The Eden Valley Foster Care Mission serves the needs of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in the Iringa region of Tanzania by strengthening the capacity of extended families and communities to care for them, and by empowering them through education.

EFCM assists schools and informal foster care homes to better provide for the needs of the community's OVC. By filling in gaps in resources from school-based programs and foster care provided by relatives, EVFCM is able to leverage its resources and support the material and educational needs of over 800 children at a time, across 7 towns in the Iringa region.

In addition to helping the community provide for the basic needs of its OVC, EVFCM seeks to empower these children to lead successful, self-sufficient lives and break the destructive cycles causing OVC, by providing vocational education, secondary education scholarships, preventive health education, counseling, and emotional support.
 

Our Philosophy:

African cultures have long provided a safety net to orphans through extended family members. Child development experts agree that these home environments, with care and nurture provided by a family, are the best solution for orphans to grow into healthy, contributing adults. Emotional and psychological needs are better met, social development is stronger, and risky behavior is less prevalent among OVC.  Not only is informal foster care considered the best solution for psychosocial development, studies by the World Bank in Tanzania have shown that caring for orphans in the community is at least 6 times more cost effective than in institutions. For these reasons, we work to support these extended families to keep children in their communities where they can grow best.