By Sumaila Ogbaje/Ahmed Ubandoma
Abuja – Victims Support Fund (VSF) has a total of 3,700 children who lost their parents to Boko Haram insurgency in the North East on its Foster Care Programme.
Dr Sunday Ochoche, Executive Director, VSF, disclosed this while featuring on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) flagship programme, NAN Forum, in Abuja.
Ochoche said that the Foster Care Programme was aimed at catering for the children whose parents were killed by the insurgents or separated during attacks.
“The Foster Care programme is one of the critical intervention of the VSF, you know very well that Boko Haram insurgency left so many children without parents, separated from their parents or parents have died.
“Some may be alive but completely separated from their children and we realized when they are in camp, it may be very difficult to manage the children.
“As the situation is stabilizing, and communities are returning, managing those children was going to become a problem.
“And so, one of the programme of the intervention of VSF was to come in and see how we can create a family environment for a number of these children.
“Today, we have a total of 3,700 children on this programme.
“And what we have done is to go to the critical communities, work with the community leaders, work with the religious leaders and political leaders and set up what we called a Child Protection Committees,’’ he said.
Ochoche said that the organisation had placed each of the child on N14,000 monthly stipend payable to the foster families for feeding, school and other needs of the child.
He added that the programme was for 10 months after which the families would continue with the care of the child.
“For each child that is placed in a home, we give the family N14,000 every month for the upkeep, the education, the management, feeding and everything of these children per child.
“Now, I said 3,700 children are directly benefiting from this but remember that for each home, there are other children.
“This support we are giving is not just directly to these 3,700 children, the other children in the homes inevitably benefit also.
“The foster care programme, let me also note that it is usually for a period of ten months. The children are supported and the families are supported for ten months.
“And part of the intention is that within the ten months when they are getting this N14,000 support per child, that such fund would be deployed to some economic activity such that even when victims support withdraws from this process, there would be sustainability.
“And we have seen many of these families deploying into farming, into animal breeding and into trading that has significantly improved their economic status,’’ he said.
Ochoche explained that VSF was able to identify such children by working with the communities through the child support committee as well as identifying responsible families especially those that had blood relationship with such a child.
He added that the committee had ensured the effective implementation of the programme, adding that the organisation also engaged social workers for daily monitoring of the children in various homes.
“We paid these social workers that are responsible for daily monitoring of the homes and the conditions of these children. They do their reports which we get on regular basis.
“The Child Protection Committee is the supra body that sees to the effective implementation of this programme.
“We also engaged local CSOs as partners in the implementation of this project,’’ he said.
VSF was founded in 2014 by the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan mobilise sustainable funding and building partnerships for the support of victims of Boko Haram insurgency in the North East.