Through the project "HOME - Ghana, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone: a Network for the reception and education of vulnerable minors", these three West African countries are working together for the wellbeing of children in vulnerable situations.
The initiative aims to involve both families and communities, thus strengthening the network formed by public and private players. It will develop following three main points: to prevent the abandonment of minors, to improve the quality of the structures that receive them, and to favour the development of educational paths tailored to their needs.
The strength of HOME, funded by the Italian Commission for Intercountry Adoption (CAI), is the wide network of partners involved, who will share their experience in the field of child protection and will act jointly, while still taking into account the local context, to support the most vulnerable.
In fact, the project is carried out through the collaboration of international organizations (the NGOs AVSI, Ai.Bi., Amici Missioni Indiane, VIS – Volontariato internazionale per lo sviluppo), local organizations (Family Homes Movement, Istituto OSU Children’s Home, Child Protection Centre – Don Bosco) and the public authorities of the three countries involved.
This is a very important step in the field of international adoptions, as Marco Rossin, project manager in charge of the international adoption department at AVSI, tells us: "Almost 10 years after the last call for cooperation financed by the Commission for Intercountry Adoption, we welcome with great enthusiasm the return of this donor. This is paramount to remind us that international adoption must be subsidiary: a tool to reach where other means do not allow to arrive and that it cannot disregard an integrated intervention in each country".
To launch an initiative like HOME, echoes Michele Torri, head of Ai.Bi.'s institutional activities, "turns out to be even more necessary in a country such as Ghana, which has recently started an important path to strengthen its child protection system with the entry into force, as of January 2017, of the Hague Convention on Protection of Minors and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. A valuable support for a country that aims to make every child grow up in a family, promoting national and international reception."
