The HIV/AIDS crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa has left millions of children orphaned, and millions more suffer direct and indirect effects of the crisis. These children, who are potentially infected with HIV themselves, are highly vulnerable and face a number of serious risks to their health and overall well-being. This project aims to evaluate programs to improve the health and overall outcomes of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) in Mozambique. A variety of health and economic interventions to help OVCs (and the households in which they live) are being carried out in Mozambique by World Education Inc. (WEI)/Bantwana. Health interventions involve a bundle of integrated programs aimed at identifying and referring children to public health centers for HIV testing and anti-retroviral therapy (ART). Economic interventions involve village savings and loan (VSL) programs to improve income, consumption, and risk-coping in OVC households. Health, education, and economic outcomes will be measured for representative samples of OVC households in baseline (pre-treatment) and follow-up (post-treatment) surveys. Random assignment will allow estimation of the causal impact of the health interventions, the economic interventions, and the interaction of the two.
