THE CHARACTERISTICS AND EXPERIENCES OF ORPHANS AND VULNERABLE CHILDREN (OVC) RECEIVING SUPPORTS FROM CBOs IN NIGERIA

Nigerian is home to an estimated 17 million OVC of which 2.23 million were considered to be orphaned by HIV/AIDS. These children face enormous challenges and are at risk. In response, organizations now provide services to them aimed at long-term sustainability of care. Data were collected from a total of 3,118 children supported by 33 organizations in southern Nigeria to examine how these supports are contributing to these children's well-being. In a series of multivariate analysis controlling for non-intervention factors, children provided with psychosocial support were significantly more likely (odds ratio 1.84, p<0.01) to report that they were happy most of the time, those visited at least once at home by volunteers (odds ratio 1.40, p<0.05) and those who received some educational support (odds ratio 1.93, p<0.01) were significantly more likely to report regular school attendance. In-spite of being served by the program children classified as double orphans were less likely than the other categories to report that they were happy (odds ratio 0.36 p<0.01). Several programming bottlenecks contribute to reduce the effects of these initiatives. It was concluded that more vulnerable orphans may require intimate monitoring than is currently the case to increase their benefits and enhance effectiveness of the program in the future.