Orphans and Vulnerable Children - CRIN

The Community’s Role in Child Development

In this activity, you will:

 Discuss how aspects of the community affect a child’s development

Facilitator’s notes:

In the last activity, you discussed how children’s environments affect their development and their
understanding of the world. In this activity, participants will explore how the community itself
affects the environment that children grow up in.

Some examples of aspects of a community that have a positive effecton a child’s development are:
 Schools
 Churches
 Caring adults who support vulnerable children by visiting child-headed households.
Some aspects of a community that have a negative effecton a child’s development, for example:
 HIV/AIDS
 the abuse and exploitation of children.

In the activity, get participants to add to these two categories (i.e. positive effects and negative effects).

For this activity you will need:

 Flipchart sheets headed Physical, Social, Intellectualand

Moral/Spiritualand markers

 Copies of Handout 2

To facilitate this activity:

1 Ask participants to think of ways that the community can
help ensure proper growth and development in children.
While they are thinking about this, put up the four sheets
of flipchart paper you have prepared.

2 Ask participants to volunteer their ideas about how a
community can help a child’s development. Write each
response under the appropriate heading – make this part of
the activity and get participants to guide under which heading
responses are placed. Review the responses. Ask participants
to look at the four categories on the flipchart paper and see
if there is anything they would like to add. For example,
if most of the suggestions have been relevant to the child’s
physical and social development, add more points to the
Intellectualand Moral/Spiritualcategories.

3 Hand out copies of Handout 2. Participants can fill in their
handouts as you review the lists.

Activity 5

45 minutes

Guide to Mobilising and Strengthening Community-Led Care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children Unit 2, Module 2^169