2nd National Conference on Orphans and Other ... - FHI 360

<strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> 

on Orphans and Other 

Vulnerable Children 

“Facing Challenges, Ensuring Futures” 

Windhoek, Namibia, 25-27 June 2002 

FULL REPORT 

Organiser and Publisher 

Directorate of Developmental Social Welfare Services 

Ministry of Health and Social Services

Published in August 2002 by the Directorate of Developmental Social Welfare Services, 

Ministry of Health and Social Services, Government of the Republic of Namibia. 

Rapporteur, transcriptions, editing, photographs and layout: Perri Caplan. 

Additional photographs supplied by Fifi Rhodes of Die Republikein. 

Printed by Capital Press in Windhoek. 

Directorate of Developmental Social Welfare Services 

Ministry of Health and Social Services 

Ministerial Head Office, Harvey Street, Windhoek West 

Private Bag 13198 Windhoek, Republic of Namibia 

Telephone (+264) (+61) 2032605 Fax 227607 Email pmasabane@mhss.gov.na 

The child welfare function has been transferred to the 

Ministry of Women Affairs and Child Welfare. For information in future: 

Ministry of Women Affairs and Child Welfare 

Juvenis Building, Independence Avenue, Windhoek 

Private Bag 13359 Windhoek, Republic of Namibia 

Telephone (+264) (+61) 2833111 Fax 220528 Email womenaffairs@namibia.com.na 

Funded by 

Government of the Republic of Namibia 

United Nations Children’s Fund 

Family Health International 

United States Agency for International Development

CONTENTS 

FOREWORD 

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS IN THIS REPORT 

INTRODUCTORY SESSION ...............................................................................................................................................1 

Report-back from OVC <strong>National</strong> Steering Committee (OVCNSC) 

Ms Petronella Masabane, Deputy Director of Social Welfare Services and Chairperson of the <strong>National</strong> Steering 

Committee on OVC (OVCNSC) ................................................................................................................................................................... 2 

Presentation of proposed national definition of OVC 

Mr Sebastian Timothy, Project Manager, SOS Children’s Village Association of Namibia, presenting on behalf of 

the OVCNSC ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 

Update on Namibian children’s legislation 

Ms Dianne Hubbard, Co-ordinator, Gender and Advocacy Research Project of the Legal Assistance Centre, 

speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Women Affairs and Child Welfare ...................................................................................... 9 

Overview of Draft <strong>National</strong> OVC Policy issues 

Mr Andrew Muwonge, Senior Consultant, Southern Consultants .............................................................................................. 16 

Impacts on OVC in Namibia and strategies to reduce them 

GROUP DISCUSSIONS WITH OVC 

Group 1 (Blue Group) ................................................................................................................................................................................ 20 

Group 2 (Green Group) .............................................................................................................................................................................. 22 

Group 3 (Red Group) .................................................................................................................................................................................. 24 

Group 4 (Yellow Group) ............................................................................................................................................................................. 26 

Group 5 (Black Group) .............................................................................................................................................................................. 28 

OFFICIAL OPENING SESSION ..................................................................................................................................... 31 

Statement by Ms Khin-Sandi Lwin 

UNICEF Representative in Namibia ....................................................................................................................................................... 32 

Statement by Ms Rose De Buysscher 

Country Director, Family Health International (FHI) .......................................................................................................................... 34 

Statement by Hon. Ms Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah 

Minister of Women Affairs and Child Welfare (MWACW) ................................................................................................................ 36 

Keynote address, launch of study on orphans and official opening statement by 

First Lady Ms Kovambo Nujoma, OVC Patron 

Read by Hon. Dr Libertina Amathila, Minister of Health and Social Services ........................................................................ 39 

Vote of thanks 

Ms Ulitala Hiveluah, Permanent Secretary, MWACW .................................................................................................................... 40 

EXPERT PRESENTATIONS .............................................................................................................................................. 41 

OVC and Education: Summary of findings of study titled “Impacts of HIV/AIDS 

on Education in Namibia” 

Ms Claudia Tjikuua, Chief Education Officer, Ministry of Basic Education, Sport and Culture (MBESC) ........................ 41 

Overview of the West and Central Africa Regional Workshop on OVC held in 

Yamoussoukro, Cote d’Ivoire, in April 2002 

Mr Stanley Phiri, OVC Regional Advisor for East, Southern, West and Central Africa and Global, 

UNICEF Regional Office, Nairobi .............................................................................................................................................................. 47

VIDEO SCREENING 

Rays of Hope: Women’s Struggle to Care for the Orphans in Uganda ............................................ 52 

OVC LOGO AND DEFINITION ....................................................................................................................................... 53 

Adoption of new OVC logo .................................................................................................................................................. 53 

Adoption of definition of OVC .......................................................................................................................................... 54 

WORKING GROUP SESSIONS 

Transcriptions of working group objectives, discussions and reports back to plenary; 

plenary discussions; and key strategies and recommendations as amended and adopted ............. 55 

Instructions to the working groups .................................................................................................................................................... 55 

Objectives set for the working groups .............................................................................................................................................. 55 

Group 1: Identify the psychosocial (PSS) needs of OVC ...................................................................... 57 

Group 2: Identify the most suitable care setting for OVC ..................................................................... 61 

Group 3: Review the Draft <strong>National</strong> Policy on OVC .................................................................................... 65 

Group 4: Determine how and why Namibia should record its OVC and who should 

do this ............................................................................................................................................................................... 68 

Group 5: Determine how Namibia can ensure access to quality education for OVC ...... 72 

CLOSING SESSION .................................................................................................................................................................. 76 

Election of OVC <strong>National</strong> Steering Committee ............................................................................................... 76 

Official closing address and vote of thanks 

Hon. Ms Marlene Mungunda, Deputy Minister of Women Affairs and Child Welfare ........................................................... 40 

CONFERENCE HANDOUTS ........................................................................................................................................................... 79 

CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS 

Lists of participant names, posts, organisations and contact details ........................................................................................... 80 

OUTGOING AND INCOMING OVC NATIONAL STEERING COMMITTEES (OVCNSCs) 

Outgoing OVCNSC – members’ names and contact details; list of co-opted members ....................................................... 87 

Incoming OVCNSC – members’ names and contact details ........................................................................................................ 88

FOREWORD 

Namibia has come a long way since attending the first Eastern and Southern African <strong>Conference</strong> 

on OVC held in Zambia in 2000. At that conference all countries were called upon to place 

OVC high on their national agendas, mobilise and confer with all stakeholders, draw up a national 

plan of action and national OVC policy, and develop a national programme and services. Namibia’s 

<strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on OVC marked the end of the first year of development of our national 

OVC programme. It was a year of many successess, all of which are covered in this conference 

report. 

I thank you all for your dedication and hard work, and look forward to our future partnership. 

What we achieved in the first year of the national programme only scratched the surface, and 

we must ensure that our momentum continues. The second conference, like the first in 2001, was 

a great success. It was very well attended; we had almost 300 people present in all key plenary 

sessions and full attendance at all working group sessions. Many key issues were discussed and 

debated, examples being psychosocial support, registration, institutionalisation, access to education 

and the national OVC policy, and many new challenges came to light in the discussions and debates. 

The challenges call for continuous monitoring and evaluation of our national plan and programme, 

and for updating these to incorporate new issues as they appear. 

The Ministry of Women Affairs and Child Welfare (MWACW) is henceforth tasked to oversee 

the national OVC programme. As outgoing programme guardian I wish the MWACW every success. 

Please use this report as your constant guide and companion. 

Dr Libertina Amathila 

Minister of Health and Social Services 

CONFERENCE ORGANISING TEAM 

(See list of acronyms on overleaf 

for full names of organisations.) 

Back row from left: 

Lewis Awiseb, MWACW 

Belinda Karuaera, MWACW 

Francina Soul, MWACW 

Front row from left: 

Petronella Masabane, DDSWS 

Doris Roos, UNICEF 

Rose De Buysscher, FHI 

Paul Pope, FHI/MoHSS 

Not pictured: 

Esme Kheibes, FHI 

Betsy Basson, DDSWS 

Jacques de Wit, CBB 

Ruusa Shipiki, LAC

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS 

IN THIS REPORT 

AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome 

ARV anti-retrovirals 

CAA Catholic AIDS Action 

CAFO Church Alliance for Orphans 

CBB Church Benevolence Board (of the Dutch Reformed Church) 

CBO community-based organisation 

CCN Council of Churches in Namibia 

C&ECD Community and Early Childhood Development (Division of the MWACW) 

COLS Change of Lifestyle Homes Project 

CRC (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child 

CSG Circle of Support Group 

DDSWS Directorate of Developmental Social Welfare Services 

ECD Early Childhood Development (Programme) 

ELCAP Evangelical Lutheran Church AIDS Programme 

ELCRN Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia 

FBO faith-based organisation 

FHI Family Health International 

HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus 

HSSSP2 Health and Social Sector Support Programme – Phase 2 (Government of Finland) 

IEC Information, Education and Communication 

IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development 

LAC Legal Assistance Centre 

LRDC Law Reform and Development Commission 

MBESC Ministry of Basic Education, Sport and Culture 

MoHSS Ministry of Health and Social Services 

MP Member of Parliament 

MRLGH Ministry of Regional and Local Government and Housing 

MWACW Ministry of Women Affairs and Child Welfare 

NACOP <strong>National</strong> AIDS Co-ordination Programme 

NAMCOL Namibian College of Open Learning 

NAWA Namibia Women’s Association 

NGO non-governmental organisation 

OVC orphans and other vulnerable children 

OVCNSC OVC <strong>National</strong> Steering Committee 

PLWHA people living with HIV/AIDS 

PR public relations 

PSS psychosocial support 

SADC Southern Africa Development Community 

SB school board 

SIDA Swedish International Development Agency 

SWIS Social Welfare Information System (of the DDSWS) 

TADA Teenagers Against Drug Abuse 

TKMOAMS Tate Kalunga Mweneka Omukithi wo ‘AIDS’ Moshilongo Shetu 

UNAIDS United Nations AIDS Programme 

UNAM University of Namibia 

UNGASS United Nations General Assembly Special Session (on AIDS) 

UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund 

USAID United States Agency for International Development 

UWESO Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans 

WCAR West and Central African Region 

WCPU Women and Child Protection Unit 

WHO World Health Organisation

INTRODUCTORY SESSION 

Session chairperson: 

Ms Batseba Katjiuongua 

Director of Developmental Social Welfare Services, MoHSS 

Ms Batseba Katjiuongua 

Ms Katjiuongua welcomed the participants, noting that they had been 

asked to gather for this <strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on OVC to follow up on 

what had been done since the first conference in May 2001 and to chart 

the way forward. 

The purpose of this introductory session was to update the participants 

on the work of the <strong>National</strong> Steering Committee on OVC (OVCNSC) since 

its establishment at the last conference, to bring to light issues of concern 

for their consideration at the conference, and to familiarise them with legal 

developments relevant to their work with OVC. 

After a prayer led by Sister Petronella Shetunyenga of Catholic AIDS 

Action (CAA) Ms Katjiuongua called on the first presenter. 

Following are verbatim transcriptions of the slides and commentaries, 

written notes and/or tapes of the proceedings (with minor edits for layout 

purposes), and summaries of the plenary discussion on each presentation. 

The Jan Möhr Secondary School choir sang a few songs and led the participants in singing the Namibian national 

anthem and OAU anthem during the official opening session in the afternoon. (Photo: Fifi Rhodes, Die Republikein.) 

<strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children – Windhoek, Namibia, 25-27 June 2002: Full Report 

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SLIDE 1: TITLE – “OVC ONE YEAR ON” 

You will remember that you gave us a mandate 

last year and instructed us to report back to you 

within a year. This presentation is an overview 

of the work, work plans and achievements of 

the OVCNSC during the last year. A copy of the 

OVC five-year strategy with subgroup work plans 

is contained in the conference handout pack. 

SLIDE 2: CONFERENCE OUTCOMES 

“STRATEGIES” 

As you will recall, we came up with a number of 

key strategies at our conference last year: 

Develop a national home-based family and 

orphan support programme. 

Develop a plan of action to mobilise all stakeholders’ 

input for a co-ordinated response 

to OVC. 

Develop a national policy on OVC. 

Strengthen the existing prevention and care 

activities through a multi-sectoral and coordinated 

process whereby they become 

community owned and of direct benefit to 

OVC. 

Develop and strengthen existing networking 

forums for OVC at all levels including the 

constituency and regional levels. 

SLIDES 3-4: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT? 

The UNICEF-supported study undertaken by 

SIAPAC, titled “A Situation Analysis of Orphan 

Children in Namibia”, was finalised shortly after 

the conference last year, and the information it 

contains has impacted on the OVCNSC’s work. 

The Minister of Health and Social Services will 

Report-back from 

OVC <strong>National</strong> Steering 

Committee (OVCNSC) 

Ms Petronella Masabane 

Deputy Director of Social Welfare Services, 

DDSWS, MoHSS, and OVCNSC Chairperson 

launch the study this afternoon on behalf of the 

First Lady, but I would like to share with you 

now some of the key findings: 

By 2021 Namibia’s population will be 33% 

lower due to AIDS. 

As of 2001 there are an estimated 82 671 

orphans in Namibia. By 2021 there will be 

an estimated 251 054 orphans, 200 000 (¾) 

of whom will be AIDS orphans. 

As of 2001 it is estimated that half of all 

orphans in Namibia are AIDS orphans. This 

number will rise to some 75% by 2005 and 

remain at over 75% until 2021. 

In terms of AIDS orphans the ‘worst-affected’ 

areas of Namibia are currently the four northcentral 

Ohangwena, Oshikoto, Oshana and 

Omusati Regions, the north-eastern Caprivi 

and Kavango Regions, and Windhoek in the 

Khomas Region in central Namibia. 

The four north-central regions ‘generate’ 

some 50% of all orphans and care for over 

60% of all orphans. The Caprivi, Kavango 

and Windhoek are the next worst affected. 

As of 2001 orphans (AIDS and non-AIDS) 

comprise an estimated 20% of all children 

in Namibia aged 17 and younger, and this 

will rise to 40% by 2021. 

SLIDE 5: WHERE ARE WE NOW? 

At its first meeting the OVCNSC planned to meet 

every quarter, which brought us in line with this 

year’s conference. All the elected members have 

been committed, and all attended every meeting. 

We also co-opted a number of members – key 

role-players whose support is needed: 

Church Benevolence Board of the Dutch 

Reformed Church 

2 <strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children – Windhoek, Namibia, 25-27 June 2002: Full Report

Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) 

Multimedia Campaign on Violence Against 

Women and Children (MMC) 

Social Research Division of the University 

of Namibia (UNAM) 

Michelle McLean Trust 

Master of the High Court 

Commissioner of Child Welfare 

Parliamentary Human Rights Committee 

Staff of the MBESC, FHI and UNICEF. 

I am pleased to report that all accepted co-option 

and all have been committed to the committee. 

The committee then drew up a comprehensive 

five-year strategic plan, which will be reviewed 

every year. 

To ensure optimal use of time the committee was 

split into six working groups, each of which has 

produced work plans. I will talk about these 

groups and their plans in a moment. 

The committee has been fortunate to have the 

assistance of Technical Advisor Mr Paul Pope, 

an employee of FHI. I thank him, FHI and 

UNICEF for their support during the past year, 

which is greatly appreciated. 

SLIDE 6: KEY STRATEGIC AREAS 

One of the first issues we had to deal with was 

a working definition of OVC. We felt that committee 

consensus on this would give structure to 

our work. The committee’s proposed definition 

will be presented in the next presentation. 

Our second task was to unpack the strategies 

and recommendations from the conference, as 

there was a lot of overlap. The committee came 

up with three key strategic areas: 

Ensure the rights of OVC are protected. 

Ensure appropriate OVC care and support 

services. 

Improve mobilisation, integration and networking. 

SLIDE 7: THE WORKING GROUPS 

In order to work more efficiently, the committee 

was split into the following six working groups: 

OVC Policy Development 

Care and Support 

Lobbying 

Networking 

Monitoring and Evaluation 

Social Assistance 

I will now present the key plans of action and 

achievements of each group. The finer details 

of each action together with their outcomes and 

timelines are contained in the proposal document 

in the conference handout pack. I will start 

with the Care and Support group since the draft 

OVC policy issues will be presented later and 

there will be an opportunity to debate them in 

one of the working groups on Day 2. 

SLIDES 8-9: CARE AND SUPPORT GROUP 

The first comment to make here is that the 

statutory social workers continue to ensure the 

care and protection of children who are abused, 

neglected and/or in conflict with the law through 

the provision of statutory services and community 

awareness-raising on children’s rights. 

The Care and Support Programme is our biggest 

programme, and the key action points and 

achievements of this group are as follows: 

Develop a national OVC register by means 

of expanding the DDSWS Social Welfare 

Information System (SWIS). Flexible information 

on OVC is important for informing our 

planning and resource allocation process. After 

the success of the piloting of the SWIS, it is now 

being expanded to all our offices to capture data 

on, among other things, services for OVC. 

Establish a Foster Carer Bank in each 

region. A number of courses have been run this 

year in the development of a Foster Carer Bank, 

and the bank will be greatly expanded during 

the next year. 

Strengthen, develop and expand the Home 

Based Care Programme to ensure national 

coverage and the inclusion of psychosocial 

support and information about rights for 

OVC, based on a community support and 

monitoring model. A number of our partners, 

e.g. CAA, ELCRN, Red Cross and TKMOAMS, 

have expanded their home-based care services. 

CAA in collaboration with the Philippi Trust has 

developed a psychosocial support curriculum 

that will also be further developed. 

<strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children – Windhoek, Namibia, 25-27 June 2002: Full Report 3

Develop public relations and funding strategies 

for expanding the OVC Fund. Due to 

the growing financial needs of our OVC, an 

OVC <strong>National</strong> Trust Fund is in development. 

Strengthen existing structures/facilities to 

offer drop-in services for OVC, and mobilise 

communities to ensure that they have 

information on how to access state grants, 

allowances and services relating to OVC. 

As a result of work undertaken at the national, 

regional and constituency levels, OVC have 

become a national agenda focus and key stakeholders 

have OVC incorporated into their plans 

– this of course being an ongoing process. In all 

regions OVC are being integrated into structures 

and communities have been mobilised. All this 

work is an integral component of the work of 

each subgroup. I must acknowledge the efforts 

of the steering committee members, who willingly 

took leave from work – as a voluntary service to 

the committee – to travel the country to do this 

mobilising for the integration of OVC. Thank you 

very much, colleagues! 

Simplify and reinforce the implementation 

of the School Development Fund to ensure 

OVC access to quality education. Regulations 

to accompany the new Education Act are 

currently in development. 

Continually develop the national OVC 

resource manual. All delegates have received 

the update form for the manual, or if not there 

is a form in the handout pack. We hope to have 

the updated manual ready in a few months. 

SLIDES 10-11: LOBBYING GROUP 

The Lobbying and OVC Forums programmes 

are interlinked, but we decided to split the work 

between two groups due to the amount of work 

involved. The Lobbying group key actions and 

achievements are as follows: 

Lobby the Law Reform and Development 

Commission (LRDC) to gain assistance in 

the promulgation of all outstanding bills 

related to OVC. In the last year, in collaboration 

with many stakeholders, outstanding child 

welfare bills have been revisited and updated, 

and parliamentarians and the LRDC have been 

lobbied. 

Provide information and training workshops 

regarding the Guardian Fund. Due 

to the lack of knowledge of the Guardian Fund, 

training is about to commence. 

Devise a strategy with the MMC to promote 

the OVCNSC’s aims. 

Develop a variety of OVC awareness campaigns 

that work from grassroots level up. 

A one-year <strong>National</strong> OVC Media Strategy has 

been developed, but this will be revisited and 

portions will be incorporated into the recently 

developed national OVCNSC’s Information, 

Education and Communication (IEC) strategy. 

Mobilise and sensitise ministries, NGOs, 

churches and civil society regarding the 

needs of OVC. Again, work has been undertaken 

at the national, regional and constituency 

levels, OVC are on the national agenda and key 

stakeholders have OVC incorporated into their 

plans – an ongoing process. In all regions OVC 

are being integrated into structures and communities 

have been mobilised. 

SLIDES 12-13: OVC FORUMS GROUP 

The OVC Forums key actions and achievements 

are as follows: 

Organise a <strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on 

OVC. 

Undertake mapping of all current structures. 

Hold meetings with parliamentarians and 

regional and local councillors to promote 

OVC issues. 

Promote the inclusion of OVC in all structures 

and forums. 

Promote and facilitate the development 

of OVC forums where no other forums 

exist. Again, all this work has been undertaken 

at the national, regional and constituency levels, 

OVC are on the national agenda and key stakeholders 

have OVC incorporated into their plans 

– an ongoing process. In all regions OVC are 

being integrated into structures and communities 

have been mobilised. 


Promote and facilitate the exchange of 

information relating to OVC between all 

forums. Through all the work outlined and the 

members of the OVCNSC themselves, I believe 

that good information exchange is taking place. 

SLIDE 14: MONITORING & EVALUATION 

(M&E) GROUP 

Develop a tool for monitoring and evaluating 

OVC services and programmes that 

includes community monitors. The piloting 

of a national M&E tool is currently in development 

and the findings will be ready by October. 

This tool looks at service provision (i.e. quality, 

standards and access), training and supervision. 

SLIDE 15: SOCIAL ASSISTANCE GROUP 

This was an internal group in the Directorate of 

Social Assistance tasked to develop procedures 

to expedite payments to OVC. Over the last few 

months this directorate has also been transferring 

the budget for child welfare assistance to 

the MWACW, and in time payments will also 

be made by the latter ministry. 

SLIDE 16: WHAT ARE OUR CHALLENGES? 

I do not want to paint a picture of all being rosy 

in the garden; like all of you, we too have our 

challenges, hence the theme of the conference. 

Global goals vs local needs: It will remain 

a challenge to keep our programmes focused and 

responsive to local needs to prevent their being 

driven from outside. 

NGOs vs government: The OVCNSC has 

fostered strong partnerships with the NGO movement, 

and these have moved forward in leaps 

and bounds. However, government role-players 

face the inevitable bureaucracy which at times 

makes them look as though they are not moving 

fast enough. This can be very frustrating for the 

government role-players and their partners. 

Institutionalisation vs family-centred care: 

Unfortunately there are still people who feel that 

the best way to solve the OVC problem is to put 

children in children’s homes. In Namibia this has 

been called for, but the Government of Namibia 

(GRN) is taking a stand against going down that 

road, and I hope you will all continue to do so. 

It will be a challenge, however, to prevent private 

sector agencies developing homes if they have 

the resources. As we all know, in many cases 

institutionalisation causes children to develop 

communication and behavioural problems, and 

makes reintegration into society and forming 

relationships difficult for them. 

Legislation: One major problem we face is that 

of outdated children’s legislation. The relevant 

laws have been updated, but we had to review 

the drafts again due to the transfer of the child 

welfare function to the MWACW. Also, since the 

first drafts of the updated laws were produced in 

1995 many things have changed and we have 

learnt more. The draft laws must accommodate 

the changes and new knowledge. 

Co-ordination of resources: The OVC issue 

is very ‘hip’ at present and many people want 

to throw money at it. The same thing happened 

in Namibia in relation to HIV and in a short time 

many agencies folded. People living with HIV/ 

AIDS (PLWHA) were the ones who suffered. We 

don’t want to see the same thing happen to OVC. 

We are trying to send out the message that all 

agencies in Namibia should feed their plans, 

programmes etc. via the OVCNSC, so that we 

have a co-ordinated response – not controlling 

but co-ordinated – with the maximum impact, 

by pooling resources and avoiding duplication 

and overlap. 

Role of the older person: This matter is very 

close to my heart, and I believe it has been overlooked 

and disregarded to a great extent. Older 

people are the people providing care and support 

to OVC as well as to others affected and infected 

by HIV/AIDS. Not enough attention has been 

given to supporting them in this difficult task. It 

is my sincere wish that the incoming steering 

committee will devote substantial time to finding 

ways to support our older persons. They are an 

extremely valuable resource in our fight to 

provide care, support and protection, and it will 

be a sad day when we allow this resource to be 

neglected and slip through our fingers. 

SLIDE 17: WHAT WE HOPE TO ACHIEVE 

I think it is very important to state that everything 

we are doing or have planned, though intended 

<strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children – Windhoek, Namibia, 25-27 June 2002: Full Report 5

to meet Namibian requirements, is in line with 

the SADC/African/Global OVC movement. It is 

also important that we are not reinventing the 

wheel, but rather learning from and building on 

good practices in Namibia and elsewhere. With 

our partnerships I believe we can achieve or are 

already achieving the following: 

Political support. This has been very strong 

from the outset. 

Better care for families and caregivers. 

This is crucially important and I believe we 

are not doing enough about it. The OVCNSC 

has laid the foundation by putting in place 

the tools and mechanisms necessary for rolling 

out the national OVC programme around the 

country, but the stakeholders represented here 

have yet to tackle the actual impacts on the 

lives of OVC and their caregivers, and this 

requires our very immediate and undivided 

attention. 

Increase in the number and improvement 

in the quality of OVC support 

organisations. The GRN is a key stake- 

holder, but we need to have more and more 

organisations emerging and operating within 

the framework being established by the GRN 

and OVCNSC for a co-ordinated response. 

Expansion of the role of schools and 

the education system. The need for this 

cannot be overemphasised. Children spend 

a lot of time at school, so it is a very important 

area to target. 

Strengthening of child, family and community 

participation in OVC programme 

development. This is why we invited young 

people to join us here. We have two children 

from each region to learn from. We welcome 

them and hope they will feel at ease and tell us 

frankly whether we are on the right track and 

what actions should still be taken. 

Long-term financial commitment. We 

need to plan far into the future to determine 

whether resources will be available. 

This is what the OVCNSC has achieved, and I 

believe we have carried out our mandate in 

accordance with your wishes. I thank you. 

Ms Katjiuongua thanked the OVCNSC for a job well done, adding that the committee had done more 

than was expected. She also thanked the young people for being present, and said the time had come 

for involving young people continually in decision-making on their future, and they should feel free to 

say whatever they please. She then introduced the next speaker. 

The group of 13 representatives of young people from the regions (see p.86 for names). 


As mentioned in the previous presentation, 

the OVCNSC decided that it had to have 

a Namibian-owned working definition of OVC 

before it could proceed with its work. This is the 

definition we propose for adoption: 

OVC are children up to the age of 18 

whose mother, father or both parents 

have died; are affected by HIV/AIDS; are 

in need of care including those disadvantaged, 

in conflict with the law, subject 

to abuse and violence. 

I will now briefly explain the terminology. 

We opted for the age range 0-18 to conform 

with the Namibian school system, our current 

Children’s Act and the draft legislation. The very 

fact that a person of 18 is still attending school 

gives that person all the same rights and protections 

as younger people. 

The death of a child’s mother, father or both 

parents will make the child an orphan and the 

Presentation of proposed 

national definition of OVC 

Mr Sebastian Timothy, 

Project Manager, SOS Children’s Village Association 

of Namibia, presenting on behalf of the OVCNSC 

child may thus be more vulnerable. The cause 

of death could be anything. 

We have used the term “affected by AIDS” 

as a generic and inclusive term to ensure that it 

captures: (1) children who may be living with 

the virus; (2) children whose circumstances may 

change because their parents are living with the 

virus; or (3) children whose parents have died 

because of it. The term could also mean a 

combination of all three factors. 

The term “… are in need of care, including 

disadvantaged …” is again an inclusive term, 

which includes neglected and abandoned 

children, children subject to exclusion, and those 

who may not be able to access services because 

of their cultural identity. We felt that if we start 

to list individual groups, there will always be 

someone left out, and by leaving someone one 

out we would instantly create discrimination. 

The term “in conflict with the law, or subject 

to abuse and violence” is self-explanatory. 

The floor is now open for discussion. 

Questions and comments on the proposed definition 

Ms Masabane responded to all the questions and comments on this presentation. 

Note here and elsewhere: The identities of participants who commented or posed questions are 

recorded only where they are relevant. 

Question: In Namibia we have people aged 

18 to about 24 who are still attending or would 

like to attend school and still need financial and 

other support, but who many would not regard 

as “orphans” due to their age. Should they not 

be able to receive any support? 

Comment: Though our Constitution provides 

that a child is a person aged 18 or younger, the 

Government has not reached general consensus 

on this. 

Response: I had very much hoped that you 

would come up with some very clear recommendations 

because we have debated this issue at 

length. We are submitting to you what we have 

used as our working definition for finalisation. 

We considered the definitions in international 


7

documents such as the UN Convention on the 

Rights of Child (CRC), and in our own current 

and draft legislation, and we would like the 

definition we adopt to conform with all these. 

As Mr Sebastian noted, children still attending 

school are considered to be dependent schoolgoing 

children and are thus not excluded from 

care and support services. This has always been 

the practice. Likewise in the case of child welfare 

grants, the Commissioner of Child Welfare will 

always extend a grant or allowance for as long 

as a child remains in the school system. 

Question: I am concerned that the terms used 

are not broad enough. Should we not consider 

finding one all-inclusive term – that encapsulates 

all these and other categories of children? 

Comment (Heidi Beinhauer, CLASH): I 

appeal to you to mention children with disabilities 

in some way in the definition, especially if you 

come to specifying what you mean by the term 

“disadvantaged”. Children with disabilities aren’t 

going to disappear. (This appeal was supported.) 

Response: There are many other categories, 

e.g. children forced into labour or prostitution 

and children on the street. We thought that if we 

refer to all those in need of care, we would be 

embracing all these categories. The Children’s 

Act definition of ‘children in need of care’ very 

much embraces all the casualties and pathologies 

we deal with. We cannot mention each one as 

the list would be endless. We believe that children 

with disabilities have special needs, that 

they are in need of care and that often they are 

also disadvantaged by their disability. The same 

applies to other categories of children. Also, there 

will be more and more problems emerging in 

society necessitating adding more and more to 

the definition, and somewhere along the line we 

are bound to leave out a specific category. We 

therefore propose that the term “in need of care” 

is inclusive of children with disabilities. 

Question: If my husband dies and I am left to 

care for our children, and I am employed and 

earning a good salary and I can afford to care 

for them, are they regarded as orphans? We will 

have problems in registering orphans if we have 

a lot of working mothers who earn well applying 

for grants for their own children and for orphans 

they take in. How do we deal with this scenario? 

Response: This is a very good question, which 

is likely to come up in the working group sessions. 

Question: Should we not also mention children 

infected by HIV/AIDS? 

Response: We can discuss this further. 

Question: Regarding the term “mother, father 

or both parents”, can a child really be an orphan 

if one parent is still alive, and do we mean only 

biological parents? We have children who have 

never been cared for by their biological parents. 

Are we referring to any other caregiver who has 

raised these children as well as biological parents? 

Response: We need guidance from the house 

on how to deal with these issues. The GRN/ 

UNICEF Country Programme stakeholders have 

always felt that it should be one or both parents, 

but this is not cast in stone. Many children grow 

up not really knowing their biological parents, 

so the deaths of the latter would not have a major 

impact on their lives, whereas the death of a caregiving 

aunt or grandfather would orphan a child 

in the true sense of the word. These are difficult 

technical issues, and we have to take our laws 

and international instruments into account since 

we cannot have a definition that conflicts with 

those, nor one that could fill a book. 

Comment (Ms Liana Mbako, 17-year-old 

OVC from Tsumeb): I would just like to say 

that while we are all committed to giving orphans 

everything they need, we must not forget that 

orphans also have rights. 

Ms Masabane pointed out that two experts on OVC were present, namely Mr Stanley Phiri and Ms 

Pelucy Nfambirweki, both from the UNICEF Regional Office in Nairobi, whose expertise in this regard 

would be very useful. 

The chairperson proposed that the definition could not be adopted without further discussion, but 

since a definition had to be adopted at the conference, a committee of volunteers should work on the 

proposal taking into account the plenary input and report back on Day 3. The volunteers were Lucy 

Steinitz of CAA, Doris Roos of UNICEF Namibia, Spendu Onesmus of the MWACW and Pelucy 

Nfambirweki from the UNICEF Regional Office (see report-back on p.54). 


I 

am here to represent the MWACW task force 

that was put together specifically to work on 

two pieces of children’s legislation: the Draft 

Child Care and Protection Act and the Draft 

Children’s Status Act. It is not possible during 

the allotted time to provide details on the content 

of these pieces of legislation, but I will give you 

a very brief overview. The Draft Child Care and 

Protection Act alone has 123 sections, so it will 

be appreciated that I can only give you a broad 

sense of what this legislation will cover. [The 

following is a verbatim transcription of the tape 

with minor edits for layout purposes.] 

CHILD CARE AND PROTECTION ACT 

This Act will replace the existing Children’s Act 

of 1960, which is obviously very outdated. The 

new Act will cover the two basic categories of 

children covered in the existing Act: children 

in need of care and children in need of 

protection. As with the definition of OVC, the 

definitions for these categories are not yet final, 

and I believe it would be very useful for the task 

force to take into account this forum’s discussion 

on the definition of OVC as guidance in finalising 

the definitions in the new Act. 

In a consultation on this piece of legislation 

in October 2001 it was suggested that a third 

category of children should be covered by this 

Act: children with special needs. This category 

is also still being defined, but we envisage 

that it will cover children with disabilities, street 

children and refugee children, and possibly 

children engaged in child labour, commercial 

sexual exploitation of children, trafficking in 

children and child pornography. We are still 

going through the list to determine what belongs 

Update on Namibian 

children’s legislation 

Ms Dianne Hubbard, 

Co-ordinator, Gender and Advocacy Research Project of 

the Legal Assistance Centre, speaking on behalf of the 

Ministry of Women Affairs and Child Welfare (MWACW) 

in this piece of legislation and what might better 

be dealt with elsewhere. So we are struggling 

with the same problem already identified in this 

conference: how to be comprehensive, without 

producing something that is too wide in scope 

to be workable. 

For all these categories of children, the Child Care 

and Protection Act is basically going to look at 

situations calling for the children’s removal 

from their home environment and possible 

placement in alternative care. In some 

ways the procedures will follow the same lines 

as those in the existing Act, but there are several 

important differences: 

There will be a much greater emphasis on 

preventative services. For example, if a 

child is being neglected in the home where 

s/he normally resides, and if the neglect is 

due to alcohol abuse, it may be a better solution 

to help the other family members with 

the alcohol abuse than to remove the child. 

The idea is thus to place greater emphasis 

on finding ways to apply services so as to 

enable the family to stay together instead of 

seeing removal as the primary alternative. 

The new Act will recognise that in Namibia 

we are not talking about nuclear family units 

consisting of mother, father and child; it will 

give much greater recognition to the fact that 

members of the extended family often play 

a key role in looking after a child. The term 

being used is ‘primary caretaker’, and this 

person will be consulted and involved in all 

decision-making about the child, whether the 

primary caretaker is a parent, an extended 

family member or someone not biologically 

related to the child at all. 


9

The new Act will also cover adoption, as 

does the existing Children’s Act. This portion of 

the Act is still under discussion as there will be 

further consultation with adoptive parents and 

adopted children for input on some provisions. 

Other provisions of this Act cover basic 

children’s rights. One recommendation of the 

task force that may be controversial is to outlaw 

corporal punishment by parents in Namibia, in 

the same way as it is no longer allowed in the 

schools. Controversial as it may be, we believe 

this issue has to be put on the table for discussion. 

The committee that monitors the CRC is of the 

opinion that corporal punishment by parents is 

inconsistent with the CRC. This issue will be 

debated – perhaps in this forum too. 

There are also basic statements in the new 

Act about parental responsibilities, and 

though the draft is not final, I would like to read 

the relevant section because it says something 

very new: 

(1) Every parent, guardian or person 

having custody of a child shall safeguard 

and promote that child’s health, and be 

responsible for its development and welfare, 

and that child shall have the right to: 

(a) education and guidance 

(b) immunisation 

(c) adequate diet 

(d) clothing 

(e) shelter and 

(f) appropriate medical attention. 

(2) Every person having custody of a 

child shall protect the child from discrimination, 

violence, abuse, neglect and social 

or customary practices that are likely to 

be harmful to the child. 

This is a new concept to give attention not 

just to what parents should not do, for example 

exert corporal punishment, but also to what they 

should do, meaning the positive responsibilities 

of parenthood. This is a new emphasis in the 

sense that to date our law has tended to focus 

on rights rather than responsibilities. There is an 

international trend towards talking more about 

parental responsibilities. 

CHILDREN’S STATUS ACT 

I will now give an overview of the Children’s 

Status Act, to set the stage for highlighting a few 

issues which may be particularly interesting to 

this forum, or particularly controversial. 

The primary reason for having the Children’s 

Status Act is to try to remove the discrimination 

currently experienced by children born outside 

of marriage. Under our existing Roman-Dutch 

common law, a child born outside of marriage 

is not considered to be related to the father, even 

if the father acknowledges paternity, with the 

result that such a child cannot inherit from the 

father without a will. Even if there is a will, the 

child is sometimes excluded due to restrictive 

interpretations of the terms used in wills. 

The flipside is that the father of a child born 

outside marriage is excluded in legal terms from 

having certain rights over the child. The father 

of such a child has no right of access to the child, 

nor any of the other normal parental rights that 

go along with parental responsibilities. Men raise 

this problem in the context of maintenance. 

They ask, “Why should I pay maintenance if I 

have no rights to the child?” 

This Act will attempt to address these sets of 

problems, but the primary change it will make 

is to remove all discrimination against 

children born outside of marriage. If the 

father is known and paternity can be proved, 

then the child and father will be considered to 

be related, and there will be a right of inheritance 

between father and child as there is 

between mother and child. 

The draft Act proposes that there should be 

an automatic right of reasonable access 

for the father, unless a court finds such access 

not to be in the child’s best interest. The reason 

for taking this stance is that in a country like 

Namibia, if one first has to go to court to secure 

a right, for most people it is not a meaningful 

right since most people in Namibia still find it 

difficult to access the courts to assert a right. So 

we thought that the starting point should be to 

make access automatic, except in what we hope 

will be those more unusual situations where the 

father’s access might pose a danger to the child. 

Regarding custody of a child born outside 

of marriage, the law will still be that initially 


the mother will take custody, for the simple 

biological reason that we can only be absolutely 

sure that the mother will be present at the birth, 

and the child needs to have someone who is 

physically there from day one. But under the 

draft Act the father would have the right to 

apply for custody of the child if he could 

show that it would be in the best interest 

of the child to be cared for by him rather 

than by the mother. There is even a possibility 

in certain limited circumstances that this application 

could be made before the child is born. An 

example could be where a child is conceived 

by someone with a severe mental disability, it 

could be known before the birth that the father, 

who does not have such a disability, might be 

in a better position to care for the child. 

With respect to guardianship, the idea in the 

Act is that guardianship should follow custody, 

because you cannot have someone who 

is not involved with the child on a daily basis 

making decisions on the child’s behalf. 

This Act will also cover children born of 

assisted reproductive techniques or surrogacy 

arrangements. By assisted reproductive 

techniques I mean the situation where a couple 

is having difficulty conceiving a child and relies 

on a sperm or egg donor, or an artificial insemination 

procedure in a laboratory. Our current 

law makes a very odd arrangement in that a child 

born of a procedure of this sort is considered to 

be the child of the person/people who donated 

the sperm or egg, even if they are anonymous 

donors. This obviously leads to results that no 

party intended. Surrogacy is the situation where 

a couple unable to bear children for some medical 

reason contract with another woman to bear a 

child for them. To the best of our knowledge 

this is not happening in Namibia at present, but 

it was felt that we may need to insert provisions 

on this in Namibia’s law because it may come 

to Namibia, or it may be that a child born of a 

surrogacy arrangement in another country 

comes to reside in Namibia later in life. 

We could spend a long time discussing and 

debating each of these issues. The purpose of 

this brief overview was to give the delegates a 

sense of the content of this Act. 

*** 

There has been broad public consultation on 

the two Acts I have covered so far, and the task 

force is now attending to final revisions in light 

of the input received. 

BASIC STATE GRANTS ACT 

This Act will supplement the Child Care and 

Protection Act and Children’s Status Act. The 

draft Basic State Grants Act is now with the 

MoHSS. It will cover state maintenance grants 

and disability grants for children. In practical 

terms these three pieces of legislation will have 

to work together as a package so as to be helpful 

to children on the ground. 

KEY ISSUES RELATING TO OVC 

I will now highlight a few specific issues that are 

under discussion and likely to be of particular 

interest to this forum. 

One is the need to add a non-discrimination 

provision to the Child Care and Protection Act. 

We believe this addition is necessary because, 

though we have a very strong provision in our 

Constitution, there is a need to provide something 

more specific for children. For example, 

we think it is probably necessary to state that it 

will not be allowable to discriminate against 

children with disabilities, children infected or 

affected by HIV/AIDS, street children, or refugee 

and immigrant children. Following the example 

of the South African Law Commission’s recommendation, 

we are considering whether or not 

the Act should also outlaw discrimination against 

a child on the basis of the health, social status 

or nationality of any family member. We do not 

have the final wording on this provision, and 

the discussions here may give us guidance. What 

we want to cover in this provision is precisely 

children who are vulnerable to discrimination. 

Street chaildren are a good example of a category 

of children to include in such a provision. We 

are told that some schools are reluctant to enrol 

street children. A non-discrimination provision 

would help ensure that they cannot be treated 

differently to other children due to their status. 

Another issue under discussion relates to 

adoption. There is an international convention 


11

on inter-country adoption, namely the Hague 

Convention. Namibia is not yet a party, but 

may become a party in future. The convention 

attempts to regulate inter-country adoption to 

make it possible for adoptions to take place 

between countries which are both party, while 

avoiding the danger that a market in children 

could develop, or in other words to try to allow 

bona fide adoptions but not the sale of or trafficking 

in children. Because Namibia has not 

yet signed the convention, there is a question 

mark as to whether or not Namibia’s children’s 

legislation should take it into account. 

The position is similar with the Hague 

Convention on Inter-country Abduction. 

Namibia may become a party, so we may have 

to take this issue into account in our children’s 

legislation. As with inter-country adoption, the 

purpose of the international convention on 

abduction is to allow for co-operation between 

countries and mechanisms to facilitate cooperation 

to deal with abduction cases and to 

stamp out the practice of children being taken 

from one country to another in this way. 

Another area under discussion, on which we 

may get some guidance from this group, is that 

of harmful social and cultural practices. 

We need to find out if there are such practices 

in Namibia affecting our children and what kind 

of remedies are needed in the children’s legislation. 

One example brought to the task force’s 

attention is that in some communities there are 

certain procedures performed on young females 

to prepare them for sexual maturity. One such 

procedure is a form of stretching which would 

fall under the Type 4 category in the World 

Health Organisation definition of female genital 

mutilation. We might also have to ascertain 

whether or not there are procedures performed 

in terms of male circumcision that ought to be 

covered in our children’s legislation. In some 

South African provinces, though they do not by 

any means outlaw male circumcision, it has to 

be done in conformity with certain health 

standards to guard against infection. These are 

issues requiring much more discussion, but the 

idea is that there should perhaps be a provision 

in our children’s legislation that specifically 

protects children from harmful social and 

cultural practices. This forum may wish to put 

forward examples of such practices for consideration 

during the deliberations, examples of 

mechanisms to address such practices, and 

insight on the extent of the problems. 

One issue of particular relevance to children 

affected by HIV/AIDS is that of guardianship. 

The difficulty is that under our existing law, if a 

child’s guardian dies and that guardian has not 

made a will naming another person as guardian, 

and if there is no surviving parent, that child 

will be left without a guardian. The High Court 

can appoint a guardian for a child who does 

not have one, but this procedure is not easily 

accessible to most people in Namibia, and it is 

also expensive. There are several different ways 

to address this problem. 

In the draft Children’s Status Act there is 

already a proposal that where a guardian has 

not been named in a will, guardianship should 

pass from the deceased to the nearest ascendant 

blood relative (i.e. to the next person up rather 

than down in the line of family connection). The 

idea is that guardianship would be ‘inherited’ if 

there were no other provision for it, so that a 

child would not be left without a guardian. 

An additional provision we are considering 

is that it should perhaps be possible, in particular 

when there is no family dispute, for relatives 

who want to take guardianship responsibility 

for a child to do so by way of an administrative 

procedure rather than having to go to the High 

Court. The High Court would still be there as a 

safeguard, and certainly would need to be 

involved if there was a dispute, but the Master 

of the High Court is often being approached 

by relatives who say, “This child has been left 

without a guardian, there was no will, can you 

help us to become the child’s guardians?” 

A third aspect of the guardianship problem 

is that there may be people who are not closely 

related to a child taking care of the child, who 

may not be willing to take on the responsibility 

of full guardianship. The question is, should 

there be a certain degree of parental responsibility 

that goes along with de facto care and 

control of a child? For example, if you are 

standing in the shoes of a parent, even if you 

are not intending to do so permanently, should 

you not be able to get medical treatment for the 

child without having to find a guardian to give 


permission for it? In other words, certain basic 

responsibilities must be fulfilled if one is caring 

for a child properly. Similarly, where a family 

member without clear parental responsibilities 

is caring for a child, certain responsibilities should 

be placed on that person. For example, if you 

are caring for a child, whether or not you are 

the parent, you should have a duty to protect 

the child from harm, and a duty to ensure that 

the child has adequate food, shelter and clothing. 

I mention all these issues under guardianship 

because all are facets that may apply to children 

orphaned by AIDS or anything else, who may 

be left without clear lines of responsibility and 

decision-making on their behalf. If there is an 

opportunity during this conference, it would be 

very useful to discuss how these problems relate 

to OVC. 

The next issue I will raise, i.e. stepparents’ 

responsibilities for their stepchildren, is 

very controversial. We have been looking for 

examples from other countries, and there seems 

to be a movement towards saying that stepparents 

should have some responsibilities for 

stepchildren if they are living as a family in the 

same household. Under our existing law stepparents 

and stepchildren have no legal duties 

towards each other; only the biological relatives 

of a child have a duty to look after that child. 

The only way for a stepparent to have a legal 

relationship with a stepchild is by adopting the 

child, which is possible under existing law. 

A question arising in a number of contexts 

is whether a stepparent should have a duty to 

support a stepchild while the stepparent is married 

to the biological parent. If so, what happens 

if the couple divorces? Could the divorce court 

order a stepparent to pay maintenance for a 

stepchild? Should this be limited to stepchildren 

that a stepparent knows about at the time of the 

marriage? What happens if five years down the 

line your spouse asks if she/he ever mentioned 

the 10-year-old staying with the grandmother? 

Inheritance is another question. If a stepparent 

has been maintaining a child, should that 

child be able to request maintenance from the 

estate of that stepparent? No one is proposing 

that there should be general rights of inheritance 

– we have not found these in any country – but 

just a right to maintenance from the deceased’s 

estate. Let us say that for years a stepfather has 

been maintaining a child and he suddenly dies. 

Biological children would have a right to claim 

maintenance from the estate. Should a stepchild 

who has been maintained in the same way have 

the same rights? 

These are just some of the questions. This is 

a complicated package because it is not just 

saying that there should or should not be stepparent 

responsibilities, but also which ones. Most 

other countries limit stepparent responsibilities 

to situations where there is an actual practical 

and emotional relationship between the stepparent 

and stepchild, and most require some 

evidence of a parent-child-type relationship. 

The final issue I would like to discuss in detail 

is age of majority, this being the age at which 

you no longer need your parents to make legal 

decisions for you; you have the right to enter 

into contracts without assistance from a parent 

or guardian. Namibia’s Age of Majority Act sets 

the age of majority for boys and girls at 21 years. 

The reason there is a question about this is that 

more and more laws in Namibia are defining 

‘child’ as a person under the age of 18. Youthful 

offenders, for example, are usually defined as 

people under 18. Maintenance is usually paid 

up until a child turns 18 unless there is a compelling 

reason for continuing it. The CRC defines 

a child as a person under 18, and it has already 

been brought to Namibia’s attention that we are 

perhaps in conflict with the CRC on the question 

of age. The committee that reviewed Namibia’s 

initial report noted that Namibia seems to have 

a range of ages at which children acquire certain 

rights and responsibilities, which may require 

further examination. One possibility that the task 

force favours is recommending lowering the age 

of majority to 18, which would be consistent with 

the CRC. The relevant age for many responsibilities, 

such as voting and driving, is 18. This 

creates a conflict because we are saying that a 

child is old enough and responsible enough to 

drive and to vote, but not to enter into contracts 

without parental consent. If, for example, a 19year-old 

driver is in a car accident and wants to 

bring a court case, his/her parents would have 

to assist. The task force is concerned to resolve 

some of the conflicts arising from different ages 

being set for different rights and responsibilities. 


13

OTHER LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS 

RELEVANT TO CHILDREN 

I want to conclude by mentioning several other 

legal developments of relevance to children. 

The Maintenance Bill is now before 

Parliament. This is a new law that would cover 

child maintenance paid by parents or anyone 

else legally liable to maintain another person. 

This could extend to a number of family members, 

but in practice our Maintenance Act is used 

primarily for children. We have had an Act in 

place for many years, but it is being overhauled. 

The bill before Parliament is very exciting. For 

example, it has a number of administrative 

changes that will make the Act practically much 

more workable for mothers and their children, 

i.e. the people who will use it most. Also, it is 

completely gender-neutral; a father can claim 

maintenance from an absent mother if the father 

has custody of the child. But again, in practice 

in Namibia it is used almost 100% by mothers 

caring for children and seeking maintenance 

from absent fathers, or by grandmothers or 

extended family members caring for children. 

We have a Domestic Violence Bill, which 

is expected to be introduced in Parliament 

during the current session. This legislation looks 

at all acts of domestic violence, but with a 

specific eye on abused children. There are some 

provisions meant to help children in particular. 

For example, in the case of a child, civil and 

criminal proceedings regarding domestic violence 

can be brought by someone else acting on 

behalf of the child, e.g. a parent, teacher, social 

worker, or anyone having an interest in the wellbeing 

of the child. There is also a provision that 

says if you allow a child to witness violence and 

you are the perpetrator of that violence, then 

you have also committed domestic violence 

against the child, simply by exposing the child 

to violence. The bill recognises that even if you 

have not lifted a finger against the child, a child 

in a violent environment is suffering from the 

violent atmosphere. 

There is also a Vulnerable Witnesses Bill, 

which would look at the position of children and 

other vulnerable witnesses when they testify in 

court. It is often an extremely traumatic experience 

for children to testify; they are terrified by 

the formality and strangeness of it. This Act 

would provide for things like allowing the child 

to testify by way of closed-circuit television or a 

one-way screen, so that a child who has suffered 

sexual abuse would not have to tell the story 

with the perpetrator staring her/him in the face. 

The Act would also require that questions be 

put through the presiding judge or another 

intermediary so that the lawyer defending the 

accused could not badger the child or intentionally 

try to confuse the child so she/he will 

sound less credible. This bill seems to be stalled 

somewhere in the Ministry of Justice, but it is an 

extremely urgent matter because we have so 

much sexual abuse against children. Anything 

we can do to make life easier for children who 

have been through such a trauma would certainly 

be an important development. 

Finally, we have a draft Divorce Act now 

with a Law Reform and Development Commission 

(LRDC) sub-committee which is about to 

finalise recommendations for the consideration 

of the full LRDC. Again, special attention is paid 

to children in this bill. The sub-committee’s idea 

is that there should be a Family Advocate who 

looks at the child’s best interest – not in every 

divorce case, but in cases where there seem to 

be problematic circumstances, e.g. where one 

party has alleged abuse against the other, or 

where there is a proposal to split up siblings, or 

in other such unusual circumstances that make 

it difficult for a court to decide without extra input 

on what would be in the child’s best interest. 

I believe we have some very interesting and 

exciting developments in support of vulnerable 

children arising in a lot of different legal contexts, 

and I hope this overview has given this forum a 

sense of where children stand under our new 

and forthcoming laws. Thank you. 

Ms Katjiuongua thanked Ms Hubbard for a thorough update, adding that the issues raised are very 

pertinent and time would have to be set aside during the course of the conference for some participants 

to deliberate on them. She opened the floor for a few pertinent questions on burning issues raised in 

the update. 


Questions and comments on Ms Hubbard’s presentation 

Question (Liana Mbako, 17-year-old from 

Tsumeb): Some orphans living with a guardian 

may not be suffering any physical abuse but they 

may be suffering emotional abuse. What can be 

done about this? 

Answer: The Domestic Violence Bill covers all 

kinds of abuse – physical, emotional, psychological, 

economic etc., so this problem would 

be covered by this legislation. But it only covers 

serious cases: sending a child who has not done 

his chores to his room is a case of discipline, not 

abuse. 

Comment: The law on maintenance certainly 

has to be revisited. There are many loopholes in 

the current law which lay the law open to abuse. 

Few mothers misuse maintenance money, but 

the majority of guardians do tend to misuse it, 

and something must be done about this. We may 

need to thoroughly investigate the arrangements 

made for receiving payments to ensure that the 

money really is reaching the children. 

Response: The Maintenance Bill now before 

Parliament has a provision that would make it 

criminally punishable to abuse maintenance 

money. Any person, whether parent, guardian 

or anyone else, who takes money that is meant 

for a child and does not apply that money to the 

child’s benefit would come under investigation 

for a criminal offence. So this problem has been 

recognised. 

Question: With regard to guardianship, what 

happens if a child’s natural or indicated guardian 

is from a different country, e.g. Angola or South 

Africa? We have had quite a few cases of this in 

Namibia and it can be problematic. 

Answer: The task force has not considered this 

problem, but I’m glad you have raised it and we 

will think it through. 

Question: Could you please remind us of what 

the provisions regarding corporal punishment 

will seek to do. 

Answer: The basic idea is that punishing children 

with violence teaches them that violence is 

the way to deal with problems in life. The task 

force’s concern is that Namibia has a problem 

of being a very violent society at the moment – 

I think we all share this concern – and we think 

that if we start teaching children from the very 

beginning that there are other ways to deal with 

problems, or to punish or discipline people, this 

may help them not to grow up looking to violence 

as the answer to everything. Only a few other 

countries have outlawed corporal punishment. 

Sweden, for example, outlawed it several years 

ago and has found that this had a big impact on 

changing public attitudes on whether corporal 

punishment is a positive or negative thing. Since 

the law was passed the majority of Swedes have 

come round to agreeing with it. It is a question 

of law being influential in encouraging people 

to think of non-violent approaches to family life 

in general. 

Question: This country is 86% Christian, and 

the Bible says, “Spare not the rod!”. How will 

you satisfy most of the churches if you outlaw 

corporal punishment? Would it not be better to 

teach parents how to use corporal punishment 

positively? 

Answer: This question demonstrates why the 

issue is so hotly debated. 

Question: Can children born of extra-marital 

affairs be considerd stepchildren? 

Answer: A stepchild is a child whose mother or 

father has married someone who already has a 

child. In other words, the child of your spouse 

is your stepchild and you are the child’s stepparent; 

it doesn’t relate at all to whether the child 

was born in or out of wedlock. 

Comment (Ms Petronella Masabane, task 

force member): The task force should consider 

the point just raised. We have not paid enough 

attention in the draft legislation to the status of 

children born of extra-marital affairs whose 

mother or father marries someone else. 

Comment (another task force member): 

Some of you may recall that the task force published 

an article in a local newspaper calling for 

input on the isuue of stepchildren, and we are 

still appealing for this from you. In the first place 

we need clarity on whether or not we are making 

an issue out of a non-issue. 


15

Overview of Draft 

<strong>National</strong> OVC Policy issues 

Mr Andrew Muwonge, 

Senior Consultant, Southern Consultants 

My work is to look at the issues that are central to policy-making on OVC, and to relay to you 

that a policy is already being developed, and that a very preliminary draft will be circulated 

to you for comment. 

INTRODUCTION (SLIDES 1-2): 

The major goals of government planning 

in respect of OVC are: 

to improve protection of “children in 

especially difficult circumstances”; 

to decrease incidences of child abuse 

and neglect, child labour, and juveniles 

conflicting with the law; 

to empower society to handle children 

better; and 

to create an environment that is conducive 

to the ‘proper’ development of 

children. 

These goals are highlighted in the national 

programme of action for OVC, and measures 

have been taken on several fronts to protect 

OVC. 

A key approach to decreasing the various 

abuses is prevention. Prevention takes 

many forms, but it is aimed especially at 

strengthening or empowering society. 

Commentary: We are speaking of a society 

that has been weakened, so much so that it has 

become a ‘pedestrian’ society – impoverished, 

depressed by inflation and commercialisation 

... . You are worried that your telephone will be 

cut off when your child comes to ask for some 

money, so you slap the child. The child has to 

rely on this kind of society for its protection; it 

must rely on a ‘lame duck’ for its life. 

Our problem is how to influence the outcome; 

how to empower our society to carry its 

responsibily to care for its children, especially 

the vulnerable; and how to empower children 

to become viable or to look after themselves, 

now and in the future. 

This “society” includes the households, the 

communities and the NGOs, which I emphasise 

because if we give NGOs responsibilities, we 

have to empower them; if we rely on them, we 

cannot have them unravelling and dying. So 

one of the Government’s responsibilities will be 

to empower NGOs to ensure that they continue 

to stand on their feet and deliver the goods 

expected. 

The basket of empowerment inputs is big; it 

includes inputs into education and training (e.g. 

in psychosocial care), legislation, poverty 

elimination, empowering communities morally, 

liberating people from drug/alcohol abuse and 

all other abuses that precipitate or compound 

the problems that OVC face, child immunisation 

and generally reducing health risks for children, 

nutrition and sanitation programmes, AIDS 

awareness campaigns ... the list of necessary 

inputs is endless. 

The empowerment of communities to look 

after themselves cannot be over-emphasised. 

Now let us look at the policy. 

(SLIDES 3-4) 

It goes without saying that tackling the 

problems of OVC effectively requires a 

policy. 

The effects of the policy will be: 

a framework for and an index of references 

to best practice; 


a basis and guidelines for operations and 

activities undertaken for OVC protection 

and servicing; and 

the basis on which all OVC-related 

programmes, projects and action plans 

will be founded. 

Commentary: Many of the policy challenges 

presented in planning work for OVC will be 

discussed in this forum. These challenges raise 

many questions, e.g. how to strengthen the roleplayers’ 

capcity to play their roles efficiently and 

effectively, and how to create an environment 

that is conducive to the development of the vulnerable 

child, i.e. an environment with friendly 

laws and loving people, an environment free of 

stigmatisation, disease, hunger and deprivation. 

The challenges we are looking at now present 

us with the agenda for the implementation of 

our programme action plans. 

For the sake of clarity I should note that we 

defined an OVC as “any child from any background 

who needs assistance to access things 

that other people ordinarily access without 

assistance”. For the purposes of our analysis we 

have a very very long list of children fitting this 

description. 

THE PROBLEMS FACING OVC (SLIDE 5) 

There is a very long list of problems facing OVC, 

but they all gravitate around deprivation and 

extreme deprivation, which compounds itself 

and forms a vicious circle, especially if it is 

allowed to mutate into despondence. 

THE NEEDS OF OVC (SLIDES 6-7) 

All children have physical, emotional, social and 

intellectual needs. For a child to develop to his/ 

her full potential and evolve into a participating 

and contributing adult, these needs must be met. 

In order to define and analyse these needs 

effectively, they have been classified as: survival 

needs; security needs; socialisation needs; and 

self-actualisation needs. 

Commentary: Several concepts are linked to 

these needs, and every time something goes 

wrong with a child, each of these needs is either 

credited or debited. If a child is not attending 

school, you have to go around to determine the 

problem, which could be a lack of security, a 

self-actualisation problem (e.g. is the child not 

allowed to talk), and so on. 

SUSTAINABILITY (SLIDES 8-11) 

Sustainability will be one cornerstone of the 

policy. 

To be sustainable, the policy must employ a 

strategy based on existing and known caregiving 

technology and practice. 

The strategy or interventions must ensure the 

efficient use of resources (financial, human, 

time). 

It must focus on developing simple and costfriendly 

institutions. 

It must build on the innovative and effective 

approaches developed by the communities 

affected. 

It must reduce OVC vulnerability effectively, 

thus it must address the root causes of the 

problems. 

In line with the requirements of sustainability, 

the basis of child welfare will be the family 

and the major players will be the communities 

themselves. 

Institutional care will be a measure of last 

resort and will last only a short time, i.e. 

while the possibilities for reintegration into 

the family or foster care are being explored. 

Commentary: Using the family as a basis for 

child welfare has many merits, e.g. it is a known 

entity in a familiar setup, it is cheap, it caters for 

very large numbers of people and has the 

capacity for expansion. Institutional care, on the 

other hand, creates many problems for children 

and is too expensive for the numbers involved. 

Policy will thus preclude institutional care and 

make the family approach imperative. 

POLICY DETAILS (SLIDES 12-42 with 

commentary) 

Certain key concepts – also cornerstones of the 

policy – are worth considering: 

Building children’s capacity to support 

themselves – now and in future. For this 

to happen, children must stay in school to 

achieve the necessary foundation for sustainable 

development, and exclusion (from 


17

school or any facility) based on the child’s 

condition must be rejected. Policy has to 

guarantee access to information, education, 

training and ECD facilities. The name of the 

game here is that children must be equipped 

to stand on their own feet. 

Psychosocial care and support: Many 

children have had traumatic experiences – 

some have witnessed murder or death (HIV/ 

AIDS-related perhaps); some have been 

sexually abused or raped; some have been 

battered; some have been manhandled by 

a police officer; some are street children 

beaten by fellow street children over some 

point of contestation; some are scared, some 

are hungry, some are ill. They all need a 

helping hand to stand on their feet again – 

psychosocial support, emotional support and 

love. Caregivers have to be empowered to 

administer that care and to constitute an 

effective safety net. 

Regarding health-care services (curative 

and preventative), we need to close existing 

gaps in both the health-care system and the 

supply of safe water and sanitation, and we 

have to empower rural clinics to serve OVC 

caregivers. 

Inheritance and guardianship: Issues of 

inheritance and guardianship relate to the 

security needs of a child, therefore anything 

that negatively impacts on guardianship and 

inheritance jeopardises the child’s security. 

In many African societies there is flexibility, 

but it is subject to abuse, thus policy must 

close any gaps through which abuse could 

enter to the child’s detriment. Policy will 

protect the future of children by promoting 

the writing of wills, educating the communities 

about the importance of clarifying issues 

for children before a parent dies and so on. 

Child abuse and neglect: Children’s Act 

33 of 1960 outlaws these practices in 

Namibia; it is an offence to neglect, ill-treat, 

abandon or allow a child to be ill-treated. 

Every attempt will be made to close all gaps 

in the future rules and regulations on child 

abuse and neglect. Policy will also target all 

possible causal factors for child neglect and 

abuse, e.g. substance abuse, unemploy- 

ment, poverty, family instability, domestic 

violence and deteriorating family values. 

The strategic package will include: (a) counselling, 

information collection and dissemination, 

community projects and rehabilitation 

for substance abuse; and (b) support to the 

WCPUs. 

Child labour: A big problem in the rural 

areas and on the commercial farms. (The 

Namibia Child Activities Survey of 1999 put 

the overall labour force participation rate for 

children at 16,3% and the rural proportion 

of this at 95,4%.) The positions of the 

Namibian Constitution and the CRC on child 

labour are clear. <strong>National</strong> policy is: (1) support 

the constitutional guidelines on the minimum 

age for certain types of work; (2) inform and 

force employers to observe all legal provisions 

governing child labour; (3) monitor developments 

country-wide to enforce compliance; 

and (4) ensure that no employer/organisation 

pressurises children to work. 

Street children: Most street children come 

from poverty-stricken and overcrowded 

homes. Many other factors can precipitate a 

scourge of street children. <strong>National</strong> policy is: 

(1) take them off the street and get rid of the 

scourge of street children; (2) support and 

expand the MWACW Street Children 

Programme; (3) rehabilitate and reintegrate 

the children into their families; (4) convince 

school principals to accept rehabilitated 

street children into their schools; (5) fight 

stigmatisation of rehabilitated street children; 

(6) investigate and target the multiplicity of 

factors that predispose children to roaming 

and dwelling in the streets; and (7) empower 

the households, communities and NGOs to 

work together to put an end to the problem. 

Children in conflict with the law: 

Namibia does not yet have specific legislation 

recognising the special problems of children 

in conflict with the law; there are no provisions 

in the Criminal Procedures Act that 

apply specifically to children; we have no 

separate criminal court for children; it is not 

obligatory for a child to be legally represented; 

the Criminal Procedures Act does not 

provide for the immediate notification of 


parents when a child is arrested; and there 

is nothing in our current law on diversion. 

As we at Southern Consultants see it, the 

national policy on OVC is meant to fill such 

gaps in our children’s legislation so as to bring 

it up to international standards and into line 

with our own national code of rights. 

Children with disabilities: The <strong>National</strong> 

Assembly adopted a national policy on 

disability in July 1997, which stipulates that 

people with disabilities should be enabled 

to take charge of their own lives by removing 

barriers that deter them from full participation 

in society. <strong>National</strong> policy states: (1) in 

as far as the disability policy also applies to 

children, it is national OVC policy to support 

it; and (2) children with disabilities will have 

equal opportunities and equal access to all 

facilities and services in the community. The 

policy cornerstone is inclusion, therefore all 

practices, attitudes, words and opinions that 

are contradictory to inclusion should be 

discarded. The regular school system will be 

assisted to meet children’s diverse needs. 

Early childhood development: ECD has 

an important role to play: (1) It lays the 

foundation for HIV prevention at an early 

age; (2) It plays a role in nurturing, caring 

for and socialising young OVC, especially 

for those with limited parenting at home. 

<strong>National</strong> policy is: (1) give ECD education 

to all OVC, and a head start, and stop them 

deteriorating into despondency while 

enabling them to develop a positive selfimage; 

(2) lobby community and privatesector 

initiatives to establish ECD facilities; 

(3) ensure that community and privatesector 

ECD facilities admit OVC; (4) make 

the public aware of the importance of ECD 

education in the development of OVC and 

children in general; and (5) directly establish 

ECD facilities where there are no community 

or private-sector initiatives to undertake ECD 

activities. 

Child poverty: This sub-component goes 

hand in hand with the establishment of 

physical facilities referred to earlier. Poverty 

compounds child vulnerability and precipitates 

problems. 

State assistance: A major problem in 

caregiving is money, which is needed to 

provide food for OVC and reprieve to the 

needy (clothing, medical care, education). 

A key reason for this need is that the 

extended family which used to provide these 

things is now impoverished, and in some 

cases it has ceased to exist. State assistance 

is available but there are many challenges: 

(1) The monthly payment per child has only 

limited capacity to help. (2) There is a clear 

need to hasten the flow of money by way 

of hastening the processes of qualifying 

children and appointing legal guardianship. 

(3) Problems such as a shortage of social 

workers to carry out assessments, lack of 

transport to remote areas and lack information 

among communities and household 

members regarding state assistance affect the 

accessibility of state assistance. <strong>National</strong> 

policy is: (1) all OVC have access to state 

assistance; and (2) state assistance should be 

easily accessible, therefore all obstacles to 

accessibility must be eliminated. 

Child assessment: This is crucial to the 

efficacy of caregiving, and all needy children 

should be assessed to: (1) clarify their needs 

and fit them into the correct programmes; 

and (2) target their needs accurately. <strong>National</strong> 

policy is: (1) to deploy social workers on the 

assessment and promote social work training 

to increase the number of social workers; and 

(2) to empower communities and individuals 

in the communities to conduct assessments 

in those cases and places where the shortage 

of social workers impedes progress. 

Monitoring: The implementation of OVC 

caregiving programmes will be monitored 

closely. The purpose of monitoring will be 

to ensure that plans, programmes and 

activities in the various areas of concern are 

progressing as planned. Monitoring will take 

the form of: (1) continuous assessment and 

observation of OVC programme outcomes; 

and (2) recording of data and events, and 

sending the records to divisional/area offices 

on a regular basis – perhaps monthly. 

Thank you. 


19

Ms Katjiuongua thanked Mr Muwonge for this very important input into the conference, and explained 

that the issues raised in this overview would be discussed in detail in the working groups sessions so 

there would not be a plenary discussion now. 

Ms Katjiuongua went on to say that the next session would be the most interesting because it would 

give the role-players in the OVC programme an opportunity to hear from OVC directly. The plenary 

was divided into five groups, each of which was assigned a number of children who would talk to the 

group about impacts on them and strategies to reduce the impacts. Following are verbatim reproductions 

of the group flipcharts/notes and the key points made in each report-back. 

Two of the groups in session 

Impacts on OVC in Namibia 

and strategies to reduce them 

GROUP DISCUSSIONS WITH OVC 


Ms Doris Roos 

Child Rights Officer, UNICEF Namibia 

GROUP 1 

(Blue Group) 

Facilitator: 

Mr Andrew Muwonge, Southern Consultants 

Rapporteur: 

Ms Liana Mbako, 17-year-old OVC from Tsumeb 

On my own behalf I would like to thank everyone who made it possible for us to come here to 

state our views. Other people have always spoken on our behalf at national conferences like 

this, and we are truly grateful for the opportunity to speak for ourselves. 


I will now read out our group’s short- and 

long-term recommendations. 

Short-term recommendations: 

Ensure that OVC are consulted on all issues 

regarding OVC. 

Shorten the grant application process as the 

long time lapse causes trauma. 

The example of the Social Welfare Community 

Committee in the Karas Region should be 

explored for use in the other regions. 

OVC families should be supplied with sufficient 

information regarding their situation. 

OVC should be supported in re-establishing 

regular contact with their family members. 

Ensure that siblings remain together. 

Certain incidents regarding school admission 

should be reported to the MBESC. 

Improve co-ordination between OVC 

support institutions and schools. 

Long-term recommendations: 

Create a special fund to fulfil special needs 

of OVC in relation to sports, pocket money 

etc. 

Create a support system for caregivers that 

includes emotional, social, financial and 

other support. 

Sensitise communities regarding psychosocial 

support in order to create safety nets. 

Co-ordinate OVC care and support in order 

to prevent exploitation. 

Continue education on psychosocial care 

and support. 

Ensure that counselling and guidance are 

available to OVC in the long term. 

Those working with OVC should have a 

multicultural approach. 

Keep a continuously updated OVC register 

to allow for: 

better statistics; 

a starting point for joint planning; 

better planning for budget provision; 

better planning for educational needs; 

better understanding of OVC on the part 

of teachers; 

co-ordinated donor support; 

constant evaluation of the situation; and 

enhanced professional treatment of 

OVC (e.g. information provided on OVC 

to be treated as confidential). 

OVC should be part of decisions-making on 

their future. 

Counselling support should be developed 

nationally. 

The shortage of social workers, as well as their 

working conditions and remuneration should 

be addressed urgently. 

Provide continuous life skills empowerment 

for OVC. 

NGO, CBO and FBO activities should be 

enhanced to support OVC. 

The chairperson thanked Ms Mbako for her 

confident, assertive and straightforward input, 

adding that this is exactly what the role-players 

had hoped for. 

QUESTIONS/COMMENTS ON GROUP 1 

(BLUE GROUP) REPORT-BACK 

Comment (Petronella Masabane): I noticed 

that a lot of eyes turned to look in my direction 

when the issue of social workers’ salaries was 

raised. While I do not determine the salaries of 

civil servants, I would like to place on record 

that as a social worker myself I definitely share 

the sentiments expressed and thank the group 

for raising the issue again. 

Question: The group referred to the example 

of the Social Welfare Community Committee in 

the Karas Region. What is it doing? 

Answer (Social Welfare Community Committee 

member): In short, the committee trains 

volunteers to trace orphans and abused children 

and to provide basic support to them. We have 

established a group of volunteers in each of four 

districts in the Karas Region and are in the process 

of expanding to other Karas districts. But it should 

be noted that there are volunteers doing this kind 

of work in the Hardap Region and in the north 

as well. 

Comment (Doris Roos): I was in the Caprivi 

last week and found there too that a number of 

organisations are providing this kind of service, 

not only the government social workers. I hope 

this conference will serve as a platform for sharing 

experiences on these initiatives, and that those 

which prove positive in one region are replicated 

in others. 


21

GROUP 2 

(Green Group) 

Facilitators: 

Ms Claudia Tjikuua, MBESC 

Ms Silke Felton, UNICEF Namibia 

Rapporteur: 

Ms Ottilie Abrahams, 

NAWA 

Our modus operandi was to listen to the problems that OVC encounter with the system and 

then to identify remedies, but the discussion was so lively that we did not manage to talk much 

about remedies. Once we have identified the problems, the remedies are not hard to find. 

PROBLEMS AND ISSUES FACING OVC (FLIPCHARTS WITH COMMENTARY) 

Difficuly of extended family. OVC feel 

that the extended family is not as helpful as 

in the past. 

Institution sometimes the only way out. 

Even if there are institutions available, they 

are usually located far away from the child’s 

own community. 

Sharing clothes. Many schoolgoing OVC 

have to share clothes (e.g. each day one child 

gets to wear the one pair of shoes). 

School uniforms. It seems that most OVC 

have problems with school uniforms. 

Group pressure. This is one effect of not 

having a school uniform or food or other 

basic things that other children have. 

School fees. This is a recurring problem. 

We have to look differently at children who 

cannot afford to pay school fees. 

Labelling. OVC are concerned about the 

labelling of children as “orphans” or “disadvantaged”. 

Pressure of work (social worker). There 

are too few social workers. 

Court procedures. Children find these very 

tedious. 

Special educational needs. These are not 

being taken care of adequately. 

Lack of information. OVC do not know 

where to go when they have problems. 

Pension the only income. Many OVC are 

forced to gravitate to their grandmothers or 

grandfathers just to have something to eat. 

Too many to support on grandparent’s 

pension. 

OVC leave school to live with grandparents. 

This guarantees them at least one 

plate of food per day. 

Lack of food at school. 

Government bureaucracy (red tape). 

This seems to give most people the biggest 

headache. A child in need will arrive for help, 

the social worker will help, but then the child 

needs this and that document, and this and 

that has to be done, and the child is made to 

wait a long time for the support needed. 

Lack of clear guidelines. All stakeholders 

need guidelines for their work with OVC. 

Lack of transport. Still a big problem for 

people in rural areas, especially in terms of 

access to school and support services. 

Sensitisation of school teachers and 

principals. The problem of children being 

turned away from school because they can’t 

pay school fees is not going away. We have 

had a fee exemption policy for years, but as 

a school teacher myself I can assure you that 

most teachers and principals are still unaware 

of this, so they must be informed again. 

No information on child welfare grants. 

The public at large must be informed about 

these grants for OVC. 

Sustainability of family support system. 

Many existing family support systems are not 

really sustainable. 


Lack of food and parental supervision. 

Home-based caregivers (status). It was 

noted that not enough credit is given to those 

providing home-based care, who are doing 

a lot but nobody seems to appreciate this. 

Lack of networking and co-ordination 

among stakeholders. If the stakeholders 

co-operate better, home-based care would 

be much more effective. 

Backlog vis-à-vis grant-making – the 

churches should play a bigger role. 

Government has so much to do to process 

a grant that children are made to wait a long 

time. The churches could do a lot to expedite 

matters as they know when people are born 

and they furnish birth certificates, so if they 

could provide the necessary documents the 

process could go much faster. 

Lack of resources. One remedy would be 

to sensitise school teachers and principals on 

fee exemptions for OVC. 

Lack of education. All the children attach 

great value to education but feel let down 

because all were forced to leave school when 

they were really very anxious to study. They 

all felt, as one boy put it, that “Education is 

the key to everything.” We should bear this 

sentiment in mind when looking at remedies. 

Lack of access to information. It was felt 

that we have to make use of local structures, 

headmen and media; train NGOs to act in 

official capacities or take on certain roles of 

government for which they would get official 

recognition; and look at all other possible 

channels of communication for expediting 

services to OVC. The idea is to empower as 

many people as possible to expedite services. 

System failure – in terms of education 

and caring for children. Government and 

society should put in place preventative or 

pre-emptive measures to help ensure that we 

are prepared for all eventualities. 

Intervene where principals put pressure 

on a child. No school principal should ever 

speak directly to children about the fact that 

their school fees have not been paid. This is 

devastating for a child. Principals must deal 

directly with parents/guardians or whoever 

is responsible for paying the fees. 

Parenthood. It would be pointless to sensitise 

school personnel if parents and society 

at large are not sensitised about their roles 

and responsibilities towards children. The 

Government is already tackling the issue, e.g. 

in considering a Maintenance Bill. 

Necessary documents (not known). 

Something has to be done to stipulate what 

documents are needed for OVC to receive 

different kinds of support. 

Lack of human resources vs community 

involvement. To make up for the lack of 

human resources the community should be 

involved in a big way in supporting OVC. 

Economic empowerment. The NGOs, the 

communities and children themselves need 

to be economically empowered. Asked what 

we as role-players could have done to solve 

the problems they had faced, one child said, 

“Make education totally free!” 

Stigmatisation. 

No security after parents died. What one 

girl would have wanted was for her parents 

to provide for her security. Parents must be 

prompted to make provision in good time. 

Trauma and lack of emotional support. 

Breaking up of family. The children ask 

that this be avoided at all costs. 

School principal’s treatment of orphan 

should have been different. Principals do 

not understand the trauma OVC experience 

and must be sensitised to this. 

Strengthening social grants. 

The Orphan Emergency Fund and the 

Red Cross are a great help. 

QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS ON GROUP 2 (GREEN GROUP) REPORT-BACK 

Comment: It is all very well to offer school fee 

exemptions, but what problems will this create 

for the MBESC? We should look further – at the 

whole support system. For example, couldn’t the 

grant system make provision for paying school 

fees rather than the whole burden being placed 

on the MBESC? 

Question: At last year’s conference we spoke 

about the option of incentives for schools that 


23

accommodate children who are exempted from 

paying fees. The OVCNSC was asked to look 

into this. Did it do so and what did it find? 

Answer (Petronella Masabane): We did look 

into this and I reported this morning that we are 

in the process of developing certain guidelines 

as well as a <strong>National</strong> OVC Trust Fund, both of 

which will address the issue of incentives for these 

schools. But we are also looking at the possibility 

of direct transfers to children to cover all their 

needs, including educational, health and food 

security needs. We have laid the groundwork, 

and hopefully the new committee will take the 

matter further, perhaps as a priority. 

Comment: I hope that the scrapping of school 

uniforms will not be considered. This was done 

in America, the result being a loss of discipline 

and schools falling to pieces. A uniform brings 

commitment and pride, and it stimulates team 

work. Subsidise rather than scrap them. 

Comment: I wish to point out that the goal of 

“quality” education places OVC under tremendous 

stress because they have to cope with the 

pace of the schools competing towards this goal. 

Leonard Diergaardt 

First I would like to thank the valiant candidate 

who talked to our group. I don’t think 

that I would have been brave enough to do what 

she did. 

The group first looked at the background of 

the 17-year-old who elaborated on her past and 

present situation. We then identified general 

needs and problem areas, searched for ways to 

address these, and came up with a recommendation 

for each of four major problem areas. 

We should bear this in mind when talking about 

access to “quality” education for OVC. 

Comment: It is very important for the service 

providers to get to know and to network closely 

with local people who are close to the children. 

Comment: On the statement that the extended 

family is no longer helpful, this differs according 

to geographical location and other factors. In the 

Caprivi, for example, the extended family system 

is still strong, and grandmothers and others want 

to care for the children of deceased relatives and 

actually refuse to be separated from them, but 

the problem is a lack of resources. It is important 

to make these distinctions. 

Comment: I wish to recommend that a single 

structure be set up in each region through which 

all role-players in the OVC programme network 

and co-ordinate activities. Many of us are providing 

services, but we cannot tap one another’s 

resources because we are not networking and 

co-ordinating properly. I propose that if we pool 

resources through a single legitimate structure, 

we will respond to the crisis more effectively. 

GROUP 3 

(Red Group) 

Facilitators: 

Ms Adolfine Mushimba, C&ECD Division, MWACW 

Ms Mariane Shalumbu, C&ECD, MWACW 

Mr Clive Willemse, COLS 

Rapporteurs: 

Mr Leonard Diergaardt, SOS Children’s Village Association 

Mr Clive Willemse, COLS 

Story of a Girl Child: 

1. At 5 years old she last saw her mother and 

father. She lived with her grandmother up 

till the age of 9, when the grandmother died 

and she ended up on the street. 

2. She was picked up by a good Samaritan – 

“a lady”. 

3. She was then linked with a government 

social worker and ended up in a children’s 

home, where she still lives. 


Recommendations: 

1. Information on services for OVC, and the 

services and facilities themselves, should be 

easily accessible. 

2. There should be a proper link (networking) 

between the social workers and the children 

through the churches, NGOs, CBOs, community 

leaders, regional and local councillors, 

teachers and OVC forums and committees, 

and the latter bodies should be strengthened. 

3. A database on each OVC should be established 

in each constituency. This will assist 

in tracing parents, families and children. 

4. In strengthening support systems the focus 

should be on the foster family. 

Commentary: Only in the last of these three 

stages of life was the child herself involved in 

decision-making about her life; she had been 

forced into every situation prior to that. 

Asked if the people around her knew of the 

services available for children in similar situations, 

she replied that they did not know. 

It seems that being referred to as “orphans” 

is one of the biggest problems encountered by 

these children. To quote this child directly: “I hate 

the word ‘orphan’!” This term certainly contributes 

to stigmatisation. 

Regarding information on and access to 

services and facilities, many of the available 

facilities are very cold and not child-friendly, and 

children in need of care don’t want to be in these 

places, but accessibility to services is vital 

because only the service providers know what 

avenues are open. 

We discussed the possibility of a more 

community-type situation whereby adults and 

children are able to meet up, e.g. at social 

centres where peer-to-peer and caregiver-tocaregiver 

information exchange can take place. 

The child who spoke to us has just one wish 

apart from gaining access to education and support 

services: she wants desperately to reunite 

with her family. We were fortunate to be speaking 

to a child whose parents are still alive, but their 

whereabouts are unknown. At last year’s conference 

there was some discussion on establishing 

a database that could assist those involved in 

placing children to access information on the 

whereabouts of a child or a child’s parents. The 

database should also be accessible to biological 

relatives, who should be able to telephone a 

Regional Council office or another central office 

for such information. It is very important to reunite 

the children with their families, thus we 

recommend establishing this database. 

We agreed that the family and foster family 

are the key role-players in the prevention of 

child neglect and abandonment, and that we 

should focus on strengthening foster families. 

We also agreed that we should not look at 

establishing new committees and services, but 

rather revisit the existing ones and try to streamline 

the whole system. 

QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS ON GROUP 3 (RED GROUP) REPORT-BACK 

Comment: Maybe as one of our remedies we 

should ask the MBESC to include in the Life 

Skills curriculum a special chapter on vulnerable 

children that covers, for example, rights and 

responsibilities and how to access help, because 

the work of social workers would be greatly 

facilitated by all children knowing these things. 

Comment: I would like to place on record that 

many social workers are referring to the Orphan 

Emergency Fund as a “lifesaver” and they would 

like to see the fund extended. 

Comment (group member): It is important 

to note the child’s concern that she is 17 this 

year and still in Grade 10, and next year she 

will be 18 and by definition no longer a child, 

and thus no longer eligible for support as an 

OVC. 

Response (Doris Roos): As was mentioned 

in the presentation on the proposed definition, 

even a 21-year-old OVC who is still in the school 

system will be supported by virtue of being in 

the school system. If this child remains in school, 

she will receive support. 

Comment (Clive Willemse): I would like to 

re-emphasise the key role that education plays. 

We find that 80-90% of the awaiting-trial juvenile 

offenders passing through COLS have little or 


25

no education, meaning that they cannot read or 

write. There is a very strong link between illiteracy 

and juvenile delinquency, so we need to take 

the education issue very very seriously. 

Comment: If we should not speak of “orphans”, 

what term should we use in referring to these 

children? Perhaps there are other terms used in 

our communities and we should find out about 

this. 

Question: Would a 13-year-old girl who has 

been raped and impregnated by her stepfather 

be considered ‘vulnerable’? If we are not catering 

for children in this situation as OVC, what is the 

Government doing to respond to their situation? 

Answer (requested from Helen Mouton, 

DDSWS Assistant Programme Manager 

for Specialised Social Welfare Services at 

national level, who works with this issue 

at national level): As our proposed definition 

implies, we do regard children in this situation 

as OVC, and they are also catered for in the draft 

children’s legislation, which makes provision for 

the care and protection of any child who has 

been abused or neglected, no matter by whom. 

Addition (Petronella Masabane): I would 

like to add that we have Women and Child 

Protection Units around the country that 

specialise in helping people in such situations. 

Further, a substantial bulk of the social worker’s 

daily work is to provide services to abused and 

neglected children, and if there is any suspicion 

of these, the social worker has the mandate to 

remove the child immediately from the setting 

in question, place the child in a place of safety 

and launch court proceedings. If the court finds 

the child in need of care, it will order the child’s 

removal from the family and placement with a 

substitute family or an institution, and the same 

applies whether the child is biologically related 

to the family or not. Namibian law provides for 

immediate and very definite action to be taken 

wherever child abuse and neglect is found. 

Comment from young girl (translated from 

the Afrikaans by Doris Roos): There are a 

number of institutions providing for basic needs, 

such as food and shelter, but what we lack there 

is psychosocial support. Doris’ addition: We 

know this is where we are failing and allowing 

the children to fall through the cracks. 

GROUP 4 

(Yellow Group) 

Facilitators: 

Mariane Olivier, Philippi Trust 

Francis van Rooi, CAA 

Caroline Thomas, CAA 

Amanda Kruger, Lifeline/Childline 

Rapporteur: 

Mary Collins, MBESC 

The two young people assisting me here helped us enormously. We kept them busy answering 

questions, which they did very kindly and very well. We spent most of our time identifying 

problems rather than trying to work out solutions between ourselves. We have written up the problems 

in categories. 

System’s response: 

Rapport with OVC withheld 

No assistance for extramural activities 

Lack funds to cover e.g. NAMCOL fees 

Education: 

School Development Fund exemption 

Exemption application forms withheld 

Stigmatisation and teasing 


Social services: 

Lack of knowledge of welfare grants 

Grant-making procedure prolonged 

Health care: 

OVC should be exempted from service fees 

Community: 

At present no women’s or men’s groups are 

helping 

Extended family: 

Maintenance not received from father 

Siblings not kept together 

No income-generating options 

Child-headed households 

Domestic chores 

One person supporting a household 

Act 

Churches, FBOs and NGOs: 

CAA assistance a lifesaver; could others do 

this kind of work? 

Other issues: 

Parents do not leave a will 

OVC ID document? 

Orphanages? 

Commentary: Generally the system response 

seems to be lacking in both of these children’s 

life stories. 

The same issues came up in respect of school 

fees and the kind of assistance they could have 

done with. 

At this point Ms Collins asked one of the girls 

to tell the participants why she is studying 

through NAMCOL and what subjects she is 

taking. The girl replied as follows: 

I am a NAMCOL student because I failed 

Grade 10 last year. I had to choose one 

subject because there was no money for 

more than one subject. I chose to study 

Geography. If there was money for more 

subjects, I would take Mathematics. 

Here is a practical demonstration of how a 

child’s schooling is affected by a lack of money. 

The other girl is supported by her brother, 

who works in Windhoek and supports seven 

siblings. He has managed to cover their school 

fees, so she is in school, but she could do with 

some extra support for a special talent. 

Ms Collins asked the girl to tell the participants 

about her talent: 

In Mariental this year I was chosen to play 

in the national netball team, and I am 

going to Walvis Bay on Tuesday to represent 

Mariental in a game. 

This child is very talented, and I believe she 

would much appreciate some assistance with 

travelling expenses and other things involved 

in pursuing a talent. 

Both girls had great difficulty in securing the 

school fee exemption. As a worker in education 

myself I would like to say that the authorities are 

well aware of the access problems and we are 

addressing them through policy and the new 

Education Act. Things should improve. 

Regarding welfare grants, in the case of one 

of these girls the form went to the principal, who 

ignored it, so liaison and communication in this 

regard was not very good. One of the girls has 

been applying for a grant since 1998 and the 

other since a little later. Neither of them has yet 

received a grant, which has been re-applied for, 

held back and so on all these years. 

Stigmatisation and teasing were part and 

parcel of these girls’ experiences. This is an issue 

that will have to be addressed not only by those 

in education but by all stakeholders. 

We discussed whether it would be useful for 

OVC to have an identity card that they could 

simply present to the principal, the doctor or any 

agency, which would immediately convey that 

they should be exempt from fees. The two girls 

differed on whether this would be a good or bad 

thing. It was noted that one would not have to 

carry the card around every day but only on 

certain occasions, and it might make discussion 

and explanations unnecessary and the process 

much smoother. 

The girl from Keetmanshoop lives in a household 

headed by her 23-year-old sister who is in 

Grade 12 and caring for five siblings. All of them 

help with the housework but the older sister takes 

responsibility for most of it, so she carries a heavy 

burden. 


27

Neither child could remember recieving any 

help from members of the local community. 

Somebody mentioned a woman’s group in 

Uganda called TASO, which engages in assisting 

children in this situation and this is something 

women’s and men’s groups in Namibia could 

think about doing. 

We had quite a long discussion on the role 

of churches, FBOs and NGOs. One of the girls 

received help from CAA – sometimes the family 

went hungry, other times CAA brought food as 

well as school uniforms and money for school 

fees – and this was a real lifesaver for the family. 

We also discussed the issues of the extended 

family, household chores, income generation, 

maintenance from fathers, writing wills, identity 

documents and whether orphanages are a good 

idea or not. 

Ms Collins asked the girls to tell the participants 

how they felt about orphanages. They 

responded as follows. 

First girl: 

Being an orphan is sometimes good and 

sometimes bad, because when you are 

an orphan, other children say bad words 

to you and life becomes more worse. 

Second girl: 

I think it’s good to be an orphan, even if 

someone says to you, “You have no 

mother or father.” I know this, and I will 

tell the person, “Fine, you have parents 

now, but one day you will stand in the 

situation I am standing in.” It’s not so bad 

to be an orphan – it’s God’s word. 


Comment (yellow group member, CAA, 

Keetmanshoop): I would just like to add that 

the family of the girl from Keetmanshoop whose 

older sister is caring for five siblings also had a 

serious housing problem that CAA was able to 

help solve. The family used to live in a yard with 

five shebeens, and living there was very tough. 

For one thing, they couldn’t give proper attention 

to their schooling. The children raised the 

problem with us, and we asked Build Together 

if they could help to find the children a home 

of their own. Build Together provided a house, 

which is paid for from the monthly state grant. 

Comment (yellow group member): I would 

like to add that one of these girls wants to be a 

pastor and the other wants to be a nun, and I 

think we should help them with their education 

so we can have them in the profession! 

Comment: Regarding the suggestion of using 

another word for ‘orphan’, I propose that we just 

need to use the word positively. At the moment 

we say a child is in the street because he’s an 

orphan, or the child is not faring well in school 

because she’s an orphan. The child has lost his 

or her parents, not his or her own self. We are 

using the word negatively. 

GROUP 5 

(Black Group) 

Facilitators: 

Helen Mouton, DDSWS 

Verona du Preez, SWIS, DDSWS 

Rapporteurs: 

Gerald Witbooi, OVC supporter 

Helen Mouton, DDSWS 

We had a very good encounter with one child from the Caprivi Region and another from the 

Kunene Region. It gave us insight into a lot of things happening in our towns and rural 

communities that many of us were unaware of. 


Impacts on OVC: 

1. Psychosocial needs, i.e. emotional support and counselling 

2. Physical needs, e.g. food and clothing 

3. Access to information (on education, health care etc.) 

4. Access to state assistance nationally (social grants – foster parent, maintenance and disability) 

5. Access to free education and health care 

Strategies: 

1. Strengthen the capacity of communities to be responsive and accountable by means of: 

training traditional leaders; 

community-based training for volunteers (to assist OVC and service providers); 

community education, with the focus on school teachers and principals because they have 

the most access to children on a daily basis; 

empowering children and women through rights education, sensitisation on resources etc.; 

social workers (overworked and underpaid); 

networking (to aid resource distribution etc.); and 

funding (donors should channel to where funds are needed most). 

The previous four groups had covered everything that this group had to cover in the report-back, so 

the rapporteurs just read through and elaborated very briefly on the points on the flipchart. 


Comment: We cannot solve all the problems 

in one day. I think we just need time to educate 

the communities about the services available. I 

would like to thank the DDSWS, the Orphan 

Emergency Fund and the Red Cross for the work 

they are doing. The important thing is that we 

are doing the work. Let us look at the positive 

contributions as well as the negative. 

Comment (participant from Ohangwena 

Region): On the issue of service co-ordination, 

this conference should come up with a structure 

through which all OVC-related issues are dealt 

with throughout the country. In some regions 

there is no proper structure to work through. 

Comment: On the issue of channelling donor 

funding to where it is needed most, I would like 

to add that people must be honest and use donor 

funding for the purposes intended rather than 

pocketing it for their own benefit. 

Comment (Pelucy Nfambirweki, Regional 

Advisor on OVC, UNICEF): I would like to 

share with you some information on Uganda’s 

experience which may prove useful as you 

progress. As you know we have had an AIDS 

problem for many many years (almost 16), and 

we have learnt a lot. First I want to commend 

you and say that you should not lose heart; you 

are doing a lot and should not feel that you are 

getting nowhere. Even what I have witnessed in 

my two-day stay here has been a lot. Things 

can only get better. You need only streamline 

what you have. I would like to thank everyone 

here for the work you are doing. Having worked 

with OVC-supporting NGOs for 10 years I know 

the hardships you face. 

Uganda has over two million orphans – more 

than Namibia’s whole population. Many were 

dropping out of school due to all the problems 

that have been raised here – lack of money for 

fees uniforms, stigmatisation etc. To fight stigmatisation 

we made it a national issue by using the 

words of a song written by a person living with 

HIV/AIDS: “Today it’s me, tomorrow it’s you.” 

Government also exempted school fees. Four 

children per family do not pay fees, and orphans 

– especially those who have lost both parents – 

do not pay fees. If you insist that they pay fees, 

they will simply drop out. Another strategy was 

to increase household income so that families 


29

and caregivers could afford to buy uniforms and 

scholastic materials. The Government covers 

tuition fees only, and the families have been 

empowered to cover all the basic needs of the 

children in their care. Finally – an issue that 

encourages us – we went back to our traditions. 

We asked who looked after these children before 

the donors came. The orphan issue was there 

Venancius Rukero, a former street child who completed Grade 12 in 1998 with 

financial support from the MoHSS After School Centre, recited a poem – a unique 

and indescribable one, but one participants will recall with a smile! 

The Jan Möhr Secondary School choir performing during the next session. 

even before AIDS. What mechanisms were used 

in the past? We revisited our roots, especially 

the idea that a child belongs to the community/ 

village; it is not just my child but everybody’s 

child. These roots were and should remain very 

meaningful. If there is time here we will watch a 

video about our 16-year experience of working 

with OVC in Uganda (see page 52). 


OFFICIAL OPENING SESSION 


Ms Ulitala Hiveluah 

Permanent Secretary, MWACW 

Ms Hiveluah opened the session with a brief address (see below), whereafter the Jan Möhr Secondary 

School choir performed and Dr James Tjibeba of ELCRN led the devotion on behalf of Bishop Zephania 

Kameeta, who was unable to attend the session and conveyed his apologies. 


Honourable Ministers, Members of Parliament, Members of the 

Diplomatic Corps, Honourable Governors, Fellow Participants, 

Ladies and Gentlemen – 

We are here again to look at the plight of OVC. These three days are 

very critical in that history will judge us if we do not do justice. The 

situation is more critical than it was in May 2001 when we first gathered 

for the same purpose, so we have to seriously re-dedicate ourselves. When 

we leave this conference centre we will know what to do at the national, 

regional, local and villages levels. Having paticipated in this morning’s 

deliberations, I know that we have a capable team; one that is well able 

to tackle the issues. The children are waiting for services to be delivered, 

and we are the only ones who are going to do that. Let us remain focused 

and do what is expected of us. Thank you. 

The key speakers (from right): Hon. Ms Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Minister of Women Affairs and Child Welfare; 

Hon. Dr Libertina Amathila, Minister of Health and Social Services (representing First Lady Kovambo Nujoma); 

Ms Khin Sandi-Lwin, UNICEF Representative in Namibia; and Ms Rose De Buysscher, FHI Country Director. 


31

Statement by 

Ms Khin-Sandi Lwin 

UNICEF Representative in Namibia 

Hon. Dr Libertina Amathila, Hon. Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Children and Young People, 

Co-Sponsors, Organisers and Participants in this important national event – 

Before I begin I would like to note that at the 

table of key speakers, with the exception of our 

religious leader, we are all women. Perhaps this 

signifies that the burden of child care still lies 

with women. 

May I start with a note of congratulations to 

the organisers of this conference, the members 

of the OVCNSC, and especially to the two key 

ministries, the MoHSS and MWACW, which 

have worked closely to follow through on the 

first national conference on OVC last year. 

Looking at the turnout at this conference and 

the documentation, you have done excellent 

work in preparing for the event. Congratulations! 

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have come a 

considerable distance and have made solid 

progress since the last conference in May 2001, 

and yet we have hardly moved an inch forward. 

Let me elaborate on this statement meant to 

get your attention! 

We have made solid progress in the good 

show of inter-sectoral work of the OVCNSC in 

producing the draft <strong>National</strong> Strategic Plan of 

Action, in the high quality of the draft plan, and 

in the increased profile that the topic of OVC 

has in the country. We are also heartened by 

the news that the budget allocations for social 

welfare grants have more than tripled for the 

coming years and some progress has been made 

in simplifying the grant-processing procedures. 

The efforts of other partner ministries (e.g. the 

MBESC) to look into the special needs of OVC 

are also commendable. These are all solid 

results that deserve acknowledgement and 

congratulations. 

However, the national-level progress has yet 

to go the distance to touch the lives of the 

increasing number of orphans and the families 

caring for them with increasing difficulties. 

Hence my saying that we have hardly moved 

an inch forward. The national actions are the 

springboards for community-level interventions. 

But what is actually reaching the children is what 

we must measure ourselves against. 

When one goes to the communities in the 

high HIV prevalence areas, one finds the hardships 

and desperation of grandparents and the 

children left in their care heart-wrenching. Stories 

abound of their encounters with the bureaucracies 

for any kind of support, and of their lack 

of knowledge of whatever support the national 

policies and programmes make available. 

Only a handful of children and families are 

able to access the foster care and maintenance 

grants, and in most cases it takes a year or more 

to process these cases dealt with on an individual 

basis by 2-3 social workers at the regional 

level. Only a handful of children are able to get 

the School Development Fund and hostel fee 

exemptions in accordance with the MBESC’s 

policy. With the scale of the problem the system 

is already overwhelmed by having to deal on a 

case-by-case basis. 

The challenge for us now is exactly this: How 

do we reach those children, families and communities 

most in need of support at scale, before 

the families disintegrate and we have the worstcase 

scenarios we fear, i.e. more street and 

working children, school dropout, abuse and 

neglect, ill-health and death? There are already 


anecdotal reports from communities of increased 

theft by children driven to crime by hunger and 

desperation. The urgency of this problem need 

not be sold to the already converted group of 

individuals present here, but we do need to sell 

it up the line to other Cabinet members and the 

regional governors, and down the line to traditional 

and religious community leaders – those 

who have critical roles to play in ensuring action 

at the scale required in the high-prevalence 

regions. 

In seeking and designing viable interventions 

we must bear in mind that we are in this for 

the long haul. The HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 

country is still on the rise and people who were 

infected in the earlier phase are now beginning 

to die. These deaths will multiply for as long as 

prevalence keeps increasing without the necessary 

and massive change in behaviour, and 

without the anti-retroviral drug treatment being 

made available. The OVC problem will increase 

and deepen for the next 10-20 years. 

We must therefore seek sustainable and costeffective 

ways, with a clearly established set of 

priorities, to extend support to those most in 

need. The pressures are on for direct welfare or 

charity-type support, i.e. for feeding and clothing 

children, and covering the costs of school 

fees, uniforms and institutional care if necessary. 

With the Government’s budget limitations and 

the limitations and uncertainties or fickleness 

of external funding, we will need to make some 

tough decisions on choices and options. 

Do we provide directly for the basic needs 

of a handful of children for a couple of years 

and wring our hands helplessly when the funds 

run out and we cannot do more, or do we put 

all our energies into developing the capacity of 

families, communities and local authorities to 

cope with the situation, thereby building on the 

traditional coping measures? 

The investments made now in community 

capacity development will pay off with immediate 

effect and in the long run. The proven 

approaches of longer-term development need 

to be expanded at scale – approaches involving 

micro-credit provision, developing community 

self-help income-generation activities, and 

supporting small and medium-size enterprises. 

We will need to bring to the table the ministries 

and other actors having the mandate and the 

programmes for community-based economic 

development. 

Needless to say, the name(s) of the game is/ 

are collective action, collaboration and 

integrated, inter-sectoral efforts. The need 

for a holistic response is reflected in the draft 

strategic plan. But, given the limited resources, 

we will have to prioritise and phase action on 

the range of needs and approaches. Do we put 

more resources and effort towards ensuring that 

the basic needs are addressed through sustainable 

community development approaches first 

and pay less attention initially on establishing 

psychosocial counselling support services? Do 

we spend more on awareness-raising activities 

or campaigns or get as much as possible down 

to regional level and below as start-up capital? 

As this conference debates important national 

policy issues such as a definition of OVC, merits 

and demerits of registration and why institutional 

care should be a last resort, we will also 

need to bear in mind the ground-reality needs. 

At the level of first contact with families and 

communities, these are some questions we have 

encountered: “What is the definition of OVC in 

terms of who receives assistance and who does 

not?”; “What are the criteria for assistance if we 

do not have a broad, all-inclusive definition of 

OVC?; “How do we organise so that families do 

not have to run from pillar to post to get help?”; 

“How do we build on traditions and not destroy 

them by offering the opportunity for those 

family members immediately responsible to 

pass the buck to the Government or NGOs? I 

am sure that the collective wisdom of the participants 

who have direct contact with the children, 

families, traditional, religious and other local 

leaders will have some answers to these tough 

questions. 

UNICEF is very conscious of the fact that 

our funds are very limited. We aim to optimise 

spending on longer-term solutions that reach 

those most in need, and to work to show results 

quickly so we can generate more funds that are 

badly needed to bring us to scale. We are supporting 

start-up efforts in three regions, namely 

Caprivi, Omusati and Otjozondjupa, and with 

USAID funding CAA efforts in three other 

regions through FHI, at least six regions now 


33

have start-up support. We need to make the most 

of these start-up efforts to show evidence of 

reaching those most in need, we need to get all 

the key actors on board to work together and 

not in parallel, and we need to trigger sustained 

local action that is replicable in other regions. 

In closing I would like to assure you that 

UNICEF’s commitment to this issue is for the 

long haul, and that we will be there to support 

efforts especially in this time of transition of focalpoint 

responsibility from the MoHSS to the 

MWACW. We join everyone in this hall in the 

hope that the momentum gained in the past year 

will be maintained and taken to new heights to 

meet the massive challenges. 

Let us make the most of this investment of 

bringing the stakeholders together for three days 

so that next year we can say we have really come 

a long way in touching the lives of many many 

OVC by helping to build community caring 

capacities and by planting the seeds that will regenerate, 

year after year, the collective energies 

in this hall down to where they will really make 

a difference, i.e. in the communities. Thank you. 

Statement by 

Ms Rose De Buysscher 

Country Director, FHI 

Ms Chairperson, Hon. Minister Libertina Amathila, Honourable Minister Netumbo Nandi- 

Ndaitwah, Dr James Tjibeba of ELCRN, Ms Khin-Sandi Lwin, Honourable Regional 

Governors, Members of Parliament, Your Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps, Members 

of the UN System and Development Partners, Members of the Media, Young People, Ladies and 

Gentlemen – 

It is a great honour for FHI to have been asked 

to speak at the opening of this conference and 

I thank you most sincerely. 

Throughout our 30-year history FHI has 

focused on improving lives through highly 

diversified programmes of research, education 

and services to the family. With funding and 

support from USAID and in partnership with 

many stakeholders, we are continuing our work 

and support in Namibia. 

Our philosophy is to work directly with the 

Government (especially line ministries), NGOs 

and communities to build their capacity and work 

to achieve their identified needs. One of our key 

partners has been the DDSWS in the MoHSS. 

During the last two years we have been working 

with the DDSWS and other development partners 

in the development of the national OVC 

programme. 

The impact of OVC in Namibia has strained 

traditional coping mechanisms to a crisis stage. 

An increasing number of communities and 

government structures are struggling to harness 

the impact on children and their families. The 

challenges faced by children, families, communities 

and government in managing the impact 

of OVC are and will continue to be enormous. 

In the absence of support there will be long-term 

developmental impacts on children and on the 

nation. Therefore, comprehensive and costeffective 

approaches, coupled with co-ordinated 

partnerships and community mobilisation, are 

needed. 

Insights gained from research conducted in 

Namibia (SIAPAC, 2001) and South Africa 

(Loening-Voysey & Wilson, 2001) show the 

most common issues facing OVC to be the 

following: 


Trauma associated with losing a parent, 

which is in most cases exacerbated by the 

threat of losing the second parent. 

Witnessing the parent’s physical deterioration, 

pain and death. 

Having cared for the parent in their terminal 

phase and often being blamed for causing 

pain. 

Anxiety about their source of livelihood and 

their ability to retain the family home after 

the parent’s death. 

Keeping out of school and other activities 

with peers in order to take responsibility in 

the household. 

Being infected themselves with HIV, facing 

stigma in their communities and needing 

palliative care. 

Given the ministries’ commitment to the rights 

of Namibian children and the fact that the OVC 

numbers are increasing, there is the possibility 

that the rights of the child will erode over time. 

We all have a strategic interest in assisting the 

Government of Namibia to ensure that OVC 

continue to receive full support. Working with 

the two key ministries (MoHSS and MWACW) 

to achieve their goals, FHI and USAID will support 

the following strategies within the framework 

of the OVCNSC’s five-year work plan: 

Strengthen an enabling environment at 

the national level: Taking a rights-based 

approach we will continue to support the work 

of the OVCNSC and co-fund future national 

conferences on OVC, which will continue to 

bring together stakeholders from the public and 

private sectors, and civil society, to address and 

find solutions to the growing problem of OVC 

in the country. 

Build capacity of key stakeholders: We will 

promote and sponsor active participation of key 

stakeholders, OVC and partners in regional 

seminars and meetings, and work with selected 

stakeholders, NGOs and CBOs to build their 

capacity through in-service training and participatory 

workshops to enable them to provide 

the best possible care and support for OVC. 

Promote access to quality care and support: 

We will continue to support “Full School 

Participation for OVC”. This includes providing 

assistance to communities and schools through 

NGOs and FBOs to ensure that OVC are cared 

for and have access to education. We will 

continue to support the development of the 

psychosocial curricula and training, which will 

empower caregivers to improve the overall wellbeing 

of OVC. 

Improve capacity for monitoring and 

evaluation: We will continue to support the 

national OVC monitoring and evaluating 

system to assist providers and recipients of OVC 

services to collect quantitative and qualitative 

information. This information will be used to 

improve OVC services and strengthen communities 

in caring for OVC. 

We believe that this year’s conference will build 

on the successes of last year’s conference, and 

FHI and USAID are proud to have been partners 

in the development of the national OVC 

programme to ensure the future of the children 

of Namibia. Thank you. 

In thanking Ms De Buysscher, Ms Hiveluah 

noted that it is gratifying to hear what FHI will 

continue to do, most specifically in terms of 

building capacity. 

One of the handouts in the conference pack was 

this compilation of essays by young Namibians, 

co-sponsored by FHI (see full list of handouts with 

publication details on p.79). 


35

Statement by 

Hon. Ms Netumbo 

Nandi-Ndaitwah 

Minister of Women Affairs 

and Child Welfare 

Director of Ceremonies, Honourable Minister Libertina Amathila, UNICEF Representative Ms 

Khin Sandi-Lwin, FHI Country Director Ms Rose De Buysscher, Members of the Diplomatic 

Corps, Honourable Governors and Councillors, Representatives of the UN System and other 

Partners, Dear Participants, and most of all, Dear Children present – 

First of all I would like to thank all those who 

have participated in the preparation of this 

conference. You have done a good job; you have 

extended a tender hand and all your energy to 

assist Namibia’s children as required at this time. 

My congratulations for that! 

I would like to welcome everyone and thank 

you all for making the effort to join this forum 

once again to deal with the critical question of 

OVC in our society. 

Long gone are the days when orphans were 

few and they received all the attention they 

needed from their extended families and 

communities. In those days the members of a 

family caring for an orphan made sure that the 

child had maximum protection and love, 

because it was understood that they had already 

suffered and grieved enough, and that they did 

not need to be reminded of that. Orphaned 

children in all our cultures were viewed as children 

of God whose faith was decided by God, 

and all believed that only He could look upon 

them; no one dared to deny them the protection 

they needed. In those days, orphans were raised 

by aunts and uncles who never distinguished 

between the orphan, their own children, cousins 

and even strange children they were raising in 

the same household. Nobody maltreated an 

orphan because society regarded such conduct 

as taboo and against God’s will. 

Life changed with the introduction of the 

European model of the nucleur family, according 

to which extended family members are 

strangers. This system has robbed us of affection 

for our extended family members, and it has 

made us selfish, but in most cases we do not 

want to admit that we are destroying intrinsic 

moral values that make us human beings. It is 

very disappointing that our traditional family 

relationships are dying out so fast. True, we can 

understand that economic systems characterised 

by modern types of exchange of goods for 

money are responsible for the changes in our 

cultural patterns, but it is unfortunate that good, 

helpful and humane norms should give way to 

attitudes that are discriminatory in nature – 

whatever the cause. Our nations ought to be 

building on the foundations of love, caring and 

spiritual consciousness, which should awaken 

in us in times of need. 

Namibia faces an enormous burden of 

orphaned children, despite our relatively small 

population. The situation is aggravated when 

children of just a day or so old are left without a 

biological parent. Extended families have been 

trying their best, but those who are poor themselves, 

given the number of orphans left in their 

care, are struggling. The common grandmothergrandchild 

system especially should be commended: 

grandmothers still do their best to raise 

their grandchildren even in the face of severe 

drought. This is encouraging for as long as they 

are alive, but then what? Our orphan population 

has grown to such proportions that accommodating 

these children is a burden in addition to 

that of accommodating existing family members. 


Namibia’s resource distribution is skewed, and 

some people, particularly women, are at the 

bottom of the poverty ladder, yet they are the 

ones caring for orphans on a meagre pension 

or grant and with scanty harvests. The little ones 

end up malnourished or even die from a lack 

of food. Some children are orphaned when they 

are very small and in need of extensive care 

and perhaps medical attention, and these are 

things that especially elderly caregivers cannot 

afford, even if they are willing to care for their 

grandchildren. 

One reason for the severity of the situation 

is that most parents who die, especially those 

who die from HIV/AIDS, do not leave anything 

for their children to survive on because they 

may not have earned enough to put funds 

aside, or if they had earned enough to put funds 

aside, they might have needed those funds for 

medical treatment and food – AIDS being so 

devastating an illness that people are usually 

forced to spend their savings on essentials and 

anything else they can afford that might help 

them to feel better. 

Insurance companies have a key role to play 

in this context. After families have paid 

premiums through the nose for life, many are 

never paid out. So, in many cases the suffering 

of the children is not due to uncaring parents, 

but to an uncaring society with injustice 

permeating its institutions. One turns to thinking 

that insurance institutions are out to cheat people 

if, for all the years a person is paying it is good 

for them to accept the money, but when a claim 

is made it is no longer that person’s money 

because the person died of HIV/AIDS and thus 

forfeits the policy. If insurance companies feel 

that they do not want to lose, why do they not 

pay just a percentage of the whole amount in 

view of the fact that a person has contributed 

to a policy for many years? How come clients 

become criminals who have no say in their own 

savings? After all, they had no control over death. 

Presumably human beings – who will also die 

and claim similar entitlements – make these 

policies. I was of the belief that these insurance 

arrangements were made to make the lives of 

dependants easier after a caretaker dies. Now 

that so many Namibians and Africans in general 

are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, there will 

be no need for insurance policies since people 

would be working only to enrich these institutions 

while they die in poverty with their children 

left to become beggars in the streets and therefore 

to suffer for the rest of their lives. Even more 

disturbing is the fact that few insurance companies 

contribute anything to the welfare of 

orphans and other children living in difficult 

circumstances. Perhaps as partners in this cause 

we should attempt to develop a dialogue with 

insurance companies with the aim of changing 

their attitude and leading them to understand 

that when a person takes out a policy, it is not 

for that person’s own benefit but for the benefit 

of those who will survive that person, and the 

children are suffering. If the attitude of insurance 

companies does not change, we will inevitably 

see the numbers of street children and other 

vulnerable children increase, not least because 

the institutions we have are going to be overwhelmed. 

The last conference on OVC recommended 

that a few important strategies and mechanisms 

should be developed, e.g. policy, responsive 

and effective care services, advocacy among 

stakeholders and effective monitoring and 

evaluation. I hope we will speed up this process 

and put the machine in motion before the end 

of this year. These strategies and mechanisms 

will aid us in planning for and directing the 

activities undertaken for the welfare of our 

children who have fallen prey to unfortunate 

situations beyond their control. 

It is the goal of the Government of Namibia 

and particularly the MWACW to improve the 

situation of orphans and other children living in 

difficult circumstances in our country. This conference 

is very important to us in the MWACW 

for two primary reasons. Firstly, it enables us to 

identify our partners in child welfare. As the 

ministry now taking over responsibility for child 

welfare we do not yet know our partners and 

we need to know them. Secondly, this conference 

signifies the full transfer of the child welfare 

function to the MWACW. Allow me, therefore, 

to congratulate and thank my senior and mentor, 

Dr Libertina Amathila, Minister of Health and 

Social Services, for her continued effort for the 

welfare of children. Dr Amathila did not begin 

this effort in 1990 when independence came; 


37

she began taking care of Namibian children long 

before independence. Those participants who 

lived in exile will remember her work in Angola, 

where we knew her as “Meme Libertina who 

cares for the children”. 

I also congratulate with appreciation all those 

who have been dealing with the child welfare 

function, and especially the MoHSS staff headed 

by Petronella Masabane, Deputy Director of 

Social Welfare Services, for their very hard work 

and commitment to the plight of Namibian 

children. 

The MWACW will not start anything new, 

but will build on the work already done, and we 

will definitely call on you, the DDSWS, to tap 

your rich knowledge. The MoHSS will be one of 

our main partners in carrying out our mandate. 

It will continue to be a member of the OVCNSC 

and hopefully to serve on its sub-committees. 

Director of Ceremonies, there have been 

rumours that the MWACW does not have the 

capacity to carry out the child welfare function. 

Those holding such views do not understand 

how the Government of Namibia works. The 

decisions of our Cabinet are supported by all 

Cabinet members, and the description and 

objective of the MWACW as adopted by the 

Cabinet are as follows: 

To oversee all Government policies and 

operations in regard to women’s affairs 

and child welfare to ensure that the 

objectives are achieved and policies are 

properly implemented. ... To review 

policy and suggest and/or approve and 

make public the Government’s policies 

and guidelines in the above-mentioned 

areas. 

This means that the full Cabinet is behind this 

ministry in fulfilling its functions. As the ministry 

responsible for child welfare we welcome all 

initiatives aimed at enhancing the care and 

protection of children. However, we want coordination; 

we must not work in isolation but in 

partnership, complementing each other. Dealing 

with children is a complex matter and mistakes 

may have far-reaching repercussions. 

The MWACW has set up a secretariat to 

continue running the <strong>National</strong> Programme for 

Children previously resorting under the <strong>National</strong> 

Planning Commission, this being one of the 

functions of government that the MWACW has 

inherited. We consider this to be the ‘mother’ of 

all programmes we have to run, because whether 

children are orphaned or vulnerable or not, they 

are Namibian children. The same secretariat will 

serve the national programme for OVC, the 

OVCNSC and its sub-committees, i.e. the Sub- 

Committee on OVC, Sub-Committee on ECD 

and Sub-Committee on Child Development. 

It goes without saying that it is our moral 

responsibility as individuals, communities and 

public and private institutions to ensure that 

every child in this country is cared for unconditionally; 

we have a duty to provide support in 

whatever way we can. We must remember that 

they have no country but Namibia, and only 

Namibians should feel guilty for leaving them 

vulnerable to dangerous circumstances. It would 

be immoral to watch these children suffering 

while others swim in wealth. We have to strive 

to give life to them because they are human 

beings. These children need to go to school, 

and they have all the same needs in life as any 

other child. They need to be cared for, and they 

must not be pushed into institutions where care 

may be faceless, but rather placed in family 

homes where they can be exposed to and learn 

culture and home care and develop into healthy, 

productive, responsible adult members of 

society. A neglected child cannot be expected 

to take on social, political or cultural responsibility. 

Education is key, and our Government 

recognises this. 

I hope your discussions at this conference 

raise pertinent issues and lead us to solutions 

to problems facing the nation in respect of OVC. 

We are expecting this conference to come up 

with realistic recommendations. It has become 

fashionable at such gatherings to use a lot of 

words used in this or that document when one 

knows deep in one’s heart that something is not 

practical in one’s own situation. We cannot afford 

to play around with words when the fate of our 

children is at stake. I hope we are ready to face 

the challenges and ensure a better future for all 

our children. 

With these few words I wish you all the best 

in your deliberations. I thank you. 


Ms Kovambo Nujoma 

Keynote address, 

official opening 

statement and launch 

of study on orphans 

by the First Lady, 

Ms Kovambo Nujoma, 

OVC Patron 

Read by 

Hon. Dr Libertina Amathila, 

Minister of Health and Social Services 

Director of Ceremonies, Hon. Minister Nandi-Ndaitwah, Honourable Members of Cabinet 

and Parliament, Members of UN Agencies and the Diplomatic Corps, Distinguished Invited 

Guests, Development Partners, Ladies and Gentlemen, Children – 

I am honoured to have been asked to deliver 

the opening statement to this august gathering, 

the <strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on OVC. 

I am indeed pleased to perform three main 

tasks: open the conference, launch the study on 

orphans and host the conference reception. 

Unfortunately my health does not permit me to 

be with you today, but I assure you that my heart 

and soul are with you. I have asked Dr Amathila 

to deliver the statement, launch the study and 

host the reception on my behalf. 

Last year you came together for the first time 

to discuss what is now an even bigger problem: 

OVC. From the study on orphans included in 

the conference handout pack we learn that at 

the end of 2001 we had an orphan population 

of 82 671, this number representing all children 

who have lost one or both of their parents. Of 

that number, 40% are estimated to have lost one 

or both parents due to AIDS. These figures are 

just too overwhelming, and these are not just 

statistics; these are our children, the children of 

Namibia, our future. 

I am often referred to as the Mother of the 

Nation, but I am sure you will agree that no 

mother would be able to cope with all these 

children in need, and that is why you are here, 

Dr Libertina Amathila 

and why I am relying on you to help me in this 

endeavour. 

We have made substantial progress during 

the past year in addressing the issue of OVC 

under the leadership of the <strong>National</strong> Steering 

Committee and in partnership with our 

development partners and other stakeholders. 

However, we can never be complacent, and 

this year’s conference will identify challenges 

we have to face, and determine how we should 

update our plans in developing services to 

ensure a good future for our OVC. 

I have looked in detail at the issues you will 

be debating and I would like to make a few 

comments. 

It is clear to me that we will find ourselves 

wanting if we do not have a policy on OVC to 

guide us in our work. The policy will highlight 

all the pertinent issues and serve as our tool in 

assisting you in the development of our plans 

and services. The policy will guide us towards 

achieving our goals. 

We will continue to make progress and help 

our children to avoid becoming street children. 

We must ensure that our children receive an 

education, health care, and material and 

emotional support. 


39

You are also debating the issue of who will 

care for our OVC. I know many people believe 

that placing children in institutions is the best 

option. If you consider the numbers I have just 

presented to you, you will be convinced that this 

is not a viable option. There is no better place 

in which to raise children than the home environment. 

Institutions have and will always have 

a role to play, but they can never be the solution 

to our problem. Studies have shown that some 

children in institutions have difficulty in forming 

and sustaining relationships, and some develop 

behavioural problems. Further, the costs of 

running institutions are extremely high and 

unsustainable. I believe that we must look for a 

variety of options for the care of our OVC. For 

example, we should encourage more fostering 

by families, adoption, and communities taking 

on responsibility for the care of OVC. We need 

to know who our OVC are and where to find 

them. Through your debate on registration I 

hope that you will come up with viable options. 

In identifying OVC we will also be identifying 

a number of needs, and it is important that the 

most appropriate forms of psychosocial support 

and services are available. One basic need is 

education, and we want to ensure that our OVC 

have access to quality education. If we have an 

uneducated population, what future will these 

OVC and our country have? 

You have important tasks ahead of you in 

the next two days and I wish you well in carrying 

them out. 

With these few remarks it is now my pleasure 

to officially declare the <strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> 

on OVC open, and simultaneously to launch 

the study on orphans. Finally, I invite you all to 

attend the reception following this opening 

ceremony. I thank you. 

Ms Ulitala Hiveluah, Permanent Secretary, MWACW 

H onourable Ministers, Honourable Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Young People – 

I thank you all for being present to witness the 

official opening of this important event in the 

life of Namibian children, most specifically OVC. 

I thank the donors who made it possible to 

hold this conference, specifically UNICEF, FHI 

and USAID. I wish to assure them that we will 

do our utmost to deliver as required. 

Vote of thanks 

The study on orphans, titled A Situation Analysis 

of Orphan Children in Namibia, was produced 

by the Social Impact Assessment and Policy 

Analysis Corporation (Pty) Ltd (SIAPAC) for the 

MoHSS and UNICEF Namibia. The report was 

included in the conference handout pack (see full 

handout list with publication details on p.79). 

I thank the facilitators of the working groups 

that will come up with recommendations, and I 

thank the OVCNSC for a job well done. 

These three days are crucial. When we leave 

here, let us be clear on how we will go about our 

work at the national, regional, local and village 

levels. Thank you. 


EXPERT PRESENTATIONS 

PRESENT TIONS 


Ms Rosina Mabakeng 

Deputy Director, Division Women/Family Development and Gender Mainstreaming, 

MWACW 

Rev. A.E. Biwa and Ms Rosina Mabakeng 

Day 2 of the conference opened with a devotion 

led by Rev. A.E. Biwa, Deputy Director of Developmental 

Social Welfare Services. Before the prayer 

Rev. Biwa read from the Book of James and related 

the reading to the role-players’ approach to their 

work for OVC. 

After the devotion social workers were reminded 

that their registration as professionals would expire 

on Friday 28 June, and they should re-register by 

then or they would no longer be able to practise 

as professionals. (Forms were provided.) 

OVC and Education: 

Summary of findings of study 

titled “Impacts of HIV/AIDS 

on Education in Namibia” 

Ms Claudia Tjikuua 

Chief Education Officer, MBESC 

Honourable Governors, Partners and Supporters in this worthy cause, Colleagues in fighting 

fires and crises and facing difficult challenges – 

Thank you for this opportunity to speak about OVC and Education – a topic that I know is very 

close to your hearts. However, I am mandated to talk only about the findings of a study on the 

education sector in Namibia carried out by Abt Associates South Africa Inc. for the MBESC and the 

Ministry of Higher Education, Training and Employment Creation (MHETEC). 

SLIDES 1-2: PRESENTATION TITLES 

It is impossible to convey the findings and recommendations in detail in the given time, so I will 

present only a summary of key findings and recommendations – mainly but not only regarding 

OVC. 


41

SLIDE 3: NUMBERS OF AIDS ORPHANS IN NAMIBIA 

(Orphans defined as children under 15 years who have lost their mother to AIDS) 

Commentary: The study projections 180,000 

make obvious the fact that we are 160,000 

facing a big challenge in the coming 140,000 

years. They show that in 2002 we 120,000 

have around 20 000 AIDS orphans 100,000 

alone. People may wonder why these 

80,000 

figures differ to those already given, 

and why they seem low. The answer 

is that we do not yet have a definition 

of OVC, and these figures are based 

on the definition given on the slide. 

60,000 

40,000 

20,000 

0 

1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 

Figures based on a definition including children up to 18 would thus be higher than these. Also, 

these figures pertain only to children orphaned by AIDS whereas others pertain to all orphans and 

other vulnerable children. What is important is that the figures are rising. By 2010 we will have 

140 000 AIDS orphans, or more than 10 times the number we have in 2002. These projections 

are therefore saying that we need to wake up if we have been sleeping. 

SLIDE 4: % OF CHILDREN WHO WILL BE ORPHANED BY AIDS BY AGE GROUP 

Commentary: The graph shows a 35% 

steady rise from 0% for all age groups 30% 

in 1995 to about 4% of all children in 25% 

the 0-4 group, 20% in the 5-9 group, 

±32% in the 10-14 group and ±13% 

in the 15-19 group in 2015. In 2002 

1-4% of children in each age group 

20% 

15% 

10% 

0-4 

'5-9 

'10-14 

15-19 

are AIDS orphans. Children in the 5- 

5% 

9 group are about to start school and 

small as their numbers are today, we 

are already at pains to ensure them 

0% 

access. Children in the 10-14 group are moving into a new growth phase without parents, and we 

are not ready to address their plight. It is gratifying that we are planning our strategies now, while 

the proportion of AIDS orphans in all age groups is still under 5%, so we will not be caught with our 

pants down, so to speak. 

1995 1995 

SLIDES 5-6: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS ON ORPHANED LEARNERS’ NEEDS 

1997 1997 

Learners’ needs have been divided into three categories: 

1. Economic 

Fees/levies, uniforms, materials; food, clothing and housing; transport; employment; time. 

Hunger a common cause of dropout and poor performance – on the part of both teachers 

and learners. 

2. Parenting/family structure 

Cared for by elderly, siblings or extended family; child roles in care and households change; 

siblings are separated; and all these lead to early marriage and motherhood. Forty percent of 

teachers reported being aware of child-headed households, 39% of Grade 10 learners reported 

caregiving and other household activities to cause them to be absent from school. 

All these things have implications for socialisation and nurturing. 

42 <strong>2nd</strong> <strong>National</strong> <strong>Conference</strong> on Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children – Windhoek, Namibia, 25-27 June 2002: Full Report 

1999 1999 

2001 2001 

2003 2003 

2005 2005 

2007 2007 

2009 2009 

2011 2011 

2013 2013

3. Psychosocial 

Normal stresses and grieving. 

Avoidance, teasing and neglect. 

Social isolation and discrimination. 

Behavioural disturbance and fatalism. 

Stigma, self-stigmatisation and abuse. 

Commentary: Regarding economic needs, the 

learners and teachers surveyed in ±148 schools 

across the country were most passionate in citing 

hunger as a common cause of dropout and poor 

performance. Even children whose school fees 

have been paid tend to drop out because they 

are hungry. The role-players must look at this. 

Regarding impacts in general, study respondents 

strongly emphasised that the impacts often begin 

before parents die. 

SLIDE 7: IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCA- 

TION QUALITY AND ACCESS 

1. Dropout and declining/delayed enrolment. 

29% of students and 11% of teachers 

identified orphanhood as an important 

reason for dropout. 

2. Erratic attendance – mentioned by most of 

the respondents. 

3. Declining performance – mentioned by 87% 

of the teachers interviewed. 

4. Ill-discipline – many children who have lost 

their parents do things to attract the attention 

they need. 

5. Transfers and other disruptions – moving to 

a new town, home environment and school, 

for example, can negatively affect a child’s 

well-being. 

6. Stress on peers and staff – leads to avoidance 

and neglect, and the cycle is repeated. 

7. Lower fee/levy income for schools? 

Commentary: Participants in this conference 

have raised the school fee/levy question with 

passion and despair, and many with anger. It is 

hard to believe that our traditional cultures have 

been eroded to such an extent that teachers 

hailing from the very same communities as the 

children are turning them away in the full knowledge 

that they have just buried a parent, and 

in many cases both parents. This tells us where 

our society is going. Policy will not change this. 

Having a policy and sending letters to schools 

as reminders is not sensitisation, but rather it is 

part of the overall training needed to change our 

attitudes. We should also bear in mind that after 

independence our education philosophy shifted 

away from a focus on pass rates to a focus on 

outcomes and competencies, but still principals, 

teachers and the community cling to the old way, 

with the result that schools are doing everything 

possible to find additional resources to ensure 

high pass rates rather than taking all measures 

possible to ensure positive outcomes and competencies. 

A child should be judged according to 

where she or he has come from and moved to 

through the school system in terms of outcomes 

and competencies, not pass rates, and schools 

and society at large must be made aware that a 

high pass rate is not the aim of education. If this 

is seen to be the aim, schools will feel pressurised 

and in turn they will pressurise children and their 

parents to pay fees for materials that will ensure 

a high pass rate and nothing more. This conference 

has to consider how we will change the 

attitudes of principals, teachers and the whole 

community. 

SLIDE 8: IMPLICATIONS OF ORPHAN- 

HOOD FOR EDUCATION 

1. Educators say orphanhood is a significant 

problem in schools. 

2. Similar needs already exist among children 

in areas with early or less severe HIV/AIDS 

epidemics.+ 

Household income and pre-existing 

barriers to enrolment and performance 

may be more dominant than orphan 

status per se. 

3. Material needs of OVC are seen as most 

pressing. 

Fees, hunger, need to work. 

4. Vulnerable children are at more risk of HIV 

infection. 

5. Uncertainties: 

Girls > boys? 

Older > younger learners? 

Long-term social and psychological 

effects 

Commentary: There were no additional points 

made on Slide 8. 


43

SLIDE 9: CURRENT RESPONSES TO THE 

PLIGHT OF OVC IN NAMIBIA 

1. Many non-education (NGO) initiatives but 

limited coverage and co-ordination. 

2. Very limited responses by schools. 

3. Problems are identified late as dropout, fee 

non-payment or “discipline” problems – 

“late” meaning a child has already left school 

when e.g. inability to pay fees is discovered. 

4. School system is highly dependent on the 

individuals caring for OVC, and on external 

motivation – from MBESC Head Office, 

NGOs etc. Schools themselves are still in 

denial. 

5. A range of responses is needed and feasible. 

6. Capacity of all role-players varies. 

Commentary: In formulating policy recommendations 

this conference must consider the 

range of responses needed to address these 

issues effectively and the role-players’ capacities 

in this effort. 

SLIDE 9A: QUOTATION 

“On the surface it may appear that their 

problems are as simple as inability to pay 

fees or discipline issues but you later 

discover that their problems have deeper 

roots.” – Social Worker, Rundu 

Commentary: The study report includes 

quotations from social workers in the different 

regions, which all reveal that they are passionate 

but despairing because they are overwhelmed 

by the problems facing them. The quotation on 

this slide is particularly relevant to the education 

sector at the moment. Before we can say that 

the children ought to be in school, we have to 

identify precisely what the problems are. 

SLIDE 10: PRIORITY FUNCTIONS TO 

PROTECT OVC EDUCATION: 

“The school as a multi-purpose development 

and welfare institution?” 

1. Keep children in school: 

Early recognition of vulnerability. 

Timely response to prevent problems; 

refer if necessary. 

Monitor well-being. 

2. Provide for basic needs and assistance 

before complex services. 

3. Enable dropouts to re-access education. 

Commentary: The study found that schools 

could act as multi-purpose development and 

welfare institutions and fulfil the functions 

outlined on the slide if we plan very carefully 

and provide the right training. 

SLIDES 11-13: RECOMMENDATIONS ON 

OVC 

1. Define responsibilities of the sector, education 

institutions and other partners. 

2. Develop systems to identify vulnerable 

learners. 

3. Develop a Circle of Support for each school. 

4. Enhance capacity within schools to provide 

and co-ordinate support through: 

Guidance and Counselling and class 

teachers; 

Cluster and Special Education Unit roles; 

and 

social worker integration into education. 

5. Expand school nutrition programmes. 

6. Consider creating an education fund for 

OVC education (e.g. small grants to schools 

which have enrolled a particular number of 

orphans). 

7. Increase school flexibility to respond to OVC 

circumstances through: 

inter-school referral, scheduling and 

rules; and 

hostel accommodation. 

8. Actively support the strengthening of social 

services capacity and efficiency. 

9. Involve learners in planning and responses. 

10. Mobilise resources for education sector 

initiatives. 

11. Develop and disseminate codes of conduct 

and guidelines. 

Commentary: The diagram of the Circle of 

Support may look complicated, but it is not. 

This is how it works: The child is at the centre 

of a large circle, and around him/her are all the 

stakeholders – 

the class teacher, who should be able to 

detect that a child has problems and to 

identify them; 


RACOC 

Regional 

Director 

PEER 

SUPPORT 

Donors, NGO’s 

Colleges of Education 

Principal 

HODs 

Administrators 

Auxillary staff 

HOSTEL 

SUPERINTENDENT 

RACE 

Regional HIV/AIDS Coordinator 

Regional Counselor (SEU) 

Inspectors 

POLICE 

AND 

LEGAL 

Legal Aid Centre 

CLASS 

TEACHER 

the hostel superintendent, who should also 

be able to detect and identify problems and 

liaise with the class teacher; 

the Guidance and Counselling teacher, who 

should liaise with the class teacher and hostel 

superintendent once the problem has been 

brought to this teacher’s attention; 

the social workers, who should be alerted 

by the above parties; 

peers, for whom the above parties should 

search to render support to the child; 

the police and legal assistance services in 

cases of abuse; 

NGOs and community organisations, who 

should be contacted for material and other 

support which the school cannot provide; 

and so on. 

If it is well planned and co-ordinated, and if the 

right training is given, this system would relieve 

the pressures on social workers . In practice only 

the most difficult situations would be referred 

to social workers because most problems could 

be solved at the school level. 

The provision of small grants to schools 

through the recommended OVC Fund would 

CHILD 

NGOs 

CIRCLE OF SUPPORT 

FOR VULNERABLE 

CHILDREN 

GUIDANCE & 

COUNSELING 

TEACHER 

COMMUNITY 

SOCIAL 

WORKERS 

Boards, 

Parents, 

Church, CBOs 

ECD 

HEALTH WORKERS 

Women & Child 

Protection Unit 

HBC team 

Social workers 

Counsellors 

Nurses 

relieve the pressure on schools to make up for 

the loss of school fees. Schools could use the 

small grants not only to cover the costs of equipment 

or materials, but also to provide direct 

support to OVC within the school system. This 

too is a measure that has to be very carefully 

planned and co-ordinated. 

A USAID-funded project for the education 

sector operating in the Ondangwa East and West, 

Katima and Rundu Education Regions, is an 

example of an initiative with a focus on bringing 

parents into the school system. The parents are 

involved in formulating the school development 

plan and prioritising aspects of this plan. One 

school that applied for a small grant to raise 

awareness on HIV/AIDS in the school used the 

funds to purchase information materials for an 

‘AIDS corner’ which learners as well as the 

parents and other community members also use 

to get the information they need, e.g. on homebased 

care. 

In conclusion, we believe that total commitment 

and proper co-ordination are essential for 

an effective response to the plight of OVC. Thank 

you. 


45

Questions and comments on Ms Tjikuua’s presentation 

The number of questions/comments was limited because on Day 3 one of the working groups would 

discuss the issues covered in this presentation in detail. Participants with other questions/comments 

were asked to forward them to the organisers for the group’s consideration. 

Comment: It is clear that many OVC do not 

have access to school because they are unable 

to contribute to the School Development Fund. 

We also know that numerous circulars have been 

sent out to schools requesting them to make 

provision for OVC, and that the Minister went 

to the newspapers and some directorates speak 

over the radio, e.g. in the Caprivi, but still school 

principals send children away. I would like to 

suggest the instatement of a grievance procedure 

and dissemination of information on this procedure 

to all communities so people know that they 

have these rights. It seems they do not know 

that there is help available in this regard. 

Response: The group could certainly consider 

this suggestion, however we do already have a 

charter for junior and secondary schools which 

outlines the procedures to follow where people 

experience problems. The charter also provides 

contact details for all parties tasked to deal with 

grievances. The new Education Act also includes 

a section on grievance procedures, and the new 

education policy has a section on OVC which 

also outlines the grievance procedures. We have 

the necessary policies and procedures, but the 

question is who should advocate these rules in 

the communities, bearing in mind that the 

schools themselves are the points of contact 

between the communities and education 

authorities and schools are failing to advocate 

them. The answer is that all the role-players 

should be doing this advocacy work since they 

are working with the parents and caregivers. The 

role-players are urged to acquire all these 

documents and arm the people with whom they 

work with the information they need to demand 

their right to the fee exemptions. This applies 

particularly to the NGOs, FBOs and CBOs as 

they have direct contact with parents and caregivers. 

Information could also be disseminated 

via adult literacy programmes. The OVCNSC 

will have to determine means to disseminate 

information as widely as possible. 

Comment (social worker, Walvis Bay): I 

would like to note that I feel very motivated to 

return to work having been informed of the Circle 

of Support option. In some of our communities 

we have seen principals, teachers and social 

workers become enemies over social workers’ 

efforts to help OVC. I have even been told that, 

“This is not a welfare school.” I strongly support 

the recommendation of establishing Circles of 

Support. 

Comment (Regional AIDS Co-ordinator for 

Hardap Region): Regarding Circles of Support 

I would like to recommend strongly that each 

region establishes a forum into which all roleplayers 

in the Circles of Support are incorporated 

so that the necessary co-ordination of services 

can be achieved. It would be difficult to coordinate 

without such a regional structure. 

Response: This is a point to consider. In some 

regions forums are already being initiated. 

Question: On paper Namibia has a wonderful 

constitution and wonderful laws, but we fall 

short on implementation. Is the Minister planning 

anything concrete to ensure that the policies 

and study recommendations are implemented 

quickly and effectively? 

Response: Implementation of several study 

recommendations has started. The education 

sector has a strategic plan for dealing with AIDS, 

and activities for orphans, and these generally 

tally with the recommendations except insofar 

as the education sector had not deemed itself 

responsible for providing material support, but 

only counselling. The officials responsible for 

implementing the strategy have been planning 

workshops around the OVC issue for teachers. 

Now that the study has recommended Circles of 

Support and a counselling function within these 

circles, we will have to readjust our strategy. The 

MBESC has also been reviewing the costs of the 

overall strategic plan to the ministry in view of 


equests for increments in the School Feeding 

Programme. We have also contracted a consultant 

to look at the overall training programme 

that people in the education sector need to be 

able to deal with OVC-related issues. However, 

since a lack of co-ordination is one of our biggest 

problems, we have to find a systematic way to 

deal with the issues and not just rush into doing 

things that will not work without co-ordination. 

It may seem as though we are moving too slowly, 

but we are not. 

Question: When will we be able to start using 

the Education Act? We are told that something 

still needs to be done before it comes into force. 

Response: The Minister and the Otjozondjupa 

Regional Governor launched the Act in Otjiwarongo 

at the beginning of the year. It is therefore 

already in force and the role-players can make 

use of it. Regulations on some sections have 

been drafted. 

Closing comment (session chairperson): 

Co-ordinating the efforts of the role-players to 

solve the problems sounds easy, but there are 

always problems in co-ordinating efforts in any 

sector, and it seems that we need to acquire a 

particular set of skills to be able to co-ordinate. 

Let us examine the idea of ‘co-ordination’ and 

determine how best to co-ordinate our efforts. 

Overview of the 

West and Central Africa 

Regional Workshop on OVC in 

Yamoussoukro, Cote d’Ivoire, 

in April 2002 

Mr Stanley Phiri, 

OVC Regional Advisor for East, Southern, West and Central Africa and Global, 

UNICEF Regional Office, Nairobi 

I 

bring greetings from Kenya, and I thank you 

for the invitation to participate in this 

conference. 

I will begin by explaining why we want to 

present an overview of the West Africa workshop 

at a national conference in Namibia. Why 

should it interest you? 

I think this overview will give us three things: 

acknowledgement, affirmation, and recognition 

– that what we are doing is not just necessary 

but critical; that the issues confronting you are 

not peculiar to Namibia or Southern Africa, but 

that West and Central Africa and the whole of 

sub-Saharan Africa face the same issues; that 

some of our mistakes have been made by others 

and we can learn how to avoid making the same 

mistakes; and that in spite of feeling inundated 

with challenges, in the bigger (continental) 

picture, Namibia has gone quite far in doing 

things that you can be proud of. At the same 

time there is a big chunk of the problem that 

Namibia has yet to chew on, so to speak. All 

countries in Africa are dealing with the question 

of partnerships and co-ordination, and indeed 

this is a difficult question. We must be very clear 

about why we are co-ordinating – co-ordinating 

for what, for whom, and how? When we are 

clear about these things, co-ordination becomes 

more manageable. 

SLIDE 1: PRESENTATION TITLE 

SLIDE 2: PARTICIPANTS 

First regional conference on OVC. 

Over 100 delegates from 21 countries in the 

West and Central African Region (WCAR) 


47

First Ladies of Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Benin 

and Senegal attended the closing session. 

First Ladies made a strong call for: 

stronger partnerships; 

more sharing of information; 

a greater emphasis on satisfying children’s 

basic needs; and 

bringing national legislation in line with 

the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

Commentary: The presence of the First Ladies 

underscored the importance of the conference, 

but all senior government officials were there, 

including ministers, permanent secretaries and 

director-generals, and we also had very senior 

representation from the religious communities 

and children themselves – as you have here. 

SLIDE 3: WORKSHOP GOAL 

To build the capacity and commitment of 

governments, civil society and other partners 

in 24 WCAR countries to fulfil the specific 

commitments made by each country at the 

UNGASS goals on OVC. 

SLIDES 4-5: SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES 

Use session as catalyst for setting up multisectoral 

OVC task teams in each country. 

Provide mechanism for collating and sharing 

information on OVC challenges. 

Determine current level of response in the 

WCAR – what each country is doing and 

how it is working. 

Promote understanding among task teams 

of dynamics of OVC challenges. 

Regional and global actors to consider 

mechanisms and strengthen advocacy at all 

levels. 

Mobilise responses to and resources for OVC 

among governments, donors, civil society 

and media – financial, technical, time etc. 

Challenges of effective going-to-scale with 

OVC programming – not just in terms of 

numbers but in terms of quality. 

SLIDE 6: PROCESS AND OUTPUTS 

Process: 

Setting up of country-specific multi-sectoral 

OVC Task Team before the workshop. 

Complete assignment of collating country 

information on OVC. 

Outputs: 

Development of action plan by every 

country delegation. 

Inventory of action and resources needed at 

all levels to support country action plans. 

Commentary: About four months prior to the 

workshop each country was asked to form a task 

team of 4-6 members to gather, collate and 

present country information on OVC at the 

workshop, and then to come up with an action 

plan in the light of the findings in their respective 

countries and go back and implement the plan. 

SLIDES 7-8: KEY ISSUES ADDRESSED 

BY KEYNOTE SPEAKERS 

(The keynote speakers included the First Ladies 

and the UN Special Representative on HIV/AIDS, 

Mr Stephen Lewis.) 

In a number of countries in the next few 

years, 20-40% of the child population will 

be orphans. 

How do you plan and budget for this? How 

do you fashion social and economic policy? 

It is noted that the extended family is still 

the best source of care for orphans, but it is 

stressed and overwhelmed, and how do we 

reinforce what exists, stabilise it, strengthen 

and sustain it? 

Good progress in addressing prevention, 

treatment and care. 

But our greatest weakness lies in dealing with 

OVC. 

Every country in Africa save one has ratified 

the CRC. 

CRC demands that primary education be free 

and universal; we need a continent-wide 

campaign to abolish school fees. 

Civil society, including CBOs, NGOs and 

FBOs, are part of the fabric of state – key 

partners. 

Still face challenge of getting resources right 

down to community level. 

Commentary: It will be important to anchor 

our discussions here to some of the key issues 

addressed in West Africa. For example, with 

regard to planning and budgeting, the impor- 


tance of proper co-ordination can never be overemphasised. 

Further, we keep saying that the 

extended family has disintegrated, but it hasn’t 

and it never will. These are the people still caring 

for orphans. We find very very few orphans in 

institutions, so where are the 2 million in Uganda, 

the 1 million in Zambia, the 800 000 in Malawi, 

the 1,3 million in Zimbabwe ... if not with the 

extended families? The extended family merely 

faces a lot of stress. It is to extended families that 

we need to direct resources, and this is where 

the challenge lies. How do we direct resources 

to where they are needed in the communities 

and households? 

SLIDES 9-12: CRITICAL POINTS RAISED 

IN COUNTRY PRESENTATIONS 

The extended family remains the first and 

most effective safety net for OVC, but it is 

increasingly overburdened. 

Identifying children orphaned by AIDS is 

extremely difficult, and the value of this is 

unclear – it could increase stigmatisation. 

Not all orphans are vulnerable; some nonorphans 

are very vulnerable. 

Children’s vulnerability begins when their 

parents are ill. 

Lack legislative framework to protect OVC 

or institutional grounding for interventions 

for OVC. 

Each country needs to develop a strategic 

plan. 

Free access to education and health-care 

services must be assured for OVC. 

We need to train teachers so they know how 

to deal with HIV/AIDS-affected children. 

We need to work collaboratively in networks 

– exchanging information makes all the 

difference. 

Traditional and customary law issues (e.g. 

early girl child marriage) complicate the 

definition issue. 

Should we have specific programmes for 

orphans, or complementary programmes for 

OVC? 

What are the appropriate roles for institutional 

care (orphanages)? 

OVC themselves must be part of the 

response. 

Governments, communities, CBOs, NGOs, 

FBOs and private sectors have different roles 

to play in a scaled response. 

Policies and legislation relating to children 

are contradictory, outdated and inconsistent, 

and they do not cover new threats to children 

affected by HIV/AIDS. 

Little effective implementation, limited 

sanctions for contravening, and no monitoring 

systems. 

Harmonisation of national policy and 

legislation with international treaties and 

conventions. 

Harmonisation and consolidation of existing 

policies and legislation within each country. 

Monitoring system to oversee implementation 

and compliance. 

Commentary: The issue of identifying orphans 

is being considered in Namibia. The role-players 

should bear in mind that apart from the stigmatisation 

this could encourage, it could also 

marginalise other children who feel left out. In 

this regard it is also extremely difficult to identify 

QUOTATIONS FROM PRESENTATIONS TO THE REGIONAL WORKSHOP 

(ADDITIONAL SLIDE) 

Children prefer to stay together (with their siblings) and live without an adult rather than 

be separated and live with adults. – Côte d’Ivoire 

Kids want to know their parents’ status so they can care for their parents, so they can 

prepare for later … . – Côte d’Ivoire 

Donors make use of terms that we would rather not use, but we have to use these terms to 

get the funds. When we go to the communities we do not use the term “AIDS orphans” ... . 

– Burkina Faso 


49

which orphans are vulnerable and which are 

not, and which non-orphans are vulnerable. On 

the lack of a legislative framework to protect 

OVC, though we have a plethora of policies 

and legislative instruments, for the most part 

there is no implementation; for the most part 

the management of policy implementation falls 

far short of what is desirable. Regarding 

traditions and customs, we need to retain the 

positive ones and revisit those that are supposed 

to protect women and children, but which for 

some reason powerful traditional elites have 

circumvented to allow people to get away with 

injustices. We have to look at what is positive 

and negative about our traditions and ask 

ourselves whether we need to be dynamic and 

change negative traditions in the interest of our 

children. The question of whether there should 

be specific programmes for orphans or complementary 

programmes for OVC also relates to the 

orphan identification question. 

SLIDE 13: WORKSHOP COMMITMENTS 

In order for OVC to have access to quality basic 

services, delegates proposed advocating that all 

countries do the following: 

Provide free education to primary school 

level, especially for OVC. 

Provide hostel facilities for primary and 

secondary schools to accommodate OVC. 

Provide free primary health care for OVC. 

Expand and support these facilities. 

Provide technical and financial support to 

families, communities and institutions responsible 

for OVC care and support; support 

associations and NGOs which facilitate 

revenue-generating activities for the benefit 

of OVC. 

Support a national situation analysis, strategic 

plan of action and review of legislation 

for OVC; identify the most cost-effective 

strategies for care and support of OVC. 

Advocate for protection of children’s rights; 

undertake legislative, political and institutional 

reform. 

Increase efforts to identify OVC in rural and 

urban areas. 

Develop new types of partnership between 

the state, NGOs, CBOs, FBOs, development 

agencies, families and communities. 

Put in place an effective system for monitoring 

and evaluation. 

Commentary: We hope that the commitments 

made at the end of the workshop by the country 

delegations, the First Ladies, the governments 

and the donors will be translated into action. I 

think the biggest challenge facing us in Africa is 

that we make all these commitments and recommendations 

when we have yet to formulate or 

implement our action plans and be held accountable 

for this task. Furthermore, we undertake 

situational analyses and draw up strategic plans, 

but we do not plan for scale and we have to do 

so from now on. The “new types” of partnership 

envisaged involve an agreed-upon action 

plan and a clear vision, clear responsibilities and 

equality. The OVC problem can never be solved 

without partnerships. Namibia could consider 

bringing in a consultant to tell the stakeholders 

how to develop strategic partnerships (as opposed 

to the ‘business-as-usual’ type) that befit 

the new way of thinking. 

Questions and comments on Mr Phiri’s presentation 

The chairperson thanked Mr Phiri for an excellent presentation and said it would greatly assist the 

working groups. Since the groups would be considering many of the issues raised in the presentation, 

the number of questions/comments was limited. 

Question: The regional workshop found little 

value in identifying AIDS orphans. Did it make 

any recommendations or statements about current 

practices in registering either AIDS orphans 

or OVC as we are debating doing here? 

Response: The workshop debated at length 

the issue of identifying AIDS orphans as such. 

The debate centred on the question of whether 

or not it is ethical to go out – with government 

and other partners – to count the children and 


then not deliver. The other consideration was 

that the women and others in the communities 

who care for these children already know who 

they are and are already doing something for 

them, and if we as external agents go out and 

count them, we will raise expectations and we 

will be saying that now there is going to be a 

whole new way of dealing with the children they 

are most worried about. On the other hand, as 

governments and development partners at the 

national level we need to plan and target our 

resources efficiently and effectively. My personal 

opinion is that there are two sides to the argument: 

there is a programme-related definition 

and a policy-related definition whereby government 

is mobilising resources with its partners to 

target the most-affected areas in geographical 

terms. But when it comes to implementation, 

the principal is that the communities and households 

are the frontline of response, and they must 

define who they are most worried about; they 

must determine which children (not orphans) 

they want to take care of. Invariably orphans 

will be among the children they are most worried 

about. The debate was never concluded so there 

was no recommendation, but the issue certainly 

was debated and is or has been debated in all 

the African countries I have visited recenly. 

Question: In Namibia we are focusing on OVC 

who are or should be in primary or secondary 

school. Did the regional workshop discuss the 

future of OVC beyond secondary school, since 

many OVC would want tertiary education? I 

realise that they may no longer be regarded as 

‘children’, but they are still vulnerable and in 

need of additional support. 

Response: I am glad this question has come 

up. There was a long debate on who is a ‘child’, 

part of which related to customs prevailing in 

some countries where girls as young as 11 or 

12 are married off to young boys of 17 or 18, 

the question being whether or not they can still 

be regarded as ‘children’. There was a discussion 

on what happens in the case of people over 18 

years of age who are no longer ‘children’ and 

who want to take up tertiary studies. There was 

no consensus as most people felt that this should 

be dealt with on a case-by-case basis rather than 

have a specific programme serving people over 

18 or any hard-and-fast rule that we respond 

only to people under 18. The response has to 

be contextualised and flexible. 

Comment (Rosa Namises, Namibian MP): 

I would like to pick up on three points made in 

the presentation: (1) On “free” primary health 

care and “free” primary education, I think there 

is a need for us to go deeper in defining what 

we mean by “free”. Do we mean that a person 

will get free advice but must still pay e.g. N$15 

when she goes to the clinic? The expenses that 

accompany “free” primary health care and “free” 

primary education mean that people do not see 

these services to be free, so what exactly do we 

mean by this word? (2) On identifying AIDS 

orphans or OVC, the regional workshop agreed 

that the communities should define their role and 

identify the children themselves, but I believe it 

is also important to have records or information 

emanating from the ground on how communities 

are dealing with OVC. We are missing this 

crucial information in Namibia. At grassroots 

level people have started working with the OVC 

issue but their work is not being recorded any– 

where and we do not know what they are doing. 

This information would help us to come up with 

appropriate inputs. (3) On new types of strategic 

partnership, a big concern is that we do not yet 

have a framework for NGOs, CBOs, FBOs and 

the Government to work together. What kinds 

of agreements are there? How exactly do we 

work together? Further, adding to what Mr Phiri 

said, there should be a recognition of each partner’s 

capabilities – and perhaps an agreement 

should be in place to this effect – because there 

are tremendous skills and capabilities within the 

communities and CBOs, FBOs and NGOs which 

are not revealing themselves so that higher-level 

agents like the Government can recognise them. 

We should also consider drawing up terms of 

reference for each partner so that we can check 

each other to ensure that we are all still on track 

and criticise where necessary. 


51

VIDEO SCREENING 

Rays of Hope: 

Women’s Struggles to Care for the Orphans in Uganda 

The morning session of Day 2 closed with a video on Uganda’s experience in addressing the OVC issue. 

Prior to the screening UNICEF Regional OVC Advisor Ms Pelucy Nfambirweki (a Ugandan national) 

provided some background information as recorded below. (Circumstances did not allow for copies of 

this video to be distributed at the conference.) 

Video cover blurb 

This is a story of positive development and hope; a story 

of a remarkable collection of women and their achievements 

over the last 15 years in fulfillment of the rights of 

orphaned children. 

Initially a response to the alarming number of destitute 

orphans of the war, post-war insurgency and HIV/AIDSrelated 

mortality escalated the crisis thus creating more 

need for deliberate interventions. The building of alliances 

and increase in outreach and capacity have developed the 

Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) into 

a formidable safety network. 

The UWESO model of community-based approaches 

to mitigating the socio-economic impact of HIV/AIDS has 

brought “rays of hope” for this future generation, their 

grandmothers and entire society. The experiences of these 

people, brought from situations of hopelessness to levels 

of confidence where they are eagerly looking out to a bright 

future, are enormous. 

Production facilitated by UNICEF. Co-facilitators: Embassy of Belgium, IFAD, UWESO, USAID. 

A production of Media Forum, 2001. Duration 30 minutes. 

Additional background given by Ms Pelucy Nfambirweki 

Rays of Hope tells the story of how Uganda is grappling with its orphan population of over two 

million. It addresses the very same issues being addressed in this conference. 

Uganda is one of the few countries in the world that has seen a decline in the HIV infection rate 

– from 35% in 1990 to 6% in 2002. This confirms that there is hope for us to fight the epidemic, 

and to reach out to the children and improve their lives. Initially we were panicking because the 

numbers were big – Uganda having experienced turmoil due to war and armed conflict, which was 

heightened by HIV/AIDS. We then realised that to fight the epidemic, we had to fight poverty, and 

the bulk of this video shows how grandmothers are coping with looking after 10 or more orphans 

(35 in one case) and what we can learn from them. One thing we learn is that institutionalisation in 

an orphanage in Uganda which catered for only 50 children cost five times more than it costs for 

100 000 children to be cared for by a sister, brother or grandmother. Having realised this, we also 

realised that meetings, workshops and seminars do not bring food or caregivers to the table. 

After lunch the plenary split into five working groups to formulate recommendations on different 

aspects of the national OVC programme. The group work continued for the remainder of Day 2. 


OVC VC LOGO AND DEFINITION 


Ms Petronella Masabane 

Deputy Director of Social Welfare Services, DDSWS, MoHSS 

Day 3 of the conference opened with a devotion led by Rev. Roy Wallace 

of Gospel Outreach, who read from Hebrews Chapter 13 Verse 21. 

In introducing the programme for the day Ms Masabane remarked 

that this was the most important day of the conference because it was the 

day on which the stakeholders would determine the issues and activities 

that would keep them busy until the next conference in 2003. 

Before the working groups reported back the participants had to reach 

a decision on the new OVC logo proposed by the OVCNSC and the definition 

of OVC proposed by the committee of four volunteers who had worked on 

refining the OVCNSC definition presented on Day 1. 

Ms Masabane proceeded to give the following background information 

about the logo. 

Adoption of new OVC logo 

The OVCNSC had decided to change the logo used in 2001 (below top) because the members 

agreed that a more corporate or professional-looking logo would be more appropriate. A graphic 

designer was commissioned, and the logo used for all the conference materials (below bottom) 

was the logo proposed for adoption as the ‘trademark’ for all written materials or activities having 

to do with OVC in Namibia. 

There was a long and very lively discussion on the proposed logo, 

with several counter-proposals put forward. Some people felt that the 

participants should state their preferences on the conference evaluation 

form for the new OVCNSC’s consideration and decision, to be reported 

back as soon as possible, but it was agreed that it would not be possible 

to satisfy everybody and since the stakeholders would not gather again 

in one place for some time, a decision should be reached now. The 

following options were put to the vote by a show of hands, option 2 

being preferred by the vast majority: 

1. The proposed logo unchanged (0 votes) 

2. The proposed logo with the word Namibia added (94) 

3. The proposed logo with more than one child in the hand (0) 

4. The proposed logo with two hands (0) 

5. The 2001 logo with the word Namibia added (22) 

(Another counter-proposal was to add a map of Namibia to the 

new logo but it was immediately agreed that the word would suffice.) 


53

Adoption of definition of OVC 

Ms Masabane called on volunteer committee member Doris Roos of UNICEF to report back on the 

refined definition of OVC. The other members were Lucy Steinitz of CAA, Spendu Onesmus of the 

MWACW and Pelucy Nfambirweki from the UNICEF Regional Office. 

OVCNSC definition proposed on Day 1 

OVC are children up to the age of 18 whose mother, father or both parents have died; are 

affected by HIV/AIDS; are in need of care including those disadvantaged, in conflict with 

the law, subject to abuse and violence. 

Refined definition proposed on Day 3 

An OVC in Namibia is a child under the age of 18 whose mother, father or both parents or 

primary caregiver has died, and is in need of care and protection. 

Explanatory notes on the refined definition 

1. This definition encompasses children who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS and 

others. 

2. Access to OVC-related services may be extended to the age of 21 for children who are 

still attending secondary school. 

3. Eligibility for social and economic assistance requires a separate assessment. 

Definition adopted (plenary amendments appear in italics) 

An OVC in Namibia is a child under the age of 18 whose mother, father or both parents or 

primary caregiver has died, and/or who is in need of care and protection. 

Summary of plenary discussion on the definition 

T here was a very long discussion – mainly on the question of comprehensiveness. Some 

participants felt that the proposed definition was clear on orphanhood but not on vulnerability, 

and that it did not cater adequately for vulnerability. Many counter-proposals were put forward. It 

was eventually agreed that the amendment “and/or who is in need ...” would suffice to cover all 

vulnerable children rather than just orphans, and it implies that not every orphan is in need of care 

and protection. It is also gramatically correct. The participants also agreed to retain the singular 

rather than phrase the definition in the plural – “OVC in Namibia are children whose ... “. 

Some key points made were that: a child in need of care and protection is by definition vulnerable; 

definitions of vulnerability can be found in many national and international documents, the OVC 

policy document will spell out what is meant by these terms and explanatory notes on the definition 

could elaborate on the terminology; the definition must be easy for people who are not English 

speakers to understand; and the amended definition ties in well with the draft children’s legislation, 

e.g. with regard to the age range 0 to under 18. 

There was a motion to adopt the refined definition as amended, and another to let the new 

OVCNSC consider the views expressed and work on the definition. It was agreed that consensus 

should be reached now, and the conference adopted the refined definition as amended. 


WORKING GROUP SESSIONS 

Session chairperson: Ms Petronella Masabane 

The working groups deliberated on Day 2 from 2pm till the end of the day. The report-back session 

and plenary discussion on the group work took up most of Day 3. The following background information 

has been reproduced almost verbatim from last year’s report as the session procedures and instructions 

to the groups were almost identical. 

Group registration: The group topics and registration lists were displayed outside the hall from the start 

of the conference. The participants were asked to select the session to which they felt they could best 

contribute and add their name to the appropriate list. There should be no more than 50 people per group. 

(Too many people opted for Group 2 tasked to look at the care setting for OVC, and too few opted for 

Group 3 tasked to review the OVC policy, so some Group 2 registrants were askeded to shift to Group 3.) 

Group instructions: The group session topics and objectives (see next page) reflected the conference 

objectives . They were designed to enable the participants to debate information given to them, identify 

gaps, and devise one key strategy and recommendations for implementing it. By the end of the day 

the groups had to submit to the chairperson a write-up of their key strategy and four prioritised recommendations. 

The conference would adopt these (as amended by the plenary) and the OVCNSC would 

implement them. Each group would have 2-3 facilitators to guide the discussion. Each also had to elect 

one person from Windhoek and one from the regions to serve on the new OVCNSC to be elected at the 

end of the day. The participants were asked to participate fully. Those in large delegations were asked 

to spread themselves out in order to share their knowledge and experience more widely. The five groups 

were assigned separate breakaway rooms in the conference centre. 

Working groups and sub-groups in session 


55

OBJECTIVES SET FOR THE WORKING GROUPS 

GROUP 1: Identify the psychosocial (PSS) needs of OVC 

Facilitated by Philippi Trust 

By the end of the session the group will have identified the PSS needs of OVC by: 

identifying the factors that make OVC vulnerable and why they might require PSS; 

identifying the key issues in PSS care and support; 

identifying who is responsible for providing the PSS care and support to OVC; and 

identifying ways in which PSS can be implemented in the local community. 

GROUP 2: Identify the most suitable care setting for OVC 

Facilitated by the Early Childhood Development (C&ECD) Division of the MWACW 

By the end of the session the group will have identified the most appropriate care setting for OVC by: 

identifying the developmental needs of children in different age categories; 

identifying the benefits in providing care through a family-centred approach; 

identifying the problems associated with institutional care; and 

identifying strategies to ensure a family-centred approach for OVC. 

GROUP 3: Review the DRAFT <strong>National</strong> Policy on OVC 

Facilitated by Southern Consultants 

By the end of the session the participants will have updated and revised the draft OVC policy by: 

ensuring that it defines the current legislation giving protection and rights to OVC; 

ensuring that it outlines the material/physical needs of OVC; 

ensuring that it gives commitment to and the need for building knowledge and skills for providing PSS 

care; 

outlining the eligibility criteria for state assistance, implementation procedures and accountability 

measures; and 

ensuring that it outlines effective co-ordination, monitoring and evaluation methods. 

GROUP 4: Determine how and why Namibia should record its OVC and who should 

do this 

Facilitated by the DDSWS of the MoHSS 

By the end of the session participants will have: 

heard a presentation on the DDSWS Social Welfare Information System and the potential benefits of 

using such a system; 

debated the issue of local communities identifying and responding to their most vulnerable OVC 

versus an external request of OVC head counting; and 

devised strategies for mobilising communities in identifying their OVC and what support they may 

require to offer a sustainable response. 

GROUP 5: Determine how Namibia can ensure access to quality education for OVC 

Facilitated by the MBESC 

By the end of the session participants will have: 

identified the issues OVC may face when in or when trying to access the education system; 

identified the effects this exclusion will have on the OVC, the school, the community and the country; 

and 

identified what responses should be taken and what strategies should be developed at: 

the community, school, CBO, NGO and FBO level 

the national level (government and national NGOs) 

the international level (development partners) 


Before calling on the first group rapporteur Ms Masabane acknowledged the hard work of several 

conference organisers and group members who had worked until late the previous night typing up 

the strategies and recommendations so that all participants could have copies in writing by morning. 

The groups reported back only on their key strategy and four prioritised recommendations, i.e. not on 

their discussion and other recommendations. The group discussion summaries have been reproduced 

verbatim from the flipcharts or notes given to the report compiler. This record conveys the strategies and 

recommendations as amended by the plenary. There were very few amendments. 

Each group was assigned 15 minutes in which to report back and respond to questions/comments 

from the floor. 

KEY STRATEGY 

GROUP 1 

Identify the psychosocial (PSS) 

needs of OVC 

Facilitators: 

Mariane Olivier, Philippi Trust 

Caroline Thomas, CAA 

Amanda Kruger, Lifeline/Childline 

Rapporteur: 

Amanda Kruger 

Ensure that collaboration, co-ordination and dissemination exists among all OVC stakeholders to 

enhance PSS services to all OVC. 

RECOMMENDATIONS 

1. Develop and train local and regional structures to provide PSS support and care. 

2. Strengthen existing and establish new PSS services. 

3. Ensure active participation of OVC in structures and services. 

4. Increase awareness of and access to services for OVC and organisations or institutions working 

with OVC. 

ADDITIONAL POINTS IN THE REPORT-BACK 

This was a very active group, and as facilitators we felt privileged to lead its discussion. 

The majority in the group shared the feeling that we have moved. With reference to Ms Lwin’s 

statement yesterday that we have hardly moved an inch forward, a big part of that inch is about 

attitudes, and attitudes have changed among those of us working in the field, and we understand 

that we are responsible, not someone else. 

The group covered a wide terrain in looking at the needs of OVC and factors that make them 

vulnerable. Our strategy underscores the major change of attitudes I have mentioned. We know 

that we cannot work alone, and we each have our own task to perform within the broader spectrum. 

Regarding the recommendations, it must be noted that some areas of different regions are not 

presently covered by any PSS services at all. 


57

SUMMARY OF GROUP 1 DISCUSSION (verbatim reproduction of flipcharts) 

Needs: 

Support of other to prevent the continuation 

Play – children often get no time to play 

Rejection vs acceptance 

Positive reinforcement 

Emotional needs – love and care 

Life experiences – seeing, hearing etc. 

Love: “The worst poverty is not being loved” 

– Mother Theresa 

Right to be a child: not responsible for adult 

responsibilities 

Safety/security 

Opportunity to express feelings 

TALK time: “Please ask my thoughts” 

Physical needs – food, clothing, shelter etc. 

Educational needs 

Moral values – to give and receive 

Access to health care 

Positive role model/s 

General acceptance as a child, recognition, 

praise and encouragement 

Input into decision-making 

Access to information 

Support systems: emotional; social; advocacy; 

legal; financial 

Children’s Advocate 

Belonging 

Affection 

Peer acceptance 

PSS needs specifically: 

At least four components have a role to play in 

the successful economic and social development 

of a person, community or society as a whole: 

Material base (involving raw materials, 

instruments and goods, e.g. maize) 

Knowledge and skills (e.g. if one does not 

know how to cook the maize there will be 

no food) 

Emotional readiness (e.g. you have maize, 

you know how to cook it, and you are 

motivated to do so). Alternative terms for 

this component are emotional intelligence 

and social energy. 

Physical ability (referring not only to physical 

disability, but also to the ability to do something 

for yourself because you are strong and 

able because you have enough to eat etc. 

Conditions that lead to vulnerability: 

Unstable households 

No care and support from immediate family 

One parent who is unemployed cannot cope 

with household and other responsibilities 

Isolation (through separation of siblings) 

Desertion or abandonment 

Unemployment of caretaker (no income) 

Loss of parent/s 

Lack of support for grandparents who 

cannot cope with a number of orphans 

Parents’ neglect of children 

Lack of food 

Lack of transport (over long distances) 

Lack of love/affection and support from 

stepparents 

Favouritism 

Tradition (e.g. inheritance) 

Uncertainty about the future 

Institutionalisation 

No vision 

Marital conflict and divorce/separation 

Social isolation 

Overstretched extended family 

Unfinished business in relationships 

Special needs: HIV infection; special 

personalities; children with disabilities 

Loss and grieving 

Stigmatisation and teasing 

Unsafe institutions – lack of structures to 

ensure safety 

Exposure to unwanted, immoral, inappropriate 

practices 

Lack of parental guidance regarding e.g. 

sexual matters 

Child exploitation/labour 

Sexual abuse of children 

Peer pressure 

Child’s ambition vs poverty 

Caretakers/teachers/etc. being too strict; no 

affirmation of the positive 

Lack of responsible parenting 

Lack of emotional support 

Poor harvests 

Exclusion from formal schooling 

Discrimination; not being treated as equals 

of other children 

Repeated loss 

Attitudes of people who do not really care 


Learned/enforced roles 

Domestic violence 

Being abused or witnessing abuse 

Cultural/traditional beliefs about roles 

Gender roles 

Lack of positive role models 

No access to vocational or other training 

Alcohol/drug abuse 

Lack of physical ability or disability 

Lack of information 

Physical size 

Lack of choice 

Lack of decision-making power 

Lack of resources 

Lack of love and guidance 

Being ignored 

Treated as inferior to adults 

Being dependent 

WHO is providing PSS services; HOW is 

it done; WHAT ELSE can be done? 

The agencies listed below are either already 

carrying out or planning to carry out the 

activities listed, or will consider doing so. 

1. Childline/Lifeline: 

Counselling and life skills programme in 

schools 

Teacher workshops (e.g. counselling 

training) 

Networking with others 

2. Education staff: 

Counselling 

Networking with social workers, psychologists 

and school counsellors 

Special national awareness-raising 

events (e.g. Health Programme School 

Initiative) 

After-school clubs 

Feeding schemes 

Give love and attention (particularly 

teachers) 

Training on HIV/AIDS for teachers 

Network with NGOs planning or running 

counselling support groups (e.g. TADA, 

YWCA, Scripture Union) 

3. Church Benevolence Board: 

Counselling, pre-court counselling and 

play therapy 

Provision of food, clothing and information 

at schools 

Networking with other agencies 

Assist in finding suitable homes or places 

of safety for OVC 

Perform statutory function regarding 

children in need of care 

Workshops around OVC and HIV/AIDS 

Support groups for OVC in communities 

4. Philippi Trust: 

PSS skills training for those working with 

OVC 

Counselling and counselling training 

Training of youth group leaders 

Children’s clubs 

Youth camps for OVC 

5. Catholic AIDS Action: 

Training of other caregivers in PSS skills 

Youth education programme 

Provides school uniforms (plans to 

extend provision) and covers school fees 

Covers examination fees / Government 

Orphan Emergency Fund 

Special events for OVC 

Home-based care support 

Counselling 

Support to family for death and dying 

Workshops for awareness, prevention 

Training for community volunteers in 

PSS skills 

6. Red Cross: 

Social referrals (Rundu drop-in centre) 

Materials distribution 

7. Church Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) 

8. The Annemarie HIV/AIDS Caring 

Organisation 

Soup kitchen 

Goreangab drop-in centre 

PSS support to OVC 

Counselling, food, shelter 

Home-based care 

9. MoHSS 

Material support (food, clothing, shelter) 

Training (home-based care, life skills, 

welfare committees) 

Counselling and therapy 

Referrals and networking (interministerial 

and NGOs) 

Statutory work (foster care, adoption, 

custody and control, legal aid, presentence 

reports) 

Juvenile Justice Programme (diversion) 


59

Disability (projects and referrals) 

School health programmes (information 

and training on primary health care; 

Youth Health Development Programme; 

STD clinics) 

School fund exemption 

Poverty reduction projects 

Advocacy and lobbying 

Safeguard OVC safety (places of safety, 

foster homes etc.) 

Ensure financial assistance (grants and 

allowances) 

Commemoration of special days/events 

Strengthen programmes initiated by the 

communities 

Community awareness-raising campaigns 

OVC committees 

Street children’s programmes 

Strengthen, maintain, continue existing 

programmes 

Training for community volunteers in 

PSS care 

10. Coca Cola 

Assists schools with educational materials/sports 

Sponsorship to schools 

Assists with HIV/AIDS and drug and 

alcohol awareness in conjunction with 

TADA 

Sponsors communities financially 

Networks with the Government and 

UNAIDS 

Plans to sponsor HIV/AIDS, malaria, 

agriculture and education before the 

end of 2002 

Plans to assist NGOs with OVC centre 

11. Katonyala 

Pre- and post-test counselling 

Counselling training for professionals, 

community home-based caregivers and 

community AIDS activists 

Identify OVC (bank account has been 

opened for funds from local sponsors) 

Advocacy 

Referral 

HIV-positive support group 

Networking, e.g. with NACOP 

Plans to train teachers and older 

orphans 

Questions and comments on Group 1 report-back 

Question: On the key strategy, does the word 

“stakeholders” include the community, and on 

recommendation (4), should the community not 

be involved? 

Answer: We actually saw the community to be 

the primary stakeholder, and in the recommendation, 

“organisations” include CBOs and “institutions” 

could also include the community. 

Response: The community should be explicitly 

mentioned in the strategy because we can’t just 

assume that people will know it is involved. (The 

OVCNSC may amend the strategy accordingly.) 

Comment: Surely the starting point in implementing 

the strategy would be a committee of 

stakeholders to determine the kind of training 

and activities to be carried out. If this is the case, 

not only should the community be involved, 

but it should own the whole project and be there 

from the start – at the planning stage. 

Response: The strategy and recommendations 

will involve the community all the time. 

Question: Who will co-ordinate the activities 

around PSS support? 

Answer: The OVCNSC. We also have a number 

of regional co-ordinating structures, such as the 

RACOCs which are working very well in some 

regions. If one is dealing specifically with HIV/ 

AIDS, the RACOC structure is very strong on 

co-ordination. We want to strengthen existing 

structures rather than create new ones. 

Question: Can the group say anything about 

prioritisation in attending to the needs of OVC, 

e.g. in the HIV/AIDS impact assessment for the 

education sector there were notes saying that 

the sector should take care of basic and material 

needs before moving onto PSS needs. Should 

we address these different needs simultaneously? 

Answer: We had a broad discussion on who 

precisely is a child in need and the factors that 

place children in need, and we concluded that 

we have to meet basic needs before a child will 

start to talk or hear what a service provider says. 


Comment: Everything in the strategy is covered 

in the recommendations, but monitoring is not 

mentioned. There should be a fifth recommendation 

on monitoring PSS services. 

Response: If one considers the objectives of 

the OVCNSC last year and what it is planning 

for the coming years, these could be seen as the 

ultimate monitoring system. Various organisations 

will be reporting to the OVCNSC – whether 

through regional stakeholder or local community 

structures or their own organisational structures 

– which will thus be representative of all services 

for OVC in the country, be this on a primary or 

secondary level. For this reason we did not focus 

on creating any new or additional monitoring 

structures. Though parts of the OVC programme 

are not yet in place, monitoring of all activities 

certainly forms part of the national programme 

in line with the OVCNSC’s five-year strategy. 

Comment (Amanda Kruger): I would just like 

to note that in listing existing services we found 

KEY STRATEGY 

GROUP 2 

Identify the most suitable 

care setting for OVC 

Facilitators: 

Ms A Mushimba, C&ECD Division, MWACW 

Ms M Shalumbu, C&ECD, MWACW 

Mr C Willemse, COLS 

Ms F Soul, C&ECD Division, MWACW 

Develop a national comprehensive home-based family and OVC support programme to strengthen 

the capacities of families and communities themselves to care for OVC within the communities. 


that most people are not aware of them. Also, 

because the stakeholders are so far apart in geographical 

terms, we felt the emphasis should be 

on the doing rather than on meeting and talking 

about doing. If one can get the green light only 

in a grouping, a lot of energy will be spent on 

that grouping and it will not be directed energy. 

Comment: The strategy does not seem to meet 

the group objective of identifying the PSS needs 

of OVC. The strategy would certainly be a good 

recommendation on PSS support, but it is not 

the crucial strategy required. 

Response: Our line of thought was that with 

collaboration, co-ordination and dissemination, 

we would be able to identify the gaps in PSS 

services. The words “to enhance ...” imply this. 

The strategy may not be clear enough and we 

could try to clarify it through further discussion. 

(There was no further discussion. The OVCNSC 

may refine the wording of the strategy taking 

the plenary comments into account.) 

Rapporteurs: Mr B Pieters, Regional AIDS Co-ordinator, Hardap Region; Ms A Mushimba 

1. Promote and enhance the integration of OVC care and support into the community and 

extended family networks by strengthening the capacity of the family and community-based 

structures in order to avoid the psychosocial and economic effects of institutionalisation, which 

should be regarded as a last resort. 

2. Develop an effective and realistic information dissemination mechanism that enables families 

and communities to properly benefit from and gain access to the available OVC-related services. 


61

3. Identify, streamline, integrate and strengthen community-based, local, regional and national 

structures that should promote co-ordination and networking of OVC-related programmes, 

activities and services resulting in the provision of adequate and quality family-based care and 

support. 

4. Develop standardised and simplified mechanisms to access funding, and design a monitoring 

and evaluation tool that should enable easy funding and other external input to stabilise the 

socio-economic situation of OVC, the extended family safety nets and the communities. 

COMMENTARY AND ADDITIONAL POINTS IN THE REPORT-BACK 

Group 2 had a crucially important task: at the very least we stakeholders want to know how best 

to care for OVC. 

The group split into four sub-groups, each of which was tasked to tackle one of the four objectives. 

The sum total of the sub-groups’ extended analysis was the key strategy of developing a national 

home-based family and OVC support programme. 

In carrying out the fourth objective we first dwelt on the different categories of “family-centred 

approach”. The sub-group covered four topics: (1) How to strengthen the family unit; (2) How to 

strengthen the community within which this family unit is accommodated; (3) How to strengthen 

the OVC themselves to identify their own needs and work their way out of the challenges; and (4) 

How to create an enabling environment for OVC. 

On the first recommendation it must be noted that we do not condemn institutionalisation, but 

the problems associated with it are such that we must recommend the integration of care and 

support into the traditional extended family networks. The traditional way of caring for children 

through the extended family network is eroding, and this is the most important safety net so we 

have to strengthen it. 

On the second recommendation, though there are services available, people do not know of 

them and we have to do something about this urgently. 

The third recommendation focuses on service delivery, i.e. quality service delivery, and the 

co-ordination thereof. The group felt very strongly about the structures referred to being functional 

structures and not white elephants. 

SUMMARY OF GROUP 2 DISCUSSIONS (verbatim reproduction of flipcharts) 

GROUP 2 SUB-GROUP 1: DEVELOPMENT NEEDS BY AGE GROUP 

0-6 

Love and care 

security 

material support 

shelter 

food (nutrition) 

health care 

education/ECD 

holistic development (PSS needs) 

7-12 

Same as above plus 

life skills/exposure 

personal identification/needs/experimental 

formal educational development 

guidance (role models) 

special needs 

13-18 

Same as previous age groups plus 

career guidance 

relationships (parental guidance) 

rights and responsibilities (parental guidance) 

self-reliance and independence 

19-21 

With specific exceptions 

education 

disability 

general/special needs 


GROUP 2 SUB-GROUP 2: 

FAMILY-CENTRED APPROACH 

INDEPENDENCE 

Siblings remain together 

5. Reunited – roots – self-identification 

4. Family values: 

traditional 

and cultural 

1. Eradication of 

alienation and 

isolation 

BENEFITS 

 

3. Parenting: 

love, care and 

support 

2. Bonding – 

stronger link – 

family ties 


PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH 

INSTITUTIONAL CARE 

NB: Institutionalise as a last resort! 

Poor public perceptions: 

Harassment 

Children ill-treated 

Not having access to clothes, facilities etc. 

Institutions: 

Government (sustainability; what happens 

when funds run out?) 

Private, independent 

Church (volunteers vs paid employees – 

motivation) 

Funding at start but later standards fall 

Ill-discipline 

Psychological problems 

Behavioural problems 

But child might come from very difficult 

circumstances 

Commitment and education of caregivers 

– “Not for money but from the heart” 

Stigma: what to call the institutions – 

orphanages, children’s homes, ... 

Lack of information-sharing and networking 

Lack of monitoring and evaluation 

Absence of guidelines and standards 


STRATEGIES TO ENSURE A FAMILY- 

CENTRED APPROACH FOR OVC 

Main areas of activity: 

1. Strengthening the family 

2. Strengthening the community response 

3. Strengthening children to identify and meet 

their needs 

4. Creating an enabling environment 

1. Strengthening the family 

Strategies: 

Increase awareness of and access to 

services 

Intervention programmes before death of 

parents/caregiver 

Skills development initiatives for family 

and community members 

Intervention programmes at community 

level 


Regular communication with and information 

dissemination to families (through 

media, meetings, home visits, referrals 

etc.) 

2. Strengthening the community response 

Strategies: 

Remuneration/allowance/incentives for 

caregivers (trained and untrained) 

Promote and strengthen communitybased 

social welfare services 

Community representation on decisionmaking 

structure 

Co-ordinated capacity-building (training) 

of caregivers (will-writing, PSS care etc.) 

Identify, recruit and register foster parents/ 

families and strengthen existing ones 


Caregivers and volunteers to be trained 

in child needs assessment and PSS 

support to OVC and guardians 

Community care coalition groups at local 

and regional levels to access information 


63

and pressurise partners (Government, 

NOGs etc.) 

Community OVC focal partners to be 

represented on OVC forums 

3. Strengthening children to identify and 

meet their needs 

Strategies: 

Children placed in responsible caregiver’s 

care to participate in all development 

activities 

Acquire sufficient information on child 

rights and services for OVC to apply 

necessary pressure 

Skills training 

Education important to lay foundation 

for children to improve their ability to 

sustainably provide for their own needs 


Adults to be organised in acting during 

mediatory negotiations and arrangements 

for meeting children’s needs 

OVC to be consulted and involved at all 

levels of planning and implementation 

of OVC-related activities 

4. Creating an enabling environment 

Strategies: 

Establish a system to register, counsel and 

refer OVC and monitor their conditions 

over a period of time 

Work in co-operation with other partners 

to develop an integrated strategy to 

reduce the impacts on OVC 

Mobilise resources to provide alternative 

care for OVC who cannot be absorbed 

by communities 

Institutionalisation to be reduced to 

community-based home care 


Establish functional OVC forums in each 

political region 

Proper supervision and coninuous 

evaluation and monitoring of grants for 

OVC enclosed in legislation (to avoid 

exploitation of OVC etc.) 

Address quality of care and support as 

well as service delivery (e.g. make efforts 

to balance distribution of all services 

relevant to OVC) 


Comment: The recommendations are too 

long-winded, too broad, and very confusing for 

people who are not experts. 

Response (Petronella Masabane): These 

recommendations will be unpacked into different 

activities in the work plans. They are meant 

to provide a framework for the OVCNSC’s work 

and the new OVCNSC will translate them into 

concrete actions. 

Comment (Pelucy Nfambirweki, UNICEF 

Regional Advisor): On institutionalisation as 

a last resort, I think it is necessary to put in place 

minimum standards and guidelines to regulate 

institutions to further protect the children they 

are caring for. 

Comment (Ottilie Abrahams, NAWA): The 

Minister of Women Affairs and Child Welfare said 

yesterday that whatever plans we adopt must 

be characterised by feasibility. Group 2’s strategy 

and recommendations focus on the family and 

community, which is well and good, but have 

we gauged the state of the nuclear and extended 

family in Namibia? How long would it take and 

how much would it cost to strengthen them? In 

Namibia the nuclear and extended family have 

been disintegrating for 100 years, and with AIDS 

we see parents and household heads dying every 

day and children taking over. Are these the families 

we are targeting? The same applies with the 

community. We see umbrella NGOs disintegrating, 

e.g. in Zambia and South Africa, and in 

Namibia this has happened with NANGOF. How 

long will it take and how much will it cost to 

strengthen our CBOs? What happens to OVC 

while we are busy sharpening these instruments? 

Response: We did not dwell on the research 

aspect because we felt that research on the state 

of the family and community should be one of 

the terms of reference or an activity of either the 

national, regional or local structures working with 

the OVC issue. The structure/s could then lobby 

for the necessary resources. 

Response: We know that if we ask families and 

communities to care for OVC, they will do so 


egardless. We know it will take a long time to 

strengthen them, but we should not think this 

entails putting up new structures around the 

country. We are simply saying that we need to 

strengthen the existing families and community 

structures, and in our view it would be very costeffective 

and even economical to venture down 

this road. As Mr Phiri noted in his address, the 

extended family has not disintegrated; it is there 

but it is stressed to capacity. This is a matter of 

sustainability, and we have no choice but to find 

ways to strengthen the family networks so they 

can do what we are asking them to do. 

Comment (Petronella Masabane): The outgoing 

OVCNSC has costed the activities we had 

planned to implement on an annual basis. We 

do have a strategic plan, some of the conference 

recommendations will be catered for in this plan, 

and an action plan with specific time lines will 

be drawn up annually with all activities costed. 

It is a general requirement of government that 

all strategic plans and policies are costed so that 

we can be clear on what resources we need for 

implementating them. We must assume that the 

same will happen in respect of all recommendations 

of this conference. 

GROUP 3 

Review the draft 

<strong>National</strong> Policy on OVC 

Facilitators: 

Andrew Muwonge, Southern Consultants 

Ottilie Abrahams, NAWA 

Rapporteur: 

Rosa Namises, Namibian MP 

Ms Masabane noted that the presence of a Member of Parliament throughout the proceedings was 

much appreciated. The group had worked until 6.30pm the previous night and she thanked the members 

for their dedication to the task. 

KEY STRATEGY 

Mobilise human and financial resources for the following: 

Empowering the community to carry out various activities necessary for the development of 

OVC. 

Assessing, monitoring and evaluating. 

Ensuring speedy implementation, simplifying and dissemination of information. 


1. All stakeholders to advocate and lobby for the updating of all existing laws, for enforcing their 

implementation, and for the speedy enactment of all existing bills, with special reference made 

to gender disparities. 

2. Remove all bureaucratic procedures relating to state assistance to ensure inclusive, speedy 

and efficient access to service delivery, and increase grant amounts to bring them in line with 

current cost-of-living inflation. 

3. Identify stakeholders to work out a framework to govern effective co-ordinated networking, 

monitoring and evaluation at all levels. 

4. Support the empowerment of caregivers. 


65


Besides the key strategy and recommendations, we are calling for commitment to the protection 

of all children through policy and political will, and for all applicable draft laws to be promulgated 

and enforced immediately as a matter of urgency. If possible the OVCNSC should meet with the 

LRDC, the legal drafters and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resources, Gender 

Equality and Development to get the process rolling. It will also be important to determine how we 

will go about implementing the new laws. For this we need simplified versions to work with and 

people to give legal input, and this is key to our strategy. 

We came up with numerous recommendations apart from the four prioritised ones. 

On improving and simplifying fostering and guardianship, we know that people who adopt 

children do not get the benefits under existing law and we should look into this. We also say that 

since foster parents are eligible for grants/allowances under existing law, people should retain their 

foster-parent status. 

On seeking funding from natural resources (e.g. fishing, mining), we could see no reason for 

OVC not being able to benefit directly, e.g. why can’t OVC service providers have fishing quotas? 

Children are the best people to monitor services and must thus be part of any monitoring team. 

On developing a mechanism to prevent money/property-grabbing from children, the old law 

is still in place and it excludes estates belonging to black people. We need a national administrative 

procedure to process all estates. Since the Guardian Fund is protected, any funds paid in for OVC 

could be directed to this fund and processed from there rather than having a loose system. We also 

know that where an estate belongs to a black person and there is no will, the executor normally 

directs the decision to a lower court rather than the High Court, meaning that children are excluded 

from benefiting. 

In general we need aggressive education and training via the existing structures. 


Call for commitment to the protection of all children (policy/political): 

All existing laws pertaining to children to be promulgated and enforced. 

All outstanding laws that contribute positively to OVC should be passed urgently. 


Revisit existing data/information and integrate into policy. 

Improve and simplify fostering and guardianship – bring closer to adoption, not losing the 

financial benefits. 

Bring grants in line with cost of living and inflation. 

Reduce age of entitlement to disability grant from minimum of 16 years to onset of disability. 

Seek funding from natural resources (e.g. fishing, mining). 

Develop mechanism to prevent money/property-grabbing from children. 

Inclusivity (of all OVC and all needs) is key to policy. 

Give tax exemptions for donations – perhaps set up fund for N$1 deduction from PAYE. 

Make provision for decentralisation. 

Capacity-building for all people from village level upwards. 

Eligibility criteria must be clearly defined and information provided. 

Monitoring by committee of all stakeholders including children. 

First identify stakeholders and work out co-ordination mechanisms to determine framework 

for monitoring and evaluation and ensure that insurance benefits beneficiaries (HIV/AIDS should 

not prevent beneficiaries being paid out). 

Direct funds to Guardian Fund? 

Provide alternatives to institutionalisation, and diversion and aftercare to involve social workers 

and civil society. 



Comment: I am concerned about the cost implications 

and sustainability of bringing grants into 

line with inflation. If this becomes policy we will 

be bound forever to handing out ever-increasing 

amounts. Can we really afford this? 

Response (Petronella Masabane): Government 

will cost all policy recommendations and 

those which our economy cannnot afford will 

not be implemented. 

Response (Rosa Namises): The group also 

talked about economic empowerment for family 

members and caregivers via projects and other 

activities to help ensure that they do not become 

dependent on grants and handouts. This issue 

has come up throughout the conference so we 

did not mention it specifically. It can be assumed 

that policy will address the need to empower 

people economically. 

Response (Ottilie Abrahams): It is difficult 

for a family to purchase a bag of mielie-meal at 

N$50 on a monthly grant of N$100. We have to 

provide a reasonable standard of living so the 

policy should take cognisance of inflation. However, 

Group 3 very strongly proposes that natural 

resources be allocated to funding OVC. We could 

see no reason for not granting mining rights or 

fishing concessions to the committees or NGOs 

working with this issue. Were this possible, stakeholders 

could involve themselves in many other 

income-generating activities. The group has not 

promoted dependency at all, but it is saying that 

we have to be realistic. 

Comment: Last year we recommended setting 

up an OVC Fund to assist caregivers and organisations 

working with OVC. This must be done. 

Response (Petronella Masabane): We all still 

agree on this. The outgoing OVCNSC was busy 

looking at the process for establishing the fund 

but this has not been finalised. The issue will 

remain on the books and the new OVCNSC will 

definitely have to attend to it in accordance with 

the mandate it already has. 

Comment: In all regions we have found some 

uncertainty – which is not addressed in these 

recommendations – on the structuring of OVCrelated 

services in the whole scenario, and the 

roles and responsibilities of the structures serving 

OVC at different levels. We have the OVCNSC 

and some proposed implementors, e.g. OVC 

regional forums. Can the group say what is the 

line of duty from grassroots to local, regional and 

national levels in terms of linking the conference 

recommendations to implementation? The policy 

has to set down all aspects of structuring. 

Response (Petronella Masabane): We 

should not refer to what we have on the table as 

the policy; what we have are merely issues to be 

considered for the policy. 

Response (Ottilie Abrahams): Our third 

recommendation has to do with structuring. The 

group felt that we first have to identify the stakeholders, 

including OVC, and the stakeholders 

should form a committee to work out the modalities 

for dealing with co-ordination, monitoring 

and evaluation, and to this we could add all other 

administrative matters. 

Comment: This is criticism but hopefully it is 

constructive. The group’s task was unfair in that 

it was asked to review the proposed policy, but 

in fact there is nothing concrete on the table to 

review. 

Response: There is a draft policy and that was 

the document the group reviewed. Anyone who 

has not seen the draft can ask for a copy. 

Comment: This group’s task was made difficult 

by the fact that it was asked to come up with a 

strategy and recommendations rather than 

amendments to the draft. 

Response (Petronella Masabane): I think the 

group did what was required. It came up with 

key issues that the policy must address. Our task 

now is to discuss these issues and the principles 

underlying them. How all these things will be 

done is a technical matter that will be left to the 

policy drafters to iron out. 

Comment (Claudia Tjikuua, MBESC): I 

am concerned that education has been left out 

of the whole policy. There should be a section 

on how education should be addressed. We had 

actually hoped to get that information from this 

conference so that we can incorporate it now 

into our overall OVC education policy. 

Response (Petronella Masabane): This will 

be noted for the policy drafters. 


67

GROUP 4 

Determine how and 

why Namibia should 

record its OVC and 

who should do this 

Facilitators: 

Verona du Preez, Assistant Programme Manager, SWIS, DDSWS, MoHSS 

Helen Mouton, Assistant Programme Manager, Specialised Social Welfare 

Services, DDSWS 

Rapporteurs: 

Verona du Preez; Helen Mouton; Johan van Wyk, Data Analyst, MoHSS 

KEY STRATEGY 

Establish a national database on OVC for effective service delivery. 


1. Co-ordinate all stakeholders who collect data on OVC. 

2. Raise awareness on and build capacity of all stakeholders in the collection of OVC data. 

3. Provide financial resources for the development of the OVC database. 

4. Ensure effective monitoring and evaluation instruments for the database. 


The group as a whole wants a registering or recording system. We looked at the advantages and 

disadvantages of this. Prior to the group session the facilitators looked at how OVC are registered 

in other African countries that do this to determine why they are doing it and the advantages and 

disadvantages they have experienced. 

On the question of who should record OVC, the group recommends that this be done from 

grassroots level up – by the volunteers, traditional leaders, villagers and CBOs at village/constituency 

level, and by the people working with OVC at regional level. 

We also looked at what organisations are currently doing for OVC and how they are recording 

OVC. Each organisation represented in the group (e.g. CAA, the Church Benevolence Board and 

Lifeline/Childline) gave a brief overview of the information they record and what they do with it. 

The MoHSS representatives gave an overview of how this ministry manages its information system. 

It records information on all MoHSS social services. The group felt that the MoHSS system is too 

sophisticated and has too much detail for the purposes of an OVC register. We came up with a 

very simple data form reflecting only the child’s initials, the name of his/her school, his/her home 

address and basic particulars about family members and primary caregivers. 

The group asks why all organisations cannot simply feed the data captured for their small-scale 

systems into the one existing large-scale (national) system. Can we not simply co-ordinate all current 

recording efforts to get the information we want? This way we can be assured of having just one 

system that gives us all the information we need, deriving from grassroots level. This is our key 

strategy. 



Question: Should we capture data on OVC? Unanimous response: Yes! 

Advantages: 

Realistic/reliable figures for planning and 

budgeting 

Helps prevent duplication of services 

Helps ensure the right children are assisted 

Aids information dissemination 

Helps ensure provision of equal services 

Helps in making resources available 

Helps to co-ordinate services 

Helps to determine real needs 

Helps in verifying/validating procedures for 

rendering services 

Helps to make correct referrals 

Disadvantages: 

Stigmatisation 

Creates expectations of support (financial 

and/or material) 

Causes confusion (lack of co-ordination) 

Language barriers – miscommunication 

Exclusionary – emphasis on orphans 

Data redundancy 

Labour-intensive and costly 

Less accurate and reliable 

Subjectivity and favouritism 

Sustainability – need to update 

Who should identify OVC? 

People at village level 

Community members 

Councillors and traditional leaders 

Welfare committees (volunteers) 

NGOs and CBOs (e.g. CAA, Lifeline, WAD, 

Red Cross, Africare) 

Churches and FBOs (e.g. ELCRN) 

Home-based care volunteers 

MWACW, MRLGH, Home Affairs and other 

line ministries 

Educational institutions 

Children 

How? 

The group discussed the data-capturing and 

referral methods currently employed by 

organisations such as Lifeline, the Church 

Benevolence Board, CAA and ELCRN. 

What to record 

Particulars (name, age and date of birth, sex, 

school and grade) 

Particulars of siblings 

Particulars of biological parents (details if 

deceased) 

Particulars of primary caretaker (including 

type/s and amount/s of income) 

Location (village, district and region) 

Structure 

1. Village households 

2. Constituency 

3. Regional 

4. <strong>National</strong> 

Strategy for establishing national database 

on OVC (for rendering effective services) 

1. Record data on OVC 

2. Develop regional OVC forums 

3. Awareness 

4. Empowerment and capacity-building 

Plenary discussion on Group 4 report-back 

Comment: Stakeholders collect data because 

they need specific data for their own work, and 

it’s not necessarily the same data that would be 

collected through a co-ordinated effort. If the 

data requested for and through a national effort 

<strong>National</strong> Level 

Regional Level 

(governors, councillors, OVC forums) 

Constituency Level 

Village Level 

Household Level 

is limited, we may find ourselves far poorer in 

terms of data on what is happening in Namibia. 

Response (Petronella Masabane): I would 

like the participants to really apply their minds 

to this key issue. The question remains, why do 


69

we have to record OVC, and how and who will 

do this? It is a very sensitive issue and we need 

very clear ideas on how we should proceed. We 

do not want a system with duplication and overlap 

or differing figures. 

Comment: Currently there is a lot of confusion 

in the communities regarding OVC registration. 

It raises many expectations and causes embarrassment 

and inconvenience because it is not 

co-ordinated and there is a lack of networking. 

On the first recommendation I suggest that we 

design a standard format, and procedures with 

follow-up from local level to a central database, 

to ensure a unified national approach. I further 

suggest that the first recommendation entails a 

package of activities, and that monitoring and 

evaluation should definitely be included in the 

first recommendation. 

Comment (Erongo Regional AIDS Coordinator 

Thobias Iyambo): I propose that 

the regional and local councils could do the 

registering because they know the people. If they 

are given the task to ensure that OVC in their 

constituencies are registered, this would prevent 

different ministries having differing figures. On 

why we should record, we need accurate information 

in order to plan and co-ordinate. It will 

be impossible to do so without this information. 

On how, whether by means of research or houseto-house 

surveys or something else, this would 

depend primarily on resources. 

Comment (Oshana Regional AIDS Coordinator 

Albertina Haneb): I support my 

colleague from Erongo, except that I do not 

think the councils should do the registering on 

their own. All OVC stakeholders are also RACOC 

members, and as RACOC they should meet to 

determine how to proceed with registration. 

Responsibility for co-ordinating registration 

could lie with the regional councils, but all the 

RACOC members should be involved in identifying 

and recording. 

Comment (Omusati Regional Councillor): 

It is not a good idea for regional councils to do 

this work because they do not have the human 

resources necessary. The MoHSS and MWACW 

should continue doing the registering. We also 

have regional and constituency development 

committees through which to work. They are in 

place to co-ordinate all development at regional 

and constituency levels and we should not forget 

about them. 

Comment (Omaheke Regional Councillor 

Laura McLeod): The regional council as a 

structure per se would not have a problem participating 

in the registration of OVC, but it would 

be an additional administrative task that may 

not be done properly due to a lack of human 

resources. The capacities of the existing regional 

forums differ. RACOC’s effectiveness in one 

region may not be as high as in another, and in 

some regions there may be a better forum to do 

this work. It may be best to do it at consitutuency 

or village level. If we do not have a specific 

forum to do it, it will not be done properly, but 

we cannot decide here who should do it. The 

regional councils should determine who in their 

regions would do the best job. We could approach 

them with our recommendations and requests 

and hear what they have to say. 

Comment (Ohangwena Regional AIDS 

Co-ordinator Josephine Hamutwe): 

Registration is definitely needed. All regions need 

to know how many OVC they have. Donors, for 

example, may ask for this information and we 

have to be able to provide it. On who should do 

it, I propose setting up regional OVC forums to 

do this and all other OVC-related work in the 

regions. These would be the most effective structures. 

Also, since the MoHSS and MWACW have 

already started registering OVC, they should 

draw up guidelines for the regions to follow. 

Comment (Amanda Kruger): There are three 

extremely strong databases in Namibia already. 

One is the MoHSS database due to become the 

SWIS database, which is in an advanced stage 

of development. The idea was that other welfare 

organisations would tap into this and also share 

their own data. By law they are already doing 

so. The MBESC is also already recording a great 

deal of the data on OVC that we need, and the 

<strong>National</strong> Early Childhood Development (NECD) 

Programme is also developing a database via 

the MWACW. There are many other databases 

apart from these, e.g. the census database. We 

are talking about building up all the way from 

grassroots when we already have a lot of information. 

We just need to co-ordinate. 

Comment (Khin Sandi-Lwin): I would like 

to return to the initial question: are we clear on 


the why? If it is for the purpose of planning, the 

databases just mentioned should be looked at, 

and likewise the census in terms of numbers of 

households headed by grandparents with lots of 

children. Plenty data already exists that can be 

extrapolated for planning purposes. Registration, 

however, is a whole different ballgame. We have 

mentioned some of the difficulties, e.g. creating 

expectations. The question is: what next? Unless 

you know what comes next and you have the 

resources to do what comes next, registration can 

be a very dangerous political instrument. The 

why is crucial. If it is merely for planning and 

mobilising resources and political commitment, 

then we should be looking at other ways and 

not automatically opting for registration. 

Response (Petronella Masabane):We have 

to consider this issue very very carefully, and all 

these very valid points are much appreciated. 

We cannot take a final decision here, but we 

have to make a recommendation to the policymakers. 

At present different organisations and 

government agencies are registering OVC, there 

is no standard format, we are not clear on why 

we are doing this and how as a country we will 

utilise the data. It will make things extremely 

difficult for the MWACW if we cannot apply our 

minds to the questions of why this should be 

done and whether we really need it, or whether 

the existing databases and study findings would 

suffice for our purposes. I would like to call on 

Claudia Tjikuua of the MBESC and Stan Phiri 

and Pelucy Nfambirweki as UNICEF’s advisors 

on OVC for their expert opinions on this issue. 

Opinion – Claudia Tjikuua: We have to move 

from numbers to individuals, so we know what 

their needs are and what kind of support we can 

give them. Also, registration is tied to all the other 

strategies, and if we do not know who the OVC 

are, all the other strategies will be meaningless. 

We want to know who is not in school, why, 

and many other things about the individual, and 

without registration we cannot know. 

Opinion – Stan Phiri: I would like to turn the 

question around to make it the meta-question: 

what are the outcomes we desire for OVC? We 

desire positive outcomes of all kinds. How will 

we achieve them? Some key strategies we have 

identified speak to community capacity-building 

or development to enable the communities to 

respond effectively in a much more strengthened 

manner to the needs of the children they are most 

worried about. If this is true, then we can say 

who will register OVC. The important thing is to 

start with building community capacity to care 

for the children communities most worry about. 

The communities could enumerate the children, 

and they would know how to access resources 

and services that will help them respond in this 

much more strengthened manner. However, 

experience in the region has shown that there 

are ethical and practical problems involved in 

that communities expected food, blankets etc. 

and none of these were delivered. Registration 

became ethically untenable. What the positive 

outcomes for children are should be the starting 

point for addressing this issue. We first have to 

be clear on the outcomes. 

Opinion – Pelucy Nfambirweki: Mr Phiri has 

covered the main issues, but I will add to them 

by sharing the Ugandan experience of registering, 

in which I was involved. We also thought we 

could reach the children by registering them. The 

Ministry of Local Government was given the task 

and mandate to ensure that all children in the 

country were registered. It took about six months 

to do this and then it fell apart. It was too labourintensive, 

we could not agree on whether to use 

a questionnaire or house-to-house survey, we 

did not know who should collate and analyse 

the data, and at the end of the day we had little 

more than a lot of false expectations. People even 

thought they could register their own biological 

children since there would be rewards – food, 

clothing, school fees being paid etc. Registration 

simply didn’t work, so as a country we had to go 

back to the drawing board to determine how to 

reach the children. We now rely more on existing 

enumeration strategies such as the census and 

surveys of the health services and Ministry of 

Planning. The Bureau of Statistics as registration 

co-ordinating agent harmonises all the data 

collected by the other agencies. Registration at 

community level definitely did not work. 

Initial motion proposed for adoption as 

a conference recommendation (Petronalla 

Masabane): I propose that this conference 

should recommend stopping all registration 

activities for the time being and requesting the 

MWACW to come up with clear national guide- 


71

lines on registration within a given time frame 

and as soon as possible. The guidelines should 

explain why OVC should or should not be 

registered, and if they should be, they should 

tell us how to register them. The issue could also 

go to Cabinet for a government policy directive. 

Counter-proposal: The OVCNSC should be 

mandated to draw up the guidelines because the 

non-governmental stakeholders should also 

give input on this issue. The OVCNSC is under 

the stewardship of the MWACW. 

Counter-proposal: Registration should not 

stop while the guidelines are being developed. 

Comment (Ulitala Hiveluah, Permanent 

Secretary, MWACW): I am not totally against 

continuing the registration process in the interim, 

but I would prefer it to stop until we have our 

house in order and we know we are doing the 

right thing. We must not rush this issue. If we 

continue in the interim, we ought to set certain 

KEY STRATEGY 

standards. Many stakeholders are registering 

OVC but we need uniformity. We now have a 

definition of OVC, and I think we will be able 

to develop guidelines within a couple of weeks. 

Counter-proposal (Rosa Namises, MP): I 

can see no harm in continuing with registration 

while the guidelines are being developed. Those 

doing this work can simply present themselves 

to receive the guidelines when these are ready, 

and then proceed within the given framework. 

Final two motions proposed for adoption: 

1. Stop all registration until the MWACW and 

OVCNSC come up with a government 

position and national guidelines. 

2. Go on with the ad hoc registration being done 

by different organisations until the guidelines 

are issued. 

Option 2 was adopted by (a large) majority vote. 

Capacitate educational institutions to become proactive in the establishment of circles of support 

for OVC in order to keep them in school. 


GROUP 5 

Determine how 

Namibia can ensure 

access to quality 

education for OVC 

Facilitators: 

Claudia Tjikuua, Chief Education Officer, MBESC 

Silke Felton, UNICEF 

Rapporteurs: 

Spendu Onesmus, NECD Co-ordinator, MWACW; Claudia Tjikuua; Silke Felton 

1. Develop community-based exemption system. 

2. Establish a national educational development fund to supplement income lost to the School 

Development Fund, and finance OVC social action plans. 

3. Establish circles of support (e.g. OVC school communities). 

4. Social mobilisation and training to empower service providers / duty bearers and children: 

All school-based training to include community members. 

All other planned training to include OVC component. 



Group 5’s task was very difficult in that we had to look at two groups in one: school-going children 

in primary and secondary schools; and young OVC in kindergartens and crèches who are served 

by the NECD Programme. We also looked at access to vocational training. The video on Uganda’s 

experience showed how important vocational training options can be. Our strategy focuses on 

schools mainly, but we have used the term “educational institutions” to make the strategy inclusive 

of ECD and vocational training. 

We first looked at concerns, then made suggestions for addressing them, and then drew up the 

strategy and recommendations, which encompass all the concerns and suggestions. 

The group agreed that we have to get away from red tape, and we could do this with a communitybased 

exemption system. We could approach school boards, community leaders, NGOs etc. to 

help us develop the sytem. 

We looked at income-generating options for schools that lose income due to fee exemptions 

and struggle to sustain themselves. Predictably we spent the most time on the School Development 

Fund, starting from the premise that the current system is not working, it is stigmatising, and it needs 

to be revamped completely. We discussed at length whether we should recommend an MBESC 

decree that schools may not levy any fees at all in order to bypass the case-by-case approach and 

facilitate truly free education, and on the other hand supplement schools’ income so they are able 

to provide quality education. We could not reach consensus on abolishing all these fees from the 

top as the group felt that parental involvement is needed and one way to involve parents is through 

the School Development Fund. Whatever the case, an alternative approach to the current one is 

needed, and first we need some kind of community agreement on whether schools should levy 

funds at all, how much they should levy and what the procedures for waiving funds should be. 

We had a long discussion on the Circle of Support concept, asking, for example, whether the 

child or the community is really at the centre and whether all bodies interlink. We didn’t reach any 

firm decisions on how the circle should look. 

On the fourth recommendation, we asked why we need to empower these different groups, 

and the answer is simply that the needs of each group differ, so we need different approaches and 

activities for each group. 


Areas of concern: 

Physical access for children with disabilities 

Vocational training 

Definition of “free” education 

Unidentified OVC 

Embracing all OVC at all levels of education 

Case-by-case approach (leading to insurmountable 

bureaucracy) 

Lack of parental/communal involvement 

Example of ECD (transferred from national 

to communal level) demonstrates the 

problems for OVC 

Current school fund system is failing OVC. 

OVC, their grandparents or other caregivers 

will be incapable of accessing the support 

mechanisms 

Ministries tend to compete with rather than 

complement each other 

A definition of ‘orphan’ for Namibia is still 

outstanding 

“Education for all” and “inclusive education” 

contradict the categorisation happening in 

defining children as OVC 

Suggestions: 

Categorically eliminate all school fees, funds, 

levies etc. nationally 

Establish School Development Funds on 

communal level 

Redirect social welfare grants to benefit 

education 

Introduce a flat rate for all schools 

Introduce a small grant scheme to complement 

School Development Funds 

Leave to the schools and communities the 

identification of OVC and decisions re their 

access to education 


73

Let taxpayers contribute a percentage to an 

emergency fund for schools with a high rate 

of OVC 

Educate/inform communities/leaders 

Expand school feeding programme 

Standardise and subsidise school uniforms 

Revise the national HIV/AIDS policy, charter 

and mass campaign 

School OVC committee to realise Circle of 

Support 

CSG – training (include networking skills) 

Child workshops 

SB training 

Training for school principals, teachers, 

hostel staff etc. 

All training (professional, community etc.) 

should include OVC 

All school-based training should also include 

community members 

All training on other topics should have a 

component on OVC 

Capacitate schools and other educational 

institutions to become proactive in circles of 

support for OVC by means of: 

OVC school committee (for funds, networking, 

material and PSS needs) 

School Development Fund and <strong>National</strong> 

Education Development Fund 

social mobilisation (linked to dissemination 

of policies etc.) 

training/empowerment of principals, 

school boards, caregivers 

child-to-child support 

<strong>National</strong> ECD fund to take OVC needs into 

account 

Consensus on School Development Fund: 

Quality education needs money 

Money has to be collected equitably 

Exemption procedures must be changed 

A state fund and community funds in order 

to guarantee universal and free education 


Question: Should we not also be talking about 

access to safe schools and not only to quality 

education? OVC are more vulnerable to abuse 

and more powerless to speak out about it. The 

Abt study report (handout) makes reference to 

physical and sexual abuse in the education 

sector – perpetrated by learners and teachers. 

Did the group discuss this issue and how we can 

address it? It is very important to address it in 

responding to the OVC issue. 

Answer (Claudia Tjikuua): This is true. The 

study has shown that OVC, especially orphans, 

are more at risk of abuse, and also HIV/AIDS 

and other illnesses due to the abuse. We should 

amend the group objectives so as to ensure that 

OVC have access to quality education in a safe 

and conducive environment, rather than amend 

the strategy or recommendations, because our 

specific mandate was to look at quality education 

and our strategy addresses only that. Also, 

the terms of reference of the Circles of Support 

could take this issue on board, with all service 

providers safeguarding the safety of OVC. 

Answer (Silke Felton): I think a safe environment 

is part of quality education, so we do not 

necessarily need to amend the objective. I agree 

that the Circles of Support should be mandated 

to help ensure a safe environment for OVC. 

Question: How feasible is it to establish the 

recommended education development fund in 

the near future? Our Constitution guarantees free 

primary education for all. Therefore, should our 

emphasis not rather be on enforcing, lobbying 

and pressurising decision-makers and political 

office-bearers to make primary education free in 

the true sense of the word, while in the meantime 

we work towards establishing this fund? 

Answer (Claudia Tjikuua): The group had a 

heavy debate on the fee exemption issue. While 

there is a right to free education, the caregivers 

should also be given some responsibility for the 

children’s education. The Circles of Support will 

enable us to identify OVC, and in the process 

of identifying them, the circles will already be 

exempting them. The circles will be responsible 

for identifying the OVC, proposing exemptions 

and applying for grants to supplement the School 

Development Fund and grants to cover other 

needs of OVC. We propose this arrangement 

rather than asking the Government to do away 

with the School Development Fund. The group 


therefore reached consensus that a national 

educational development fund should be 

established, to which the schools can apply for 

grants to supplement what they lose through 

exemptions, and grants for the care and support 

they need to provide to OVC. School development 

plans for the year should cater for the latter. 

The group spent an hour debating the definition 

of ‘free’ education. Even though Namibia has 

a school fee system, these are not fees per se, 

but rather they are contributions to the School 

Development Fund; it is money going to the 

school, not to the Government, whereas in many 

other countries the fees (also hostel fees) go to 

the Government. The School Development 

Fund is decided on by the community through 

the school boards, and it is the community that 

can abolish the fund because only community 

members know what they can afford. Parents 

and school boards could decide what they will 

pay for the year. Once the fee levels are set, the 

parents and school boards could determine how 

many children will not be able to pay, and then 

apply to the <strong>National</strong> Educational Development 

Fund for a grant to make up for the shortfall. At 

the same time the Circles of Support could apply 

for funds to cover other needs of OVC in their 

schools, e.g. they could start a school feeding 

programme or provide uniforms to OVC. The 

idea is that the Circles of Support should identify 

the needs and forms of support required. 

Addition (Spendu Onesmus): The group also 

looked at the issue of redirecting social welfare 

grants to benefit education, in the sense that a 

portion of the grant could be earmarked for the 

child’s education and directed straight into the 

School Development Fund. 

Comment (Doris Roos): On the point that 

school development funds go to the school and 

not the Government, I am concerned that the 

people sitting on the school boards are generally 

the community elite who can afford to pay fees. 

The Government should have the responsibility 

to ensure that no child is excluded from access 

to education due to fees being too high. 

Comment (Pelucy Nfambirweki): I would 

like to remind the participants that above all else, 

the children whose concerns we have heard ask 

for education to be truly free. Are we making a 

mockery of their presence and concerns by 

saying that free education is not in fact an option? 

Ms Masabane proposed a motion to adopt the strategies and recommendations as amended and the 

motion was seconded and adopted. This ended the morning session of Day 3. 


75

CLOSING SESSION 



Permanent Secretary, MWACW 

Election of OVC <strong>National</strong> Steering Committee 

Directly after the conference adopted the recommendations Ms Masabane called for the groups’ 

nominees for the incoming OVCNSC. All nominees accepted nomination and all were seconded and 

elected (see new OVCNSC members’ names and contact details on p.88). The MWACW as custodian 

of the OVC programme would elect the most appropriate person to serve as OVCNSC chairperson. 

There was a brief discussion on the question of continuity in view of the fact that only two members 

of the incoming OVCNSC had served on the outgoing OVCNSC. It was agreed that continuity could 

be assured by means of co-option. The new OVCNSC can decide whether and who to co-opt. A list of 

the members co-opted by the outgoing committee was displayed (see p.87) and the participants were 

asked whether they should all be retained as co-opted members and whether there were any other 

organisations that the committee should co-opt. There were no suggestions for new co-options and the 

plenary agreed to let the OVCNSC finalise the list in accordance with its own needs. 

A major change in the OVCNSC membership is the addition of OVC representatives nominated by 

and from the group of young people present at the conference. Each OVC member will be supported by a 

social worker serving their locality, and the two social workers were also appointed (see p.88). 

Before calling on the Deputy Minister of Women 

Affairs and Child Welfare, Hon. Marlene Mungunda, 

to deliver the closing address and vote of thanks, 

outgoing OVCNSC chairperson Ms Masabane 

expressed thanks on behalf of the committee for 

the hard work and dedication of the conference 

organising team, and particularly administrative 

assistant Esme Kheibes of FHI who was “really the 

backbone of the conference”. The outgoing committee 

had also asked Ms Masabane to expressly 

thank all the MoHSS staff who had supported the 

committee throughout the year. 

Before delivering the closing address and vote of 

thanks Ms Mungunda presented a certificate to 

each outgoing member and co-opted member in 

recognition of their good service over the past year. 

As each member was called up the participants 

responded with a cry of “Ooooh Meme!” or “Ooooh 

Tate!” as directed by Ms Mungunda, making this a 

very lively and jovial part of the conference. 

Ms Masabane thanked the outgoing members 

for their service, adding that she had found them a 

pleasure to work with and their commitment would 

always stand as inspiration and a shining example 

to her. Ms Mungunda thanked Ms Masabane for her 

part and the plenary responded with loud applause. 

Petronella Masabane (left) and Esme Kheibes. 

Hon. Marlene Mungunda (right) leading the plenary 

in singing and dancing to a song well known to 

Namibians – “Together We Can Make It”. 


Session chairperson Ulitala Hiveluah had the following few words to say before introducing the Deputy 

Minister officially. 

Chairperson’s introductory remarks 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am sure you will agree that the last three days have been challenging, 

but that the information and experience we have gathered in this conference will go a long way 

to enriching our efforts for OVC. This conference has been blessed with the participation of two 

UNICEF regional experts who have shared with us their practical experience of what has worked 

and what has failed. Let us draw on what they have told us so that we build something sustainable 

and truly effective. I personally have found this a very informative and productive meeting and on 

my own behalf I wish to thank all of you present. 

Official closing address 

and vote of thanks 

Hon. Ms Marlene Mungunda 

Deputy Minister of Women Affiars and Child Welfare 

Director of Ceremonies, Members of Parliament, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and 

Representatives of UN Agencies, Dignitaries from the regions and particularly the Regional 

Governors, Members of the OVC <strong>Conference</strong> Task Force, Participants, Children’s Representatives, 

Members of the Media, Ladies and Gentlemen – 

The Namibian nation said YES! to children by 

adopting the UN Convention on the Rights of 

the Child, and our brave nation has taken a giant 

step further by designating 28 September as the 

Day of the Namibian Child. 

For every nation, every child is a precious 

investment. Our children’s future is in our hands, 

and we will one day have to account for what 

we have done to give them food security, a safe 

and secure shelter, quality education, protection 

from abuse and crime, and very importantly, an 

example of a moral lifestyle. 

“Thank you” is a term used ordinarily; we 

teach our children at a very young age to always 

thank a person who has done them a good deed. 

As a nation we will fail in our duty if we do not 

extend our profound gratitude to the team whose 

generous contributions helped us to make a 

great success of this conference. The team 

includes a variety of stakeholders, some of them 

from across the globe. It is my humble honour 

now to extend Namibia’s gratitude to the 

following individuals, ministries and organisations 

for their contributions: 

The First Lady, Kovambo Nujoma, patron 

of OVC and the entire team 

The MoHSS, MWACW and MBESC 

FHI, UNICEF, USAID and UNESCO 

CAA, COLS, the Philippi Trust and Lifeline/ 

Childline 

The Jan Möhr Secondary School Choir 

We also thank with deep gratitude the members 

of the OVCNSC, the OVC conference task force, 

the chief social workers and the participating children 

for their time, devotion and achievements. 


77

Together we can do more! A team working 

together can do more of what is expected than 

any individual can do alone. This is exactly what 

we have to do now: show the nation what we, 

the nation, can do as a team working together 

for our children. Stories about drought and food 

shortage, AIDS, poverty and conflict dominate 

the news on Africa. Bearing in mind that charity 

begins at home, I wish to salute the applicable 

Namibian individuals and groups for making the 

first move on the home front instead of waiting 

for others to care for what belongs to us all, and 

our international partners for the resources and 

tools that made the first move possible in fighting 

for this just and very important cause. These 

individuals and groups have given us a purpose 

and direction, and we must continue on this path 

of working together in implementing, monitoring 

and evaluating. Namibia has fought many brave 

battles, and we defeated the enemy. A brave 

nation that fights disease and poverty will never 

fight in vain. Together we are going to crush these 

enemies! People who stand up for themselves 

are respected. We have to walk the extra mile 

to make a difference in the lives of the marginalised, 

the suffering, the hungry, the poor, the 

The participants sang the national anthem and the conference was closed. 

naked, the sick and the orphaned. Jesus never 

went to where the diamonds were shining; he 

went to where people were suffering in need. I 

humbly request the private sector and business 

community also to spread the word and help us 

renew and strengthen our culture of sharing and 

caring. Let us share with the have-nots; let us 

not just talk but walk the talk; let each of us ask 

ourselves what we have done in the past week, 

month, year or decade to help at least one child 

in need. We can commit ourselves as individuals 

to contributing, for example, a school uniform, 

pair of shoes or book to one or two children in 

a particular community so as to enable them to 

complete their schooling. We can offer a friendly 

smile and warm eyes that vulnerable children 

would remember for the rest of their lives as a 

smile or eyes that helped them to develop into 

balanced, caring, loving people. 

Finally, our thanks and appreciation to our 

President, His Excellency Sam Nujoma, who 

puts children first. 

Thank you all for caring and for being here 

today. 

LONG LIVE THE CULTURE OF SHARING 

AND CARING! 


Official reports and policy documents 

Social Impact Assessment and Policy Analysis 

Corporation (SIAPAC) (Pty) Ltd (2002). A 

Situation Analysis of Orphan Children in Namibia 

(April 2002). Report on the study commissioned 

by the MoHSS and UNICEF. Windhoek: 

MoHSS. 

MoHSS (2002). “Draft Policy Issues Surrounding 

OVC”. Mimeo (May 2002). 

Directorate of Developmental Welfare Services 

(2002). “Orphans and Vulnerable Children Five- 

Year Strategic Plan 2001-2006 and Programme 

Proposals 2002-2003”. Mimeo (undated). 

Booklets 

Namibian HIV & AIDS Media Campaign (joint 

venture of UNESCO, The Namibian newspaper, 

FHI & USAID) (ed.) (2001). Caring for People 

Living with HIV and AIDS: Essays by Young 

Namibians. Windhoek: UNESCO. 

Namibian HIV & AIDS Media Campaign (ed.) 

(2002). How Should we Care for our AIDS 

Orphans?: More Essays by Young Namibians. 

Windhoek: UNESCO. 

Ruusa Shipiki & Michaela Figueira (2002). Training Manual for Trainers on Will Writing and Inheritance 

in Namibia. Windhoek: AIDS Law Unit of the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC). 

Ruusa Shipiki & Michaela Figueira (2002). Your Guide on How to Write a Valid Will. Windhoek: AIDS 

Law Unit of the LAC. 

Dianne Hubbard (translated by Willem Odendaal) (2001). ’n Opsomming van die Wet op die Gelyke 

Behandeling van Getroude Persone. Windhoek: Gender Research & Advocacy Project of the LAC. 

Pamphlets 

CONFERENCE HANDOUTS 

AIDS Law Unit (n.d.). (1) Pregnancy and HIV; (2) Wills and Inheritance; (3) Promoting a human rights 

based approach to HIV/AIDS. Windhoek: LAC. 

Church Alliance for Orphans (CAFO). Information pamphlet. 

Other items 

Form for information to update manual titled Resources for Needy Children. 

UNAIDS Press Release 2002: “UNAIDS releases new data highlighting the devastating impact of AIDS 

in Africa”, Geneva, 25 June 2002. 

American Cultural Center invitation to a panel discussion on HIV/AIDS with visiting US speaker Jesse 

Milan and Namibian HIV/AIDS activist Emma Tuahepa-Kamapoa on 27 June 2002. 

Catholic AIDS Action (CAA) invitation to a “<strong>Conference</strong> on Helping Orphans and Vulnerable Children 

in the Community” on 19 August 2002. 

CAA <strong>National</strong> and Regional Office addresses and other contact details. 

Turquoise collared T-shirt with conference title on the breast pocket and conference theme on the back. 

Black nylon shoulder briefcase (designed for carrying documents and stationery) with the conference 

title on the flap. 


79

CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS 

PARTICIPANT’S NAME, POST & ORGANISATION POSTAL ADDRESS TELEPHONE FAX 

MINISTRY OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES (MOHSS) 

Hon. Dr Libertina Amathila, Minister of Health and Social 

Services 

P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2039111 221332 

Ms Batseba Katjiuongua, Director of Developmental 

Social Welfare Services 

P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2032859 227607 

Ms Petronella Masabane, Deputy Director of Social 

Welfare Services, DDSWS 

P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2032857 227607 

Mr E Biwa, Deputy Director of Social Assistance, DDSWS P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2039111 227607 

Ms Lentina Baardt, Medical Social Worker PO Box 70192 Khomasdal 061-297814 

Mr Johan van Wyk, Data Analyst P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 

Mr Risto Pomoell, Co-ordinator, HSSSP2 PO Box 8600 Windhoek 061-2032551 231333 

Ms Magda Oliphant, Programme Manager, DDSWS P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2032889 227607 

Ms Lisa van Rhyn, Programme Manager, DDSWS P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2032886 227607 

Ms R Adams, Programme Manager, DDSWS P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2039111 

Ms Verona du Preez, Assistant Programme Manager, 

Social Welfare Information System (SWIS), DDSWS 

P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2039111 

Ms Helen Mouton, Assistant Programme Manager, 

DDSWS 

P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2039111 

Ms N Mavulu, Control Officer, Directorate Social Assistance P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2032642 227607 

Ms Erica van Rooi, Chief Social Worker, Hardap Region PO Box 238 Mariental 063-242803 242727 

Ms A Louw, Chief Social Worker, Karas Region P/Bag 2101 Keetmanshoop 063-223388 222590 

Ms L Cronje, Chief Social Worker, Erongo Region P/Bag 5004 Swakopmund 064-412466 404780 

Ms EM Yambuua, Chief Social Worker, Caprivi Region P/Bag 1081 Katima Mulilo 066-252024 253565 

Mr A Tjikuzu, Chief Social Worker, Kunene Region P/Bag 3003 Opuwo 065-273026 273022 

Ms Loide Nekundi, Chief Social Worker, Ohangwena 

Region 

P/Bag 5538 Oshakati 065-221391 220162 

Ms A Kangayi, Chief Social Worker, Kavango Region P/Bag 2094 Rundu 066-256025 255037 

Ms HL Andjamba, Chief Social Worker, Oshana Region P/Bag 5538 Oshana 065-221391/2 220162 

Ms Ellen van der Berg, Chief Social Worker, Omaheke 


PO Box 147 Gobabis Cell 081-2426353 562940 

Ms R Andrew, Chief Social Worker, Otjozondjupa Region P/Bag 2612 Otjiwarongo 067-300909 302078 

Ms M Kandjii, Chief Social Worker, Oshikoto Region P/Bag 2007 Tsumeb 067-224050 22079 

Mr ES Kavela, Chief Social Worker, Omusati Region P/Bag 504 Otaupi 065-250318 251020 

Ms Shirley Wemmert, Senior Social Worker, Khomas 


P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2032719 222886 

Dr Z Chirwa, Acting Regional Medical Officer, Caprivi 


P/Bag 1081 Katima Mulilo 066-253034 253565 

Mr C Ashipala, Acting Regional Medical Officer, Karas 


PO Box 1169 Keetmanshoop 063-223388 22590 

Mr M Likando, Regional Medical Officer, Kavango Region P/Bag 2094 Rundu 066-255025 255037 

Ms Hilma Kashupi, Acting Regional Medical Officer, 

Oshana Region 

P/Bag 1199 Oshakati 065-223366 221390 


MINISTRY OF WOMEN AFFAIRS AND CHILD WELFARE (MWACW) 

Hon. Ms Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Minister of Women 

Affairs and Child Welfare 

P/Bag 13359 Windhoek 061-2833111 220528 

Hon. Ms Marlene Mungunda, Deputy Minister of Women 

Affairs and Child Welfare 

P/Bag 13359 Windhoek 061-2833111 220528 

Ms Ulitala Hiveluah, Permanent Secretary P/Bag 13359 Windhoek 061-2833111 220528 

Ms Adolfine Mushimba, Deputy Director, Community and P/Bag 13359 Windhoek 

Early Childhood Development 

061-2833126 221304 

Ms Rosina Mabakeng, Deputy Director, Division 

Women/Family Development and Gender Mainstreaming 

PO Box 30523 Windhoek Cell 081 24299900 

Ms Mariane Shalumbu, Chief Community Liaison Officer 

for Omusati Region 

P/Bag 523 Ombalantu 065-251141 251189 

Ms Francina Soul, ECD Trainer, Community Liaison Office P/Bag 13359 Windhoek 061-2833116 221304 

Ms Eva Neels, Deputy Director, Community Participatory 

Assessment and Project Monitoring 

PO Box 30332 Pionierspark 061-2833113 221304 

Ms Hilde Hijamutiti, Liaison Officer, Omaheke Region P/Bag 2277 Gobabis 062-564687 562432 

Mr Simon Kangootui, Chief Liaison Officer, Omaheke 


P/Bag 2277 Gobabis 062-564685 562432 

Mr Alfred Oxurub, Acting Chief Community Liaison Officer, 

Erongo Region 

PO Box 2701 Swakopmund 064-462580 403294 

Ms Kornelia Shilunga, Chief Liaison Officer, Oshakati and PO Box 70 Oshakati 

Omusati Regions 

065-222447 221495 

Mr J Ndumba, Chief Liaison Officer, Rundu Office PO Box 2085 Rundu 066-256771 256776 

Ms C Udjombala, Chief Liaison Officer, Oshikoto Office PO Box 2020 Tsumeb 067-220344 222678 

Ms H Afrikaner, Chief Liaison Officer, Karas Region PO Box 384 Keetmanshoop 063-225945 225945 

Ms Emilia Nakwatumba, Liaison Officer, Ohangwena 


PO Box 13199 Eenhana 065-263047 263102 

Ms B Urika, Chief Liaison Officer, Otjozondjupa Region PO Box 1911 Otjiwarongo 067-301269 302419 

Ms Hertha Kashele, Chief Liaison Officer, Eenhana Office PO Box 13199 Eenhana 065-263047 263047 

Ms M Mahoto, Chief Liaison Officer, Katima Mulilo Office PO Box 1416 Katima 066-254121 252126 

Ms Monika Tjizembiza, Chief Liaison Officer, Opuwo P/Bag 502 Opuwo 065-273409 273032 

Ms Spendu Onesmus, <strong>National</strong> ECD Co-ordinator P/Bag 13359 Windhoek 061-2833132 221304 

Ms Ruusa Kayoo, Chief Community Liaison Officer, 

Ohangwena Region 

PO Box 13092 Ohangwena 065-263062 263033 

Ms Mosioline Kasiringua, Chief Community Liaison 

Officer, Otjozondjupa Region 

P/Bag 2617 Otjiwarongo 067-301269 304037 

Ms Elfriede Kalira, Chief Community Liaison Officer, 

Kavango Region 

PO Box 17 Rundu 066-255939 255603 

Mr Elliot Muchila, Chief Community Liaison Officer, Caprivi P/Bag 5002 Katima Mulilo 066-252286 253619 

Ms Belinda Karuaera, Development Planner PO Box 21142 Wanaheda 061-2833117 

Mr Lewis Awiseb, Chief Clerk PO Box 21142 Wanaheda 061-2833117 

Ms Kauna Ekandjo, Regional Chief Community Liaison 

Officer, Oshana Region 

P/Bag 5543 Oshakati 065-220432 220432 

MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, WATER AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT 

Mr KM Sibolile, Chief Agricultural Extension Officer P/Bag 13184 Windhoek 061-2087535 2087785 

Ms Alice Mwangi, Agricultural Extension Officer P/Bag 5005 Katima Mulilo 066- 253015 

Ms Isabella Katjiruru, Chief Clerk PO Box 714 Gobabis 062-564140 

MINISTRY OF BASIC EDUCATION, SPORT AND CULTURE (MBESC) 

Mr Joseph Nangolo, Deputy Director, Primary Education P/Bag 13186 Windhoek 061-2933106 2933922 

Ms Claudia Tjikuua, Chief Education Officer P/Bag 13186 Windhoek 061-2933277 2933922 

Ms Mary Collins, HIV Advisor P/Bag 13186 Windhoek 061-2933207 2933922 

Ms Susanchen Dippenaar, <strong>National</strong> School Counsellor P/Bag 13186 Windhoek 061-217975 217974 

Ms Sanet Cloete, Regional School Counsellor, Ondangwa 

West Education Region 

P/Bag 2020 Ondangwa 065-240156 240175 

Ms Evy George, Regional School Counsellor, Windhoek 

Education Region 

P/Bag 13236 Windhoek 061-2934331 231367 

Ms Maree Smit, Regional School Counsellor, 

Keetmanshoop Education Region 

P/Bag 2160 Keetmanshoop 063-222811 224503 

Mr Jason Shamena Haihambo, Senior School Counsellor, 

Ondangwa East Education Region 

PO Box 2028 Ondangwa 065-240024 240315 


81

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INFORMATION AND BROADCASTING 

Ms Rianne Selle, Director of Print Media, Directorate 

Information and Broadcasting; Co-ordinator, Multi-media 

Campaign on Violence Against Women and Children 

P/Bag 13344 Windhoek 061-222246 224937 

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE 

Ms Elsie Beukes, Master of the High Court P/Bag 13190 Windhoek 061-2921202 236802 

Ms Leoni du Plessis, Deputy Master of the High Court P/Bag 13190 Windhoek 061-2921202 236802 

Adv. Herman January, Office of the Prosecutor-General P/Bag 13191 Windhoek 061-2921318 221127 

Mr Petrus Unengu, Chief Lower Courts P/Bag 13302 Windhoek 061-2921111 236802 

Mr Alfred Siboleka, Magistrate P/Bag 13302 Windhoek 061-2805331 224347 

REGIONAL AIDS CO-ORDINATORS 

Mr Johannes Haufiku, Oshikoto Regional Council P/Bag 1116 Tsumeb 067-222997 220729 

Mr Joseph Mbuche, Caprivi Regional Council P/Bag 5002 Katima Mulilo 066-253046 253916 

Mr Tobias Iyambo, Erongo Regional Council P/Bag 5019 Swakopmund 064-404880/ 

412700 

412701 

Mr Tommy Kaereho, Otjozondjupa Regional Council PO Box 1682 Otjiwarongo 067-303702 302742 

Mr R Kavendjii, Omaheke Regional Council P/Bag 2277 Gobabis 062-563191 562432 

Ms N Ekaku, Khomas Regional Council PO Box 3379 Windhoek 061-221441 220317 

Ms Denise Cosgrove, Karas Regional Council PO Box 384 Keetmanshoop 063-222068 223538 

Ms N Ngatjiheue, Kunene Regional Council P/Bag 502 Opuwo 065-273139 273077 

Ms J Hamutwe, Ohangwena Regional Council P/Bag 13185 Eenhana 065-263021 263033 

Mr P Mundjele, Omusati Regional Council P/Bag 523 Outapi 065-251019 251078 

Ms Albertina Haneb, Oshana Regional Council P/Bag 5543 Oshakati 065-220441 221292 

Mr Bartholomeus Pieters, Hardap Regional Council P/Bag 2017 Mariental 063-240673 240527 

OTHER GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVES 

Hon. Ms Rosalina Namises, Member of Parliament – 

<strong>National</strong> Assembly 

P/Bag 13323 Windhoek 061-2882525 226899 

Mr B Sibalatani, Caprivi Regional Governor P/Bag 5002 Katima Mulilo 066-253046 253619 

Mr S Nuujoma, Erongo Regional Governor P/Bag 5019 Swakopmund 064-405420 412201 

Mr S Goliath, Karas Regional Governor PO Box 384 Keetmanshoop 063-222068 223538 

Mr S Karupu, Kavango Regional Governor P/Bag 2124 Rundu 066-255396 255036 

Mr JA Pandeni, Khomas Regional Governor PO Box 3379 Windhoek 061-221441 220317 

Mr S Tjongarero, Kunene Regional Governor P/Bag 502 Opuwo 065-273139 273077 

Mr B Mwaningange, Ohangwena Regional Governor P/Bag 13185 Eenhana 065-263021 263033 

Ms L McLeod, Omaheke Regional Governor P/Bag 2277 Gobabis 062-563191 562432 

Mr S Kayone, Omusati Regional Governor P/Bag 523 Outapi 065-251019 251078 

Mr C Kashuupulwa, Oshana Regional Governor P/Bag 5543 Oshakati 065-220441 221292 

Mr V Kamanya, Oshikoto Regional Governor P/Bag 1116 Tsumeb 067-221435 220729 

Ms G Uushona, Otjozondjupa Regional Governor P/Bag 1682 Otjiwarongo 067-303702 302742 

Mr Peter Endjambi, Omusati Regional Councillor P/Bag 523 Outapi 065-251019 251078 

Mr Alberth Tjiuma, Chief Clerk, Kunene Regional Council P/Bag 502 Opuwo 065-273446 273077 

Mr WT Biyasi, Co-ordinator, Council of Traditional Leaders PO Box 120 Windhoek 061-271046/ 

Cell 081-1249808 

271046 

Rev. Tjipuesa Mutirua, Council of Traditional Leaders PO Box 120 Windhoek 061-271046/ 

Cell 081-1249808 

271046 

Rev. Julius Tjiueza, Council of Traditional Leaders PO Box 120 Windhoek 061-271046/ 

Cell 081-1249808 

271046 


CATHOLIC AIDS ACTION (CAA) 

Dr Lucy Steinitz, <strong>National</strong> Co-ordinator PO Box 11525 Windhoek 061-276350 248126 

Ms Francis van Rooi, Special Projects Officer PO Box 11525 Windhoek 061-276350 

Ms Caroline Thomas, Special Projects Officer PO Box 11525 Windhoek 061-276350 

Ms Ingrid Louise, Orphan Care Specialist, Khomas Region PO Box 8325 Bachbrecht 061-234221 218665 

Ms Hellena Munghono, Prevention Assistant Officer, 

Omusati Region 

PO Box 7 Oshakati 065-254539 

Mr Joseph Stramish, Regional Representative, Erongo 


PO Box 158 Usakos 064-530781 530782 

Ms Fredrika Herero, Regional Representative, Hardap 


PO Box 347 Mariental Cell 081-2614273 242396 

Mr Gerrit Nantes, Volunteer PO Box 282 Karasburg 

Sr Agnes Mouton, Regional Representative, Karas Region PO Box 56 Keetmanshoop 063-226061 226061 

Ms Maria Breeuwsma, Social Worker, Khomas Region PO Box 1215 Windhoek 061-234221 218665 

Sr Petronella Shetunyenga, Regional Representative, 

Omusati Region 

PO Box 7 Oshakati 065-254539 254539 

Ms Diana Etuhole, Orphan Care Specialist, Oshakati PO Box 1290 Oshakati 065-222851 222851 

Mr Rodger van Wyk, Prevention Assistant Officer, 

Khomas Region 

PO Box 11525 Windhoek 061-276350 

Ms Jane Wachila, Regional Representative, Caprivi Region P/Bag 1019 Katima Mulilo 066-252129 252129 

Mr Phillemon Haingura, Prevention Assistant Officer, 

Kavango Region 

P/Bag 1294 Rundu 066-255913 255184 

Sr Margaret Shitango, Regional Representative, Kavango 


PO Box 2075 Rundu 066-255913 

Ms Gloria Sishwashwa, Volunteer, Caprivi Region PO Box 2293 Katima Mulilo 252129 

Ms Angelina Nuuyoma, Volunteer, Oshana Region PO Box 2 Oshakati 065-222851 222851 

Mr Patrick Katjito, Regional Representative, Hardap Region PO Box 4931 Rehoboth 062-524842 524842 

Ms Josephine Kuwinga, Volunteer, Hardap Region PO Box 347 Mariental 063-293070 

CHURCHES AND OTHER FAITH-BASED ORGANISATIONS (FBOs) 

Ms Selma Shejavali, Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN) PO Box 41 Windhoek 061-217621 262786 

Rev. Nangula Kathindi, CCN PO Box 41 Windhoek 061-217621 262786 

Ms Petra Fourie, Chief Social Worker, Church Benevolence 

Board (CBB), Dutch Reformed Church 

PO Box 2826 Windhoek 061-237296 227287 

Mr Jacques de Wit, Chief Social Worker, CBB PO Box 2826 Windhoek 061-237296 227287 

Ms Estelle Labuschagne, Social Worker, CBB PO Box 3307 Windhoek 061-237296 227287 

Rev. W Diergaardt, Co-ordinator, Evangelical Lutheran 

Church AIDS Programme (ELCAP) 


Rev. Dr Henry Platt, Church Alliance for Orphans (CAFO), PO Box 40468 

061-213311/ 213311 

United Reformed Church 

Ausspannplatz 

Cell 081-2527975 

Ms Brenda Johnston, Principal, The Ark, Okahandja PO Box 1034 Okahandja 062-503417 501367 

Ms Katharina Janssen, Principal, The Ark, Okahandja PO Box 1034 Okahandja 062-503417 501367 

Ms Sylvia Beukes, Principal, Youth for Christ PO Box 3868 Rehoboth 062-523700 501959 

Mr John Louw, House Parent , Youth for Christ PO Box 3868 Rehoboth 062-524126 524126 

Ms Fransien Louw, House Parent, Youth for Christ PO Box 3868 Rehoboth 062-524126 524126 

Ms Joyce van Ness, Children’s Worker, Child Evangelism 

Fellowship 

PO Box 8141 Bachbrecht Cell 081-2513093 247135 

Peter and Tertu Banda, House Parents, Youth for Christ PO Box 1034 Okahandja 062-503417 501367 

Rev. SW Pienaar, Moderator, Dutch Reformed Church PO Box 1165 Windhoek 

Ms TM Olivier, Social Worker, CBB PO Box 820 Walvis Bay 064-461962 205315 

Ms F Els, Social Worker, CBB PO Box 820 Walvis Bay 064-205857 205315 

Ms C Swiegers, Social Worker, CBB PO Box 189 Keetmanshoop 063-222130 222130 

Ms M Barkhuizen, Social Worker, CBB PO Box 663 Tsumeb 

Rev. Roy Wallace, Gospel Outreach, Khomas Region PO Box 98444 Windhoek 061-222325 

Rev. Cornelia Nell, Methodist Church PO Box 23440 Windhoek 


83

OTHER NATIONAL NGOs, CBOs AND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 

Mr Sebastian Timothy, Project Manager, SOS Children’s 

Village Association of Namibia (based at SOS Hermann 

Gmeiner Technical High School) 

Ms Dianne Hubbard, Co-ordinator, Gender Research and 

Advocacy Project of the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) 

Ms Olga Tjiurutue, Trainer, Women’s Action for 

Development (WAD), Otjozondjupa Region 

Box 4242, Vineta 

Swakopmund 

064-403872 462917 


P/Bag 2104 Okakarara 067-317041 317041 

Ms Gissellah Babsy Ndjao, Trainer, WAD, Hardap Region PO Box 3027 Rehoboth 062-524329 524329 

Mr Chris Moller, Michelle McLean Children's Trust PO Box 31248 Windhoek 061-240807/9 240808 

Ms Julianne Breitenfeld, Technical Advisor, AIDS Care 

Trust of Namibia 


Dr J Fitter, Director, GTZ PO Box 8016 Bachbrecht 061-222447 222427 

Mr Clive Willemse, Director, Change of Lifestyle Project 

(COLS) 

PO Box 10509 Khomasdal 061-244947 244947 

Mr Quintin Platt, Child and Youth Care Officer, COLS PO Box 10509 Khomasdal 061-244947 244947 

Mr M Haikali, Fathers’ Union PO Box 20379 Windhoek 061-218439 218439 

Mr Nestor Ya Toivo, Co-ordinator, Katonyala PO Box 1238 Onandjokwe 

State Hospital 

065-240111 240688 

Ms Ngondi Ngatjiheue, Kunene AIDS Care Organisation 

(KACO) 

PO Box 3003 Opuwo 065-273026 273022 

Adv. Michaela Figueira, Co-ordinator, AIDS Law Unit, 



Mr Hans Stramisch, Namibian Men Planned Parenthood 

(NAMPPAN) 

PO Box 1295 Okahandja Cell 081-2551361 504330 

Mr Ricardo Stramisch, Community Volunteer, NAMPPAN PO Box 1295 Okahandja 504330 

Mr Kwani Huarakia, <strong>National</strong> Early Childhood Development 

– NGO Association 


Rev. Ngeno-Zach Nakamhela, Namibian Men for Change 

(NAMEC) 

PO Box 50190 Bachbrecht 061-222323 226775 

Ms Mariane Olivier, Training Co-ordinator, Philippi Trust 

Namibia 


Mr Nortin Brendell, OVC Co-ordinator and Senior Trainer, 

Philippi Trust Namibia 


Mr Leonard Diergaardt, <strong>National</strong> Director, SOS Children’s 

Village Association of Namibia 


Ms Amanda Kruger, Co-ordinator, Lifeline/Childline 

Namibia 


Mr Immanuel Goraseb, Regional Co-ordinator, 

Lifeline/Childine, Kavango Region 

PO Box 930 Rundu Cell 081-1271913 

Ms Selma Mpinge, Community Activator, Lifeline/Childline, 

Ondangwa Office 

PO Box 2928 Ondangwa 065-246252 

Ms Ottilie Abrahams, Chairperson, Namibian Women’s 

Association (NAWA) 


Ms AM Ashby, Namibia Resource Consultants (NRC) PO Box 11607 Klein 

Windhoek 

061-230679 

Mr Gerald Witbooi, community OVC supporter PO Box 70764 Khomasdal 061-265236 

Mr Martyn Price, Development Worker, Tate Kalunga 

Mweneka Omukithi wo ‘AIDS’ Moshilongo Shetu 

(TKMOAMS) 

PO Box 2861 Oshakati 065-220384 221338 

Ms Nicolette Bessinger, Programme Head, Namibia Red 

Cross Society 


Ms Wendy Hilongwa, Regional Officer, Namibia Red 

Cross Society, Ohangwena 

PO Box 13014 Eenhana 065-263177 263006 

Ms Polly Helmut, Administrative Assistant, Namibia Red 

Cross Society, Kavango 

PO Box 1562 Rundu 066-256213 

Ms Irene Arnald, German Red Cross, seconded to Namibia 

Red Cross Society, Ohangwena Region 

c/o PO Box 346 Windhoek 

Ms Anna Beukes, Project Co-ordinator, Urban Trust of 

Namibia 

P/Bag 13291 Windhoek 061-248708/10 248411 

Mr Bjarne Risager, Development Assistance from People 

to People (DAPP) – Child Aid 

PO Box 135 Outapi 065-250067 250067 

Mr Mike Yates, Katutura Youth Enterprise Centre (KAYEC) PO Box 5167 Ausspannplatz 061-272670 

Ms Ruusa Shipiki, Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) PO Box 604 Windhoek 061-223356 234953 


Dr Marita Grobler, Head of Department of Social Work, 

University of Namibia (UNAM) 

PO Box 9799 Eros 061-2063708 2063806 

Ms Eveline Nuujoma-Kalomo, Lecturer, UNAM PO Box 2302 Windhoek 061-2063713 2063806 

Ms Salenia Engelbrecht, Social Worker, Polytechnic of 

Namibia 

P/Bag 13388 Windhoek 061 2072453 2072458 

Ms Janet Ananias, Lecturer, UNAM P/Bag 13301 Windhoek 061-2063711 2063806 

Ms Heidi Beinhauer, Director, Association for Children with 

Language, Speech and Hearing Impediments of Namibia 

(CLASH) 


Ms Christine Aochamus, Vice-President, Girl Child Project PO Box 3590 Windhoek 061-263665 

Ms Lois Hobson, Director, Peace Corps PO Box 6862 Windhoek 061-226525 224211 

Ms Sonja Reynolds-Cooper, Associate Director, Peace 

Corps 


Mr Benhoff Makina, OVC focal point and community PO Box 3320 Rehoboth 062-176161/2 (telephone 

leader, Rehoboth, Hardap Region 

booth outside house) 

Ms Elsabe van Wyk, Founding Member, Velile Trust P/Bag 12039 Ausspannplatz 061-2020000/ 

Cell 081-2490083 

2020111 

Ms Lorraine Strong, Founding Member, Velile Trust P/Bag 12039 Ausspannplatz 061-2020000 2020111 

Mr Venancius Rukero, Founding Member, Velile Trust P/Bag 12039 Ausspannplatz Cell 081-2490083 2020111 

Mr Richardt Xam-//Goaseb, Co-ordinator, Orwetoveni 

OVC Project 

PO Box 1729 Otjiwarongo 067-304361 304963 

Ms Wilhelmien Isaaks, Founding Member, Annemarie 

HIV/ AIDS Caring Organisation 

PO Box 9231 Eros 061-272769 272769 

Ms Beverley Figaji, Director, Multi-Purpose Centre, Walvis PO Box 7243 Walvis Bay 

Bay 

064-200219 200291 

Ms Rosemarie Goagoses, Women Support Women PO Box 7383 Katutura 061-224984 

UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM IN NAMIBIA 

Ms Khin-Sandi Lwin, Country Representative, UNICEF PO Box 1706 Windhoek 061-2046111 2046206 

Mr Stanley Phiri, OVC Regional Advisor for East, Southern, c/o PO Box 1706 Windhoek 061-2046111 2046206 

West, Central Africa & Global, UNICEF Regional Office or 

Ms Pelucy Nfambirweki, OVC Regional Advisor for East PO Box 44145 Nairobi, (+254) (+2) 2046206 

and Southern Africa, UNICEF (Regional Office, Nairobi) Kenya 

267333 

Ms Lavinia Shikongo, Communications Officer, UNICEF PO Box 1206 Windhoek 061-2046111 2046206 

Ms Doris Roos, Child Rights Officer, UNICEF PO Box 1706 Windhoek 061-2046111 2046206 

Ms Judy Natjila, Assistant Project Officer, UNICEF PO Box 1706 Windhoek 061-2046111 2046206 

Ms Silke Felton, Education/Protection Officer, UNICEF PO Box 1706 Windhoek 061-2046111 2046206 

Ms Mulunesh Tennegashaw, Country Representative, 

UNAIDS 

P/Bag 13329 Windhoek 061-2046219 2046203 

Ms Diana Swain, Mission Director, USAID P/Bag 12028 Windhoek 061-225935 227006 

Ms C Kirk Lazell, Health and Population Officer, USAID P/Bag 12028 Windhoek 061-225935 227006 

Ms J Badcock, UNDP P/Bag 13329 Windhoek 061-2046111 2046203 

Mr Kemal Mustafa, UNFPA P/Bag 13329 Windhoek 061-2046111 2046204 

Mr Johny McClain, Country Representative, UNESCO P/Bag 24519 Windhoek 061-2917000 2917220 

Mr Peter Mandara, Country Representative, WHO PO Box 3444 Windhoek 061-204 6304 2046202 

OTHER INTERNATIONAL NGOs, DONOR AGENCIES AND CONTRIBUTING EXPERTS 

Ms Rose De Buysscher, Country Director, Family Health PO Box 90199 Klein 061-239463 239461 

International (FHI) 

Windhoek 

Dr Fred van der Veen, Regional Technical Advisor, FHI PO Box 90199 Klein 

Windhoek 

061-239463 239461 

Mr Paul Pope, OVC/CAA Technical Advisor, FHI PO Box 90199 Klein 

Windhoek 

061-239463 239461 

Mr Andrew Muwonge, Senior Consultant, Southern 

Consultants c.c. 


Dr David Cownie, Managing Director, Social Impact 

Assessment and Policy Analysis Corporation (SIAPAC) 


Ms Petra Pellfalk, European Union (EU) PO Box 24443 Windhoek 061-2026000 2026224 

Mr Emmerentia Leonard, Embassy of Sweden – Swedish 

International Development Agency (SIDA) 


Ms Deedee Yates, Project Liaison Officer, Ford Foundation PO Box 11857 Windhoek 061-249759/ 

Cell 081-1281223 

249759 


85

PRIVATE SECTOR REPRESENTATIVES 

Ms A Williams-Adonis, Health and Safety Officer, Namibia PO Box 1435 Windhoek 

Beverages 

Cell 081-2418315 216570 

Mr J Van Zyl, Human Resource Manager, Namibia 

Beverages 


Ms Simonee Shihepo, Chamber of Mines PO Box 2895 Windhoek 061-231480 222638 

YOUTH REPRESENTATIVES 

Ms Welma Booysen, Oshikoto Region PO Box 1128 Tsumeb 067-220949/178386 

Ms Josephine Frans, Karas Region PO Box 1617 Keetmanshoop 063-222803 

Ms Monaliza Garises, Kunene Region c/o sister at cell 

081-13318076 

Ms Anne-Mari Ises, Otjozondjupa Region – OVCNSC member PO Box 1034 Okahandja 062-503417 

Cell 081-2474498 

Ms Bonita Josob, Hardap Region PO Box 603 Mariental c/o Empelheim 

Secondary School 

Ms Gerfred Linyando, Kavango Region PO Box 504 

Nyangana Junior Secondary 

School 

066-256025 

Ms Sophia Mauha, Erongo Region PO Box 105 Omaruru c/o SI Gobs Senior 

Secondary School 

Ms Liana Mbako, Oshikoto Region – OVCNSC member PO Box 388 Tsumeb 067-222693 

Ms Anton Ngundja, Kavango Region PO Box 11 Rundu 066-256025 

Ms Kornelia Sakeus, Ohangwena Region PO Box 501 

Engela Secondary School 

Ms Petrah Simwanza, Caprivi Region PO Box 1019 

Kizito College 

Mr Mavezupi Tjiuma, Omusati Region PO Box 3019 

Omakange Junior Secondary 

School 

065-273159 

Mr Joseph Williams, Ohangwena Region c/o Eembahi Combined 

School 

065-253025 


OUTGOING AND INCOMING 

OVC VC NATIONAL STEERING COMMITTEES 

(OVCNSCs) 

Outgoing OVCNSC 

OUTGOING OVC NATIONAL STEERING COMMITTEE (OVCNSC)* 

Ms Petronella Masabane (Chairperson), Deputy Director 

of Social Welfare Services, DDSWS 

P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2032857 227607 

Ms Betsy Basson, Senior Social Worker, DDSWS <strong>National</strong> 

Office 

P/Bag 13198 Windhoek 061-2032888 227607 

Mr Cecil John Clarke 

Coordinator, Catholic AIDS Action Erongo Region 

PO Box 252 Walvis Bay 064-205492 205492 

Ms Salinia Engelbrecht 

Social Worker, MOHSS Gobabis Regional Office 

P/Bag 2277 Gobabis 062-563191 562432 

Mr Jason Shamena Haihambo 

School Councillor, Ministry of Basic Education, Sport and 

Culture, Ondangwa East Education Region 

PO Box 2028 Ondangwa 065-240024 240315 

Ms Amanda Kruger 

Co-ordinator, Lifeline/Childline 


Ms Eveline Nuujoma-Kalomo 

PO Box 2302 Windhoek 061-2033033 / 227607 

Windhoek Women & Child Protection Unit 

221222 

Ms Mariane Shalumbu, Chief Community Liaison Officer 

for Omusati Region, MWACW 

P/Bag 523 Ombalantu 065-251141 251189 

Ms Selma Shejavali 

Council of Churches in Namibia (CNN) 


Mr Sebastian Timothy 

Director, Destiny Haven 

Box 10131 Khomasdal 061-213083/4/5 213047 

Ms Erika van Rooi 

Chief Social Worker, MOHSS Hardap Regional Office 

PO Box 238 Mariental 063-242803 242727 

* Organisation, post and contact details may have changed – check against the current details in the preceding lists. 

Co-opted members of the outgoing committee 

Church Benevolence Board (CBB) 


Multimedia Campaign on Violence Against Women and Children (MMC) 

University of Namibia (UNAM) – social research 

Michelle McLean Children’s Trust 

Master of the High Court of Namibia 

Commissioner of Child Welfare, Government of Namibia 

Parliamentary Human Rights Committee 

Additional staff of the MBESC 

Representatives of FHI and UNICEF 


87

Rev. W Diergaardt 

Co-ordinator, Evangelical Lutheran Church 

AIDS Programme (ELCAP) 

Mr Jason Shamena Haihambo 

Senior School Counsellor, Ondangwa East 

Education Region, MBESC 

Ms Albertina Haneb 

Regional AIDS Co-ordinator, Oshana 

Regional Council 

Ms Anne-Mari Ises 

Young person, to be supported by 

Ms R Andrew 

Chief Social Worker for Otjozondjupa 

Region, DDSWS, MoHSS 

Ms Eveline Nuujoma-Kalomo 

Lecturer, University of Namibia 

Mr Benhoff Makina 

OVC focal point and community leader, 

Rehoboth, Hardap Region 

Ms Liana Mbako, 

Young person, to be supported by 

Ms M Kandjii 

Chief Social Worker for Oshikoto Region, 

DDSWS, MoHSS 

Ms Alice Mwangi 

Agricultural Extension Officer, Ministry of 

Agriculture, Water and Rural Development 

Ms Mariane Olivier 

Training Co-ordinator, 

Philippi Trust Namibia 

Rev. Dr Henry Platt 

Church Alliance for Orphans (CAFO), 

United Reformed Church 

Mr Venancius Rukero 

Founding Member, Velile Trust 

Ms Francis van Rooi, 

Special Projects Officer, Catholic AIDS 

Action 

Incoming OVCNSC 

PO Box 3952 

Windhoek 

PO Box 2028 

Ondangwa 

P/Bag 5543 

Oshakati 

PO Box 1034 

Okahandja 

PO Box 785 

Otjiwarongo 

PO Box 2302 

Windhoek 

PO Box 3320 

Rehoboth 

PO Box 388 

Tsumeb 

P/Bag 2004 

Tsumeb 

P/Bag 5005 

Katima Mulilo 

PO Box 4447 

Windhoek 

PO Box 40468 

Ausspannplatz 

P/Bag 12039 

Ausspannplatz 

PO Box 11525 

Windhoek 

062-525209 

coordinator-elcap@iway.na 

065-240024 

065-220441 

062-503417 / Cell 081-2474498 

067-303660 

061-2063713 

ekalomo@mail.unam.na 

062-176161/2 

(telephone booth outside house) 

067-222693 

067-220991 

066-253015 

alicem@mighty.co.za 

061-259291 

philippi@iafrica.com.na 

061-213311 / 081-2527975 

hplatt@namibnet.com 

Cell 081-2490083 

061-276350 

francis@caa.org.na 

240315 

221292 

303966 

2063806 

221370 

276364

2nd National Conference on Orphans and Other ... - FHI 360

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