer. The first 6-month project volunteer will arrive in Vietnam on August 15th.
8. Government Accountability. Four government offices have been made individually aware of the project goals and project conditions. Each office participated in the project development and contributed in making the project what it is today.
Encouraging Orphanage Ownership of the Project. When we were polling orphanage directors about the project during our project development phase, nearly 100% of the orphanage directors indicated that they would want to receive the Intel Classmate PC units, about 67% were open to pediatric medical examinations, and 20% were interested in having their children receive vaccinations. These statistics encouraged us to change gears and invite orphanage directors to submit an application to participate rather than us basically inviting ourselves to each orphanage. We decided that if directors were required to undergo a significant application and review process, it would likely indicate that they were more willing to invest their time and energy in helping the project to succeed. We received 16 applications, selecting 5 orphanages to participate in 2009. Already, word of mouth recommendations have spread throughout the orphanage community leading to 22 new applications for 2010. We believe that a key component of the project success lies in each orphanage taking ownership of the project. Everyone will say yes to a computer donation - but not all of the directors are interested in working to help their kids be successful. (Note: It is important to mention that though we set strict criteria for orphanage participation this year, the overall goal of the project is to help institutionalized orphans in Vietnam. This includes all orphans in all orphanages. As the project continues we do not want to simply ignore the children who happen live in orphanages run by a less cooperative director).
Using the Modern Day Web to Engage Donors/Supporters. We love how the web is changing the way NGOs interact with our supporters. The pace is fast. Increased transparency is becoming the norm. Access to information can be nearly immediate. Orphan Impact is a project that we hope will offer something different - something exciting - and something new for those of you that care deeply about the cause of institutionalized orphan children in Vietnam. We'll share tons of video footage. Open up our budget. Share our mis-steps. Celebrate our successes. And we'll do it on Qik, Twitter, Facebook, Animoto, Posterous, and Smugmug.

Thanks for joining in as we announce Orphan Impact. Three more orphanages will be launching in September and October and we'll look forward to bringing portions of these launches to you LIVE! via Qik. In the meantime, we've made it easy for you to follow us online.

Sincerely,

Tad Kincaid