Following three years of program implementation, SOS Children’s Villages commissioned a private consultant to complete an impact evaluation on their programming in Bolivia. The report explores the recent history of the agency’s work there and how the programming meets the larger missions and guiding principles of the agency.
The objectives of the evaluation were to
- Determine the level of impact that the SOS Social Centres programmes of the SOS Children’s Villages had had on the children, families and communities who had received the services for at least 2 years
- Analyse the results to propose, through pinpointing strengths and weaknesses, a reworking of the work of the programmes.
- Have a final document that includes both the research process as well as the results obtained and the conclusions and recommendations.
This documents the success in developing and implementing two primary initiatives of SOS in Bolivia: The Children’s Villages and the Child Abandonment Prevention Programmes both on which are credited with the substantial advancements for involved children in the areas of nutrition, health, education, development and community and family strengthening.
The Children’s Villages provide substitute families for the children who have lost their own families due to specific circumstances or because their families can not take care of them. There is a substitute mother and brothers and sisters – biological siblings are kept together- in a home and a community that protects the children and provides integral development programmes for them. The Villages are included in the long-term childcare in permanent substitute families strategic initiative.
The Child Abandonment Prevention Programmes, that work with the families and communities most susceptible to abandoning and not protecting their children. These programmes promote the children’s natural development within their biological families with the support of the communities and SOS Children’s Villages. And so the second strategic initiative is developed; family and community strengthening for child abandonment prevention.
