At age 16, Erick Omondi Okoth became a CRS beneficiary of The Children Behind Project in western Kenya. He had lost his parents and all but one of his uncles. As the eldest child in the family, he was responsible for 15 siblings and cousins. He received assistance from CRS partners in the form of seeds and agricultural training, nutritional and emotional support, school fees, medical care, and vocational and entrepreneurship training.

Once the family was in a better position to fend for itself, Erick felt called to assist other vulnerable children. He pooled his money with other community members and eventually founded his own local nongovernmental organization, or NGO: the Blue Cross Nyatike Development Program that now serves more than 5,000 vulnerable children and their households.

CRS has helped Erick and Blue Cross become a responsive grassroots NGO with well-articulated vision and mission statements. With staff training and CRS guidance, Blue Cross has developed human resources tools for building staff skills and retaining well-performing employees. Such guidance has paid off: Now a well-operating NGO, Blue Cross has put into place mechanisms for program management and design, monitoring and evaluation, and a responsive board of directors with a coherent strategic. Subsequently, the organization has been able to apply for USAID and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, subgrants so that it can continue to meet the needs of the most vulnerable populations in its community.

Erick is an example of how giving one person a hand up can lead to transformational change on a broader scale. By investing first in Erick and then, later, in Blue Cross, CRS increased its effect beyond one vulnerable child to more than 5,000 vulnerable children. We are now replicating this approach across programs and countries.

Services for 275 children infected with and affected by HIV in Ho Chi Minh City have been streamlined, thanks to the formation of a network of service providers. Although well-functioning health, education, and social services existed, poor coordination coupled with HIV stigma and low awareness of how to get assistance meant some children were left out of the system while others received double services.

With funding from USAID and Private Agencies Collaborating Together, Inc., or PACT, CRS teamed up with the Department of Labor—Invalids and Social Affairs, or DOLISA, to view the needs of a child with or affected by HIV from the perspective of the local health, legal, and education and training departments. Most of the participants were unfamiliar with concepts of service coordination and case management. Furthermore, they lacked experience working in a cooperative network.

With CRS training and guidance, these departments developed a menu of core interventions, defined which agency could provide a service within the network, and established a DOLISA-headed coordination board to oversee the process. CRS worked with DOLISA to set up the referral system among these key service providers, develop the monitoring system tools and software, and identify volunteer ward workers—who routinely visit the children in their homes and serve as direct links between DOLISA and the service providers—in the community.

Each ward worker assesses a child’s needs—vital information used to develop a service delivery plan that prioritizes basic needs and defines the network member equipped to meet them. When service is provided, the referred agency completes and returns a form to DOLISA. Follow-up ward worker visits ensure that clients are using the assistance offered through the network. As a result, the number of children receiving services has increased from 17 to 275.