Crescere al sicuro. Growing Up Safe
Supporting the state-run orphanages of Kapisa
In Afghanistan, orphanages play a crucial role in feeding, educating, protecting, and caring for children from families living in extreme poverty. For many of these children, orphanages are often the only chance to survive, attend school, and be shielded from child exploitation and other forms of violence. For girls, they can also represent an escape from very early marriage.
According to UNICEF data, in 2022 Afghanistan was one of the worst places in the world to be a child. Approximately 15 million children were living in multidimensional poverty and facing severe food deprivation.
The boys’ orphanage in Kapisa (the smallest but most densely populated province northeast of Kabul) was at the time home to 51 highly vulnerable minors between the ages of 6 and 17, and could barely provide them with the essentials. It was impossible to accommodate the many other requests for admission.
NOVE stepped in by providing food, clothing, medicine, hygiene products, educational support, and specialized psychological care for three years, during which our staff carried out ongoing monitoring, paying particular attention to meal quality, hygiene conditions, and the overall well-being of the children. This support created the conditions needed to take in more at-risk children: by the end of the intervention, the number of children housed at the orphanage had risen to 100.
In 2024, NOVE also contributed to the opening of the first public girls’ orphanage in Kapisa province: a safe environment offering shelter and protection to 52 girls between the ages of 5 and 14. In addition to rehabilitating the facility and covering staff salaries, NOVE provided essential goods such as beds, mattresses, stoves, and firewood for winter, and launched a program of psychological and recreational support that, over the course of the year, offered individual and group sessions to the girls in residence.
The project was entirely funded by the Only the Brave Foundation.