Program Components
JeCCDO runs four major programs: Integrated Community Based Childcare, Advocacy-Networking-Research, Institutional Childcare (currently being phased out) and Organizational Development in Bahir Dar, Debre Berhan, Debre Zeit, Dire Dawa and Awasa towns.More than 500,000 children, women and other members of the communities are directly and indirectly benefiting from these programs.

These programs are discussed in sector as follows.

Program Components by Sector
JeCCDO's child right and welfare oriented development services can be fairly clustered as follows. These are support to orphan and street children, education, health and environmental sanitation, income generation, urban agriculture, environmental development, advocacy and networking, child-family reunification and reintegration, and institutional Capacity building.

Orphan and street children support
JeCCDO realizes that children have to be protected from hazardous and harmful economic activities, which often harm their health and biological development. It is obvious that orphan and street children, on top of the deprivation of other rights, are vulnerable to such dismals. JeCCDO, therefore, provides supports to orphan and street children at their original settings through the respective community and CBOs to protect children from hazardous work, abuse and exploitation.
 
Education
JeCCDO recognizes the right of children to education, information and material resources. In an attempt to ensure this right on a basis of equal opportunity, the organization facilitates the provision of integrated services of education to children in all its operational regions. The services include tutorial sessions, non-formal basic education, library services and access to information.

Health and Environmental Sanitation
JeCCDO assists in the provision of reasonable standard of health facilities for the prevention and treatment of illness of children. To that end, JeCCDO organizes Communities and Community-Based Organizations to provide health related services, such as HIV/AIDS/STIs prevention and control, maternal and child health care, malaria control, tuberculosis control, environmental sanitation and garbage collection services, etc to their respective communities.

Income Generation
The parents/family should be able to provide adequate support to the physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development of the child as every child has the right to survival and development. This will, however, be effected when the child's family is at a reasonable economic status. To this end, JeCCDO facilitates the economic enhancement of low-income families so that the families can be able to care for their children. The organization extends provision of income generation support services through CBOs and encourages urban families through engagement in various income generation schemes

Environmental Development
Among the various special care entitlements of childhood, children ought to grow in a balanced ecosystem and conserved environment. Environmental degradation being a factor that harshly contributes to the denial of the rights of children, JeCCDO facilitates Community Based Organizations to mobilize their respective communities to rehabilitate and conserve natural resources to reduce the direct and indirect effects of environmental degradation towards children's lives.

Promotion of Urban Agriculture
This package promotes household food security, job opportunity, income generation, and better health. It enables many urban households in general and children in particular, to access to adequate and balanced food. Through this package, JeCCDO helps urban households to retain their expenses that will be spent on the purchase of agricultural products and to sell some products hence generate income for their vulnerable children.

The package includes:
  » Bio intensive horticultural production
  » Improved household livestock husbandry
  » Integration of organic household waste management with organic      gardening

Advocacy, Networking and Research
The services under this program include:
 » Awareness raising on the Rights of the Child
 » Networking, sharing of experiences, and coordinating the efforts of    NGOs, GOs, and CBOs in the provision of services to orphan and    vulnerable children
 » Commissioning Researches to find out educative issues in relation to   children, and distinguish the role that children may play in the   community

Child-Family Reunification and Reintegration
JeCCDO believes that children should grow up in a family environment for their full and all-round personal development, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and affection. All children must be given the opportunity to learn life skills and the tools that equip them to become productive citizens. It has also found out that institutional childcare is inefficient to meet the basic rights and needs of children.

In view of that JeCCDO has reunified and reintegrated about 1000 institutionalized children. It has reunified some of the children with their families and reintegrated others into the society upon provision of training in marketable skills.

And later, an impact assessment study was conducted on childcare to evaluate the JeCCDO's childcare, reunification and reintegration programs undertaken over the past two decades.

The aim of the assessment was to assess the situation of the deinstitutionalized youths; to find out the positive and negative impacts of childcare, reunification and reintegration on the lives of children, families and the community, and finally to pass on and share the experiences with partner organizations to enable them employ in their child support interventions.

The study indicated that the impact of reunification and reintegration activities were positive among children, families and their communities. The assessment also indicated that institutional childcare brings long lasting dependency among children, which in turn resulted in difficulties in integration/assimilation with families and communities. (Details of the sudy can be accessed a the Central Office, Addis Ababa.)
 
Institutional capacity building
JeCCDO endeavors to adapt in response to a changing environment and to learn from experience. The organization has therefore modified its approach from direct implementation of programs to facilitation of community development. In pursuit of this transformation, JeCCDO is adopting new processes and policies as well as adapting the staffing pattern as required.