This research reported on the targeting approaches used in social protection interventions for the livelihood of the most vulnerable children. Intervention organizations mainly adopted three types of targeting approaches : 1) the community-based approach, which was the most widely used, 2) identifying children and their households based on a case-by-case basis through some kind of proxy means test using criteria set by the community or intervention organization, 3) identifying children based on their demographic characteristics. It was revealed in the findings that the majority of the interventions targeted orphans living in poor households, children living on the streets, labourers, and those living with very old caretakers. In most cases, NGOs and FBOs targeted children by combining various mechanisms. The national guideline was not used by NGOs and FBOs as it is extensively loaded with activities and expected outcomes (village/street level) that are too ambitious, which makes its application difficult given existing organizational, human, and financial capacities. Thus, the guideline was poorly implemented, even for the identification exercise led by the local government authorities. The findings clearly show poor participation of children in matters that affect them, with 80% of them not involved in any stage of the process and 84.7% not involved in selecting MVC representatives in the village/street MVCC and district MVC forum.
