Democratic Republic of the Congo

CapacityPlus supported the Ministry of Social Affairs, Humanitarian Action, and National Solidarity and its child protection division (DISPE) to better coordinate, monitor, and evaluate orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and strengthen the management, planning, training, and supervision of social service workers who care for the country’s estimated 8.2 million OVC. Organizational development activities focused on enabling DISPE to fully assume its role as the coordinating body for OVC-related activities and building the capacity of local staff in priority provinces (Katanga, Kinshasa, and Orientale) in leadership, monitoring and evaluation, supportive supervision, and program planning. Major achievements included developing the first-ever annual operational plan for the National Orphans and Vulnerable Children Strategy, establishing a core group of trainers with the skills and tools to train provincial-level stakeholders on the content and application of the national norms and standards for care of OVC, and creating a DISPE-led stakeholder leadership group to coordinate national OVC efforts across donors and projects. Progress on these efforts initiated through CapacityPlus continued through the global USAID 4Children Project.

As part of CapacityPlus’s work with the Nursing Education Partnership Initiative (NEPI) to improve the preservice education of nurses and midwives, the project used the Bottlenecks and Best Buys approach to conduct capacity assessments and costing studies at seven nursing and midwifery schools in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The results guided the country’s NEPI Steering Committee in developing and implementing frameworks, plans, and budgets for scaling up the quantity and quality of graduates.

Photo by Martin Ndombe