VULNERABLE CHILDREN LIVING IN THE STREETS 
REVIEW OF CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES’ 
“IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF LIFE FOR 
OF SANTO DOMINGO (PROJECT NINA)” 
This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development’s 
Displaced Children and Orphans Fund, DG/DCHA under Contract #DFD-M-00-04-00238-00 with Manila 
Consulting Group, Inc.The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of 
the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. 
REVIEW OF CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES’ 
“IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF LIFE FOR VULNERABLE 
CHILDREN LIVING IN THE STREETS OF SANTO DOMINGO 
(PROJECT NINA)” 
July 31 – August 4, 2006 
David James-Wilson, 
Street Children Advisor, 
Displaced Children and Orphans Fund 
John Williamson, 
Senior Technical Advisor, 
Displaced Children and Orphans Fund

TABLE OF CONTENTS 
MAP ...............................................................................................................................IV
LIST OF ACRONYMS.....................................................................................................V
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ..............................................................................................VII
Project NINA ..................................................................................................................................................... vii
August 2006 Technical Visit ............................................................................................................................. vii
RECOMMENDATIONS TO USAID/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC BY THE DCOF 
TECHNICAL TEAM .......................................................................................................IX
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1
Situation Analysis .................................................................................................................................................1
Children Living in the Streets .............................................................................................................................1
Children Working in the Streets .........................................................................................................................1
Sexually Exploited Children ................................................................................................................................1
Haitian Children...................................................................................................................................................2
Geographic Prevalence of Vulnerable Children ................................................................................................2
The Displaced Children and Orphans Fund ......................................................................................................2
DCOF Technical Support Visits to the Dominican Republic ...........................................................................3
Project NINA ........................................................................................................................................................4
DCOF Review of Street Children Programming...............................................................................................7
ACTIVITIES DURING THE VISIT ................................................................................... 9
KEY OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS ............................................................. 11
CRS’s Leadership Role ......................................................................................................................................14
APPENDIX A: SCOPE OF WORK ............................................................................... 17
APPENDIX B: ITINERARY........................................................................................... 21
APPENDIX C: RESOURCE DOCUMENTS.................................................................. 23
iii 
MAP
iv 
LIST OF ACRONYMS 
CTO Cognizant Technical Officer 
CONANI National Child Welfare Bureau 
CRS Catholic Relief Services 
DCOF Displaced Children and Orphans Fund 
DR Dominican Republic 
ILO International Labor Organization 
M&E monitoring and evaluation 
NGO nongovernmental organization 
SO Strategic Objective 
SWOT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats 
USAID U.S. Agency for International Development 
v 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 
Project NINA 
Since late 2004, the Displaced Children and Orphans Fund (DCOF) has been supporting a 
consortium of five street-children-serving NGO’s in the Dominican Republic who have come 
together under the umbrella of “Project NINA,” a three-year initiative whose objectives are: 
(i) Vulnerable and displaced children have improved ability to exercise their abilities, rights, 
and opportunities, 
(ii) Increased numbers of children are successfully reinserted into families and/or other 
appropriate care-giving situations, 
(iii) Five (5) local organizations increase their capacity and viability to serve and protect 
vulnerable and displaced children, and 
(iv) Community and political alliances strengthen community support and protection of the 
rights and needs of vulnerable and displaced children. Addressing this objective should 
include fostering a more supportive policy environment that promotes the protection of 
children’s rights and the meeting of their basic needs—while at the same time building 
support among the broader community for sustained funding and political support for 
street children programming 
The Consortium Members are “Ninos Del Camino,” “Quedate Con Nosotros,” “Yo Tambien,” 
“Accion Callejera,” and “Caminante.” 
August 2006 Technical Visit 
In response to a proposal submitted by the office of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in the 
Dominican Republic, DCOF requested the transfer of $1,500,000 to USAID/Dominican 
Republic, which established agreement #517-A-00-04-00114-00 with CRS for “Improving the 
Quality of Life for Vulnerable Children Living in the Streets of Santo Domingo (Project 
NINA).” The project began on August 31, 2004, and is scheduled to end August 30, 2007. Two 
technical visits have been made by DCOF staff and consultants, the first in April 2005, and the 
second in August 2006. 
vii 

RECOMMENDATIONS TO USAID/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC BY THE 
DCOF TECHNICAL TEAM 
Based on the observations and conclusions of DCOF’s technical team, the following six 
recommendations are submitted for the consideration of USAID/Dominican Republic. The basis 
for these six recommendations includes direct conversations with key members of the CRS 
leadership team, USAID personnel, Project NINA technical staff and lead consultants, and Team 
Leaders representing each of Project NINA’s five consortium members, as well as the review of 
relevant documents. All six recommendations were shared verbally with CRS during a 
debriefing session on August 4, 2006, at CRS’s Santo Domingo offices. In addition, CRS was 
invited to comment on a draft of this report. 
1. Impact on Children and Families – CRS should work with consortium members and 
project NINA technical staff to ensure that additional emphasis is placed on achieving 
measurable impacts on children, their families, and their community support systems (as 
envisioned under goals 1 and 2 of the project description), and these changes should be 
consistently documented and cumulatively reported to USAID/Dominican Republic and 
DCOF. These impacts should be defined and measured in terms of reach (total number 
served), depth (relative frequency / intensity of services provided), and results (overall 
change in condition or outcome fostered by project interventions). Early work in the area of 
self-esteem is promising, but it is recommended that additional outcome measures of family 
reunification, community integration, educational achievement, improved health, and 
psychosocial well-being all be integrated into project monitoring and reporting. 
2. Monitoring and Evaluation System – CRS should work with consortium partners to 
address significant deficiencies in reporting on the project’s current monitoring and 
evaluation (M&E) indicators. This would require significant improvements by partners in 
their use of existing quarterly indicator tracking tables to report their results to CRS in a 
timely and comprehensive manner. Indicator tracking tables should be included in each 
report to USAID/Dominican Republic, and these should include both progress achieved 
during the reporting period as well as cumulative progress. It is understood that this work 
will likely require the immediate services of an M&E specialist familiar with programming 
for vulnerable children (and USAID M&E standards) in order to develop revised indicators 
and reporting tables. This work may also require additional administrative support and 
management oversight resources from CRS to ensure timely and comprehensive 
implementation by all partners. Further, CRS should strongly consider increasing the 
frequency of its reporting to USAID/Dominican Republic from a semi-annual to a quarterly 
basis. This will facilitate USAID’s tracking of the changes that the program makes to address 
the concerns and recommendations presented in this report. 
3. Technical and Organizational Capacity Building of Consortium Members and 
Improving their Future Viability – CRS and Project NINA consortium members should 
continue and reinforce existing efforts to effectively increase the capacity of all participating 
institutions to extend the reach, depth, quality, and effectiveness of their efforts to improve 
the lives of street-active children and to improve conditions in their families and community￾based systems of care. CRS should also give significantly greater attention to improving the 
ix 
organizational functioning and continuity of consortium members. This work will need to 
address: 
a. Clarifying the consortium members understanding of capacity building – CRS and 
implementing partners must recognize that this involves more than simply 
increasing staff size or range of services provided. Effective capacity building 
requires that the partners effectively incorporate strategies that (i) increase the 
overall numbers of children and families served, (ii) ensure high-quality 
developmental impacts for beneficiaries, and (iii) enhance the organizational 
functioning and financial viability of participating organizations beyond the life of 
this project. 
b. Completing outstanding efforts to improve operational systems – This includes (i) 
testing a common information tracking system and the consortium members and 
CRS making it operational, and, (ii) documenting, systematizing, and 
disseminating in written form (and via workshops) accumulated expertise and 
programming models of consortium members in the areas of HIV/AIDS, 
substance abuse, integrated approaches to health, flexible education approaches, 
and vocational/technical training. 
c. Exploring opportunities to draw on effective practices and program models of 
other organizations in the Dominican Republic (including but not limited to 
USAID grant recipients) in such areas as (i) HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and 
treatment, and (ii) economic strengthening for families. This might lead to 
incorporating these models and practices during the current project NINA life￾cycle, or in future consortium-driven programming. 
d. Continuing to increase the capacities of partners to secure and manage new 
funding from sources other than Project NINA. 
4. CRS’s Project Management and Technical Capacity in Street Children Programming – 
It is recommended that CRS review current management (and related administrative support) 
staffing levels and work priorities in order to ensure that Project NINA has a substantially 
improved degree of program oversight and adequate capacity to implement the changes 
recommended above. It is further recommended that CRS ensure that the Project NINA 
leadership team has access to appropriate technical advice in the area of best practices in 
street children programming, taking advantage of existing expertise internal and external to 
CRS. The purpose of both of these recommendations is to ensure that the project has 
sufficient management oversight capacity and technical competency to effect the 
comprehensive completion of all major project deliverables under all four of the project’s 
objectives. 
5. Planning For Project Completion – It is recommended that CRS begin to work with Project 
NINA consortium members to plan for the end of the current DCOF supported phase of 
project activities in thirteen months time. This work should focus on: 
x 
a. Addressing the relative financial dependence of some consortium members on 
Project NINA funding to cover core operating costs – and the related need for 
focused fund development and institutional service planning efforts to prepare for 
the end of USAID funding in August 2007. 
b. Exploring the leadership structure, institutional agreements, and ongoing technical 
supports required to continue the work of the Project NINA consortium as an 
effective vehicle for shared capacity building, joint fund development, and 
collaborative advocacy beyond the life of the current project. (It is understood that 
CRS may or may not decide to continue its role in the consortium beyond the life 
of this current project and that this would imply either a new structure or the end 
of the consortium.) 
c. Continuing to provide information regularly to the USAID/Dominican Republic 
on projected expenditure of remaining project funds, to clarify whether the project 
will end on schedule or if CRS may request and provide a justification for a no￾cost extension. 
d. Exploring the possibility of seeking new funding from other donors to sustain the 
NINA consortium. 
6. The Possibility of Technical Support from DCOF – It is recommended that 
USAID/Dominican Republic and DCOF defer any decision related to the provision of 
additional technical support to Project NINA until after CRS has developed its operational 
response to the above five recommendations. 
xi 

INTRODUCTION 
Situation Analysis1 
The presence of children living and/or working in the streets of the Dominican Republic is a 
reflection of the extreme poverty and the lack of social services2
 that are endemic in many highly 
populated urban areas throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. These children often flee 
poor, dysfunctional family backgrounds and, once on the street, are isolated from the support 
structures of their families, communities, and the formal education system. These children are 
highly vulnerable and frequently unable to realize their full potential. Instead, street exposure 
increases the likelihood of physical, sexual, and verbal abuse; infection with HIV and other 
sexually transmitted infections; and the devastating consequences of drug consumption. 
Children Living in the Streets 
Working with children who live in the street presents many physical, social, psychological, and 
other challenges, due to their especially precarious situation. A study conducted by Niños del 
Camino and Centro de Estudios Sociales P. Juan Montalvo, S.J., found that 94.74 percent of the 
cases were boys who came from unstable, often female-headed family situations with various 
dysfunctions: physical, verbal and/or sexual abuse; neglect; parental domestic violence; drug 
abuse; and extreme poverty3
. Many participants in the study identified one or more of these 
factors as the determining trigger for leaving their homes. Most of the boys were between the 
ages of eleven and fifteen, mostly involved in activities such as shoe-shining, street vending, 
cleaning windshields, stealing, transporting and selling drugs, domestic work, and prostitution. 
Children Working in the Streets 
Many children who still live at home engage in street-based work similar to that of children who 
both live and work on the street. The risks they face are also very similar to the risks faced by 
those who live in the streets – as many of them are also exposed to drugs, and sexual and/or 
physical abuse in the streets. However, alternative approaches to street life are easier to provide 
to them, given their familial and community support systems. In this case, it is crucial to help 
prevent their abandoning their homes and increasing their involvement in risky activities. 
Sexually Exploited Children 
The majority of children exploited in the sex trade are girls, but the practice also involves boys. 
A significant number of working children engage in the Dominican Republic’s sizeable sex 
trade, particularly in Boca Chica and other tourist centers. Numbers are difficult to obtain due to 
the clandestine nature of the activity, but it is widely acknowledged that a segment of tourists to 
Dominican Republic visit specifically to have sex with children. The children earn up to $35 for 
several hours of sexual work in a day. According to a recent study from the International Labor 
1 The Situation Analysis section is based on the official Project Description for “Project NINA.” 2 The annual investment in social services is 12 percent of the GDP, one of the lowest in Latin America. World Bank Report, 2001. 3 Psycho-social Profile of Children and Adolescents Living in the Streets. Social Studies, Vol. XXXVI, Number 128, April-June 2002. 
1 
Organization (ILO), their ages range mostly between ten and seventeen years, with 29 percent of 
the sexually exploited boys being younger than fifteen, and 5 percent of the girls being younger 
than fifteen. 
Haitian Children 
Another important dimension to consider when dealing with vulnerable children in the 
Dominican Republic, is the problem of trafficked children from Haiti. An estimated 2,000 
Haitian children4
 per year fall prey to a well-established and sophisticated network of traffickers.5 
Like Dominican street children, most of them work informally as shoe shiners, vendors, and in 
the cases of young girls, as domestic servants and prostitutes. 
Geographic Prevalence of Vulnerable Children 
The presence of children living and/or working in the streets is highest in the two most populous 
cities, Santo Domingo and Santiago, and in main tourist centers such as Boca Chica, located near 
the capital city. Project NINA consortium members estimate that 1,500 children live in the 
streets of the Dominican Republic. 
A study carried out in 2002 in Santo Domingo by the non-government organizations Niños del 
Camino and Centro de Estudio P. Juan Montalvo S.J. 6
 revealed that the majority of minors 
living in the streets originated from poor neighborhoods in the city (including Cristo Rey, Los 
Mina, María Auxiliadora, Guachupita, and la Ciénaga y los Alcarrizos) and that the next largest 
group came from the impoverished southern region of the country. The same study indicated that 
75 percent of the children had lived on the streets for less than three years. Project NINA is 
intended to provide services to the children in the destination areas and in their communities of 
origin. 
The Displaced Children and Orphans Fund 
Established in 1988 by an act of the U. S. Congress, the Displaced Children and Orphans Fund 
(DCOF) is administered by the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance of 
the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID). It provides funding and technical 
assistance for initiatives to benefit especially vulnerable children, especially children affected by 
armed conflict and children on the street or at risk of moving onto the street. The Fund was the 
first arm of the U.S. Government to respond to the issue of children being orphaned and 
otherwise made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS, and it continues to provide technical support to that 
type of programming, although it is not providing new funding in that area. DCOF is managed 
by Lloyd Feinberg and is supported by the Displaced Children and Orphans Fund, War Victims 
Fund, and Victims of Torture Fund Technical Support Project managed by Manila Consulting 
Group, Inc. 
4
 Although difficult to quantify, it is estimated that as many as 2,000 minors are trafficked annually to the Dominican Republic from the three 
Northern departments in Haiti…Almost without exception these children are exploited as agricultural workers, in the informal sector or in 
organized groups of beggars. “Trafficking Haitian Children into the Dominican Republic.” UNICEF/IOM, July 2002. 5
 “The Dominican Republic is a source, transit, and destination country for persons trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labor…Haitian 
children are trafficked into the Dominican Republic.” US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2003. 6 Psycho-social Profile of Children and Adolescents Living in the Streets. Social Studies, Vol. XXXVI, Number 128, April-June 2002. 
2 
DCOF has evolved into a program that seeks to improve and expand interventions to benefit 
children in the developing world affected by family separation or significant loss or 
displacement. It provides funding and technical support for programs and facilitates networking 
for information exchange and collaboration among organizations concerned with especially 
vulnerable children. Because annual DCOF funding is limited in relation to the massive 
problems it addresses, USAID uses these resources very selectively to support promising, 
innovative projects, to learn lessons that can be applied in other situations, and to share these as 
widely as possible with practitioners. DCOF’s fundamental approaches are to strengthen the 
capacity of families and communities to protect and care for especially vulnerable children as 
well as strengthening children’s own capacities to provide for their own needs. In keeping with 
DCOF’s standard approach, “children” in this report are considered to be below eighteen years 
of age. 
DCOF Technical Support Visits to the Dominican Republic 
In response to a proposal submitted by the office of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in the 
Dominican Republic, DCOF transferred $1,500,000 to USAID/Dominican Republic, which 
established agreement #517-A-00-04-00114-00 with CRS for “Improving the Quality of Life for 
Vulnerable Children Living in the Streets of Santo Domingo (Project NINA).” The project began 
on August 31, 2004, and is scheduled to end August 30, 2007. Two technical visits have been 
made by DCOF staff and consultants over the life of the project, the first in April 2005, and the 
second in August 2006. 
In cooperation with USAID/Dominican Republic, DCOF carried out a review visit April 5 to 9, 
2005, to develop a better understanding of the project's consortium-driven approach to street 
children services and to determine what lessons might be learned from an ongoing technical 
collaboration with Project NINA relevant to this and other DCOF-funded projects working with 
street children That visit was carried out by Lloyd Feinberg and David James-Wilson, technical 
specialist and consultant to DCOF.7 
This report concerns the second technical support visit related to Project NINA by DCOF, 
carried out July 31 to August 4, 2006. It was carried out by the two-person team of David James￾Wilson, an independent consultant with extensive experience in programming for street children, 
and John Williamson, DCOF’s senior technical advisor. The aims of the visit were, together with 
USAID/Dominican Republic, to: 
• Contribute to DCOF’s internal review process regarding programming for street children, 
• Better understand project NINA’s common data gathering efforts, 
• Assess the financial sustainability of the consortium’s work, 
7
 See the trip entitled "Building Bridges to Mainstream Opportunities for Street Children in the Dominican Republic: A Report on 
the DCOF Engagement Mission With Project NINA and its Consortium Members -- Dominican Republic, April 5-9, 2005." 
3
• Clarify the emerging emphasis within Project NINA on enhancing “self esteem” among 
participating children, and 
• Determine priorities for ongoing technical assistance from DCOF. 
The detailed Scope of Work is found in Appendix A. 
This report includes observations and recommendations in support of USAID/Dominican 
Republic's management of the project. The team’s itinerary is included in Appendix B; the list of 
its key contacts follows in Appendix C; and the key resource documents are listed in Appendix 
D. 
Project NINA8 
Catholic Relief Services has designed, developed, and implemented Project NINA within the 
framework of a carefully structured, highly participatory, and collaboratively led consortium. 
The consortium model was designed to build upon CRS’s strengths as a well-regarded 
community development and social-justice-oriented institution with a strong track record in the 
design and delivery of programs for USAID and other international funders. The consortium was 
also structured to benefit from, and build upon, the core capacities of a cluster of local direct 
service organizations who have worked with street-involved children for many years. 
The five local NGO members of the Project NINA consortium respond to the reality of 
vulnerable and displaced children at the grass-roots level in the Dominican Republic: 
• Acción Callejera provides focused attention to street children between ages seven and 
fourteen, including educational support, arts education, recreational activities, self-esteem 
building, and legal support for documentation. 
• Quédate con Nosotros [Stay with Us Program] provides temporary shelter and provides 
personal development and social integration services to children in Santo Domingo between 
ages eight and thirteen who have lived on the streets for less than six months. 
• Caminante Proyecto Educativo [“Traveller” – Street Children Education Program] works 
with street children in the tourist town of Boca Chica providing services in: 1) 
technical/professional training; 2) advocacy for the defense, dignity, and rights of mothers 
and children; 3) preventive methodologies increasing the physical/mental health of the 
children; 4) recreational activities; 5) increased access to and attendance by children of 
formal education; and 6) educational processes encouraging family and community 
integration. 
• Niños del Camino promotes the social integration of vulnerable and displaced children, 
raises public awareness of the plight of these children, and advocates for public policies that 
8 The text (up to the section, “DCOF Review of Street Children Programming”) is taken from the official “Project Description” 
for Project NINA. 
4
protect child rights. It provides ambulatory services to children throughout the displacement 
cycle, from a child’s first night on the streets through family reintegration. 
• Programa Yo También [“Me Too” Program] is a residential program for boys who have left 
the streets of Santo Domingo. It provides shelter, food, and educational and recreational 
activities. The goal of the program is for children to leave the street and find an appropriate 
family setting. 
Strategic Framework. The Strategic Objectives of Project NINA is to increase the quality of 
life of 1,500 vulnerable or displaced children by intervening at three societal levels (individual, 
family, and community). Its strategic objectives (SOs) are presented below. SO’s 1 and 2 are 
directed toward individual children and their families, SO 3 is directed exclusively toward the 
Dominican consortium organizations, and SO 4 focuses on communities and political alliances 
which deal with vulnerable or displaced children. 
Objective 1: Vulnerable and displaced children have improved ability to exercise their 
abilities, rights and opportunities: The project description foresees a participatory process with 
children to improve their overall well-being. The proposed activities aim to help vulnerable and 
displaced children analyze their current situation and recognize themselves as persons with 
potential. Children are to be provided opportunities to exercise their rights and develop their full 
potential. For example, the right to an identity is to be met through appropriate documentation, 
such as birth certificates, which facilitate access to education and health services. Legal support 
will help children who have been wrongly imprisoned or mistreated by law enforcement officers. 
Consortium members in their current programs provide many of these services, and Project 
NINA seeks to improve, systematize, and document them. 
Objective 2: Increased numbers of children are successfully reinserted into families and/or 
other appropriate care-giving situations: Reintegration into society and care-giving situations 
is an essential yet delicate process for vulnerable and displaced children. Each reintegration case 
will vary in terms of time and effort, and the process can be very slow and uncertain for children 
who live on the streets. Consortium members believe that, if at all possible, children living on the 
streets should spend some transitional time in a shelter to receive consistent health care, 
psychosocial support, and substance-abuse rehabilitation. Special care must be taken to establish 
a child’s sense of safety and desire to strive toward a more positive lifestyle. 
Many children who live in the streets may be reluctant to return home because they left violent 
domestic situations. To address the issue of domestic violence, Project NINA members must 
visit families; evaluate the family environment, family members, and their circumstances; and 
sometimes providing counseling. In some cases NINA members may conclude that returning 
home is not a safe option for the child and will review extended family and other options for 
care. 
Objective 3: Five (5) local organizations increase their capacity and viability to serve and 
protect vulnerable and displaced children: Project NINA seeks to build management and 
programmatic capabilities of its Dominican partners with the ultimate aim of improving their 
ability to provide needed services to vulnerable and displaced children. Consortium members 
5
selected the programmatic and management areas that would best enable them to increase the 
quantity and quality of services to vulnerable children. Technical areas identified include: 
information technology and case documentation, HIV/AIDS treatment, substance abuse, 
integrated health, advocacy, and vocational/technical training. Each consortium partner is 
supposed to develop expertise in one of these fields. Each will then provide technical support and 
guidance to the other members in its designated area of expertise. Also, the partners must 
develop the capacity to carry out accurate reporting, monitoring, evaluation, accounting, strategic 
planning and fundraising. Key activities and milestones identified in the project description 
include: the completion of a baseline study to provide accurate data to be used by all institutions; 
the establishment of a consistent system of documentation and record-keeping by all partner 
organizations, the usage of a database by all partners, and the improvement of fundraising 
abilities. By building Dominican partner capacities in such critical programmatic and 
management areas, CRS/DR intends to pave the way for improved, sustainable, quality services 
for vulnerable/displaced children beyond the project period. 
Objective 4: Community and political alliances strengthen community support and 
protection of the rights and needs of vulnerable and displaced children: This aim of this 
objective is to educate key actors and advocate for the rights of vulnerable and displaced 
children; this will help ensure greater project impact and sustainability. Supportive community 
groups and strategic political and organizational alliances will help reintegrated children to 
remain with their families; provide a safety net in times of need; and encourage community-led, 
customized preventive mechanisms for at-risk children who may separate from their families. 
The role of the partner organizations on the community level will focus largely on outreach, 
relationship building, and targeted advocacy and educational activities. Consortium members 
have each strategically selected communities using the following criteria: a high number of 
vulnerable children originate from these communities and they either have active PTAs [parent 
teacher associations] or community groups, they are an area where consortium members provide 
services, or both. Entering communities through the schools, consortium partners will make 
contacts with local PTAs and community groups with interests in child welfare. At local 
meetings, the partners will assess the needs and interests of the groups, and if these coincide with 
the strategy of the partner, it will subsequently collaborate with them to design and provide 
training in desired areas. 
Three Project NINA consortium members are part of the Coalition of NGOs for Children, which 
also includes government agencies and is part of the process to implement the recently 
established Dominican Law 136-03, for the Protection and Fundamental Rights of Boys, Girls, 
and Adolescents. That law consolidated all nationally recognized rights of children and created 
mechanisms to fulfill them. With the support of the NGOs for Children coalition and other 
institutions, Project NINA will advocate for the rights of vulnerable and displaced children. The 
consortium is committed to identifying cases of child sexual exploitation or other forms of child 
abuse, promoting the citizen participation components of Law 136-03, and actively defending 
children’s rights. The Government of the Dominican Republic is currently integrating Law 136­
03 into national, municipal, and local practices, though resources to do so and ensure 
enforcement are limited. Project NINA will support this process by educating community groups 
in the communities where children live or originate. 
6
Intended Beneficiaries. Data gathering is challenging for Project NINA because of the target 
population’s transitory nature. The intended direct beneficiaries of Project NINA are children in 
Santo Domingo, Santiago, and Boca Chica who live and/or work in the streets or who are 
sexually and commercially exploited. Currently, partner NGOs provide many different services 
to approximately 600 of these children a year. An additional 600 adults are indirect beneficiaries 
of current partner initiatives, as most of the children’s households of origin have one parent. 
Project NINA aims to gradually increase by 50 percent annually the number of beneficiaries of 
its partners over the project’s three-year span. The consortium projects that, collectively, partners 
will provide services to 750 children in year two, and 900 in year three. These figures total 
2,250, but as a portion of the children, particularly those who receive ambulatory services, 
receive services for more than one year, Project NINA seeks to reach 1,500 individual children 
over three years (with widely varying degrees of services offered to each depending on their 
need and their ability/willingness to benefit from intensive family/community re-integration 
efforts). 
DCOF Review of Street Children Programming 
Since 2005, DCOF has been concurrently engaged in a review of its projects that serve street 
children. This review has included a desk study, a series of field visits to existing street children 
activities, along with the ongoing development of a guidance document on DCOF’s funding of 
street children programming. The objective of that review has been to ensure coherence and 
cross-learning among DCOF projects in this area, and to enhance DCOF’s grant-making work in 
this particular area of programming for displaced children. An additional dimension of the 
August 2006 technical mission to the DR involved an intentional effort on the part of DCOF to 
incorporate emerging effective practices and key lessons learned from Project NINA into its 
ongoing internal review of street children programming. Opportunities were also sought to 
ground truth with consortium members, consultants, and key CRS staff, conclusions articulated 
in DCOF’s draft guidance document for this area of programming. 
7

ACTIVITIES DURING THE VISIT 
DCOF’s technical team—along with the USAID/Dominican Republic’s cognizant technical 
officer (CTO) for Project NINA (Norma Paredes)—worked with Project NINA technical staff to 
design a four-step process of meetings and field visits. Theses steps included: 
(i) Engagement Activities – These included individual site visits and meetings with key project 
stakeholders in order to develop a more complete understanding of Project NINA activities, 
key program development priorities, and critical next steps toward successful completion of 
the project. These sessions included site visits to the offices of CRS, Quédate Con Nosotros, 
and Yo Tambien.9 
(ii) Exchanges of Best Practices – These activities brought together practitioners and policy 
makers to discuss the state of the art of street children programming in the Dominican 
Republic. The activity was a one-day colloquium on the theme of “First Contact: How 
Approaches to Initial Relationship Building with Street Children Impact Later Intervention 
Steps.” This colloquium brought together representatives of the Project NINA consortium 
members, CRS Project NINA personnel, personnel from other local child-serving NGOs and 
representatives of Government institutions with an interest in vulnerable children such as the 
Tourist Police (POLITUR), the Ministry of Labor, and the National Child Welfare Bureau 
(CONANI). Project NINA was able to highlight its work codifying and articulating a 
common seven-step intervention process, and consortium members were able to speak about 
shared efforts to systematize best practices and strengthen capacity. 
(iii)SWOT Analysis Activities – This work involved Project NINA consortium members and 
key USAID and CRS personnel in a critical review of accomplishments to date; the 
identification of opportunities for improvement, enrichment, and continued excellence; and 
key obstacles currently impeding project completion. This work took place in two sessions, 
the first on August 1, the second on August 3. (This work built upon a more extensive “mid￾term” strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis carried out in recent 
months by an external consultant – the results of which have yet to be tabulated and 
released.) 
(iv)Joint Action Planning – This activity sought to take conclusions from SWOT analysis 
sessions, and then build consensus among key stakeholders (CRS, USAID, DCOF, and 
Consortium Members) regarding key recommendations for program improvement and 
critical action items for the successful completion of Project NINA. 
9
 For more details see the filed visit itinerary found in Appendix B. 
9 

KEY OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 
Based on its meeting with all the key stakeholders in Project NINA10 and review of relevant 
documents, the DCOF technical team has the following observations and conclusions with 
respect to Project NINA’s progress toward achieving its four principle strategic objectives. 
Objective 1: Vulnerable and displaced children have improved ability to exercise their 
abilities, rights and opportunities. Consortium partners and key stakeholders spoke in general 
terms regarding accomplishments under this objective, but during the SWOT analysis session 
with the consortium members, it was evident that far greater emphasis has been placed on 
accomplishing Objective 3 (institutional capacity building) and Objective 4 (policy and advocacy 
efforts). Some groups reported having new staff resources available to them for the delivery of 
day-to-day programming and many cited anecdotal evidence of the ways that programming 
activities had benefited the children and families served. When asked to make more specific 
reference to impacts captured by program indicators, consortium members were unable to 
respond in systematic or comprehensive ways. CRS has reported semi-annually to 
USAID/Dominican Republic on Project NINA. Consortium members have been expected to 
complete and provide to CRS quarterly indicator tracking tables, which include indicators jointly 
identified by NINA partners at the start of the project. However, a quick audit of the quarterly 
indicator reference tables submitted to CRS showed that consortium members have been 
struggling to document and measure impacts using the common indicator framework – with the 
majority of the internal quarterly reports submitted to CRS indicating no progress across a wide 
range of indicator categories. Partners have not submitted these forms consistently, and one 
partner had submitted none. 
Discussion with consortium team leaders revealed that many struggled to make sense of the large 
number, and relative complexity, of current indicators – although all were developed during a 
participatory planning exercise and several follow-up meetings in the first year of Project NINA. 
Others spoke of the challenge of tracking results and measuring impacts with a population as 
“transitory” and “hard to change” as street children. They also shared common frustrations with 
staff turnover and the difficulty in keeping and developing skilled staff. It appears that work will 
need to be done to re-focus existing indicators and to establish an oversight system that ensures 
compliance by all consortium members in the timely and comprehensive completion of their 
quarterly indicator tracking tables. 
Consortium members focused their positive comments on the growing openness and ability 
among consortium members to share the case management of individual street children – citing 
growing instances of referrals among projects, clinical consultations, and joint planning 
regarding the hardest to serve children. Consortium members also indicated that their joint work 
on the self-esteem project (in the final stage for development) seems to hold good promise for 
the development of more intentional interventions with regard to self-esteem building at each 
stage of their work. 
Objective 2: Increased numbers of children are successfully reinserted into families and/or 
other appropriate care-giving situations: As in the case of Objective 1, Project NINA 
10 See Appendix B for additional details 
11 
Consortium members and senior CRS staff did not have statistical or other systematic 
information regarding progress to date in this area. Overall indicators and quarterly indicator 
tracking tables for this objective include far too many indicators that have not served the project 
well, and consortium members have not completed these in a timely or comprehensive manner. 
Consortium members acknowledged at a meeting of the Team Leaders that work to reintegrate 
children into families requires considerable time and often involves multiple false starts before 
success is obtained. 
It was completely unclear whether the project had made any progress toward its goal of enabling 
1,500 children to reunite with their families or otherwise be reintegrated adequately into 
communities. Participants asserted that family and community re-integration work has recently 
become more difficult due to growing economic pressures on poor families in the Dominican 
Republic – though groups did cite some cases where a successful return to community living 
arrangements had occurred. It seems clear that this work requires a level of institutional capacity 
and technical skill that many groups find hard to marshal and sustain. It also seems clear that 
groups need intermediate (or leading indicators) that capture progress toward re-integration 
before re-integration actually occurs (which may be a multi-year process for some of the more 
heavily street involved children). These indicators could be linked closely to the “Seven Stages 
of Work” jointly identified by Project NINA partners – which provide a conceptual basis, along 
with a program implementation framework, for developing indicators to measure intermediate 
progress. 
In addition, participants spoke about the need to do more early intervention and preventive work 
with children [and families] new to street involvement – drawing on teachers and other 
community resources to help identify cases where early intervention might forestall the need for 
more extensive (and expensive) reunification efforts down the line. Groups such as Quedate Con 
Nosotros, Caminante, and Accion Callejera, who do community-based outreach work with 
vulnerable children and their families, may well decide to develop further technical capacity in 
this important area of early intervention, and can certainly draw on successful models from other 
parts of the region. 
Objective 3: Five (5) local organizations increase their capacity and viability to serve and 
protect vulnerable and displaced children: In a joint SWOT analysis (and in more informal 
group and individual discussions), it was clear that members of the Project NINA Consortium 
perceive some of the most important impacts of Project NINA to have occurred at the level of 
institutional capacity building. Participants spoke at length about being afforded an important 
opportunity to systematically review, document, organize, and describe their work (many for the 
first time). Team Leaders from the consortium members also spoke of the enormous value of 
comparing notes with counterparts from other organizations – and acknowledged that CRS staff, 
and CRS consultants, had played a major role in breaking down longstanding barriers of mistrust 
and misunderstanding between consortium members (most of whom had had to compete in the 
past for funds, staff, and recognition in the community). 
Project NINA consortium members all highlighted the value and impact of the five main 
collaborative capacity-building efforts that they have all been engaged in over the past twenty￾three months, including: 
12
• Shared work on the baseline study and upcoming mid-point study – with the baseline 
representing one of the most comprehensive examinations of the street children phenomenon 
to date in the Dominican Republic; 
• Mutual investment in the effective practices in self esteem-building activity – which was 
led by an outside consulting team, and which many groups said provided them a unique 
opportunity to compare practices and challenge long-standing assumptions about their 
respective work; 
• Common efforts to systematize and disseminate effective practices in the area of non￾formal education (with a working group on course to complete this report in the near 
future); 
• Shared investment in the development of common community and organizational diagnostic 
tools (completed in February 2006); and 
• Significant joint efforts to contribute to the development of a common information system 
software package – currently in the final stage of development by a leading independent 
consulting firm, with detailed input from consortium members. 
While more effort and progress has been made by the partners in addressing capacity-building, 
many are substantially delayed in their timelines and deliverables, and at the current rate many 
may not produce pilot tools and materials until the final six months of project activity. In some 
cases, the scope of work given to consultants may be too ambitious, given the limited human 
resources of consortium members to contribute to material development and field testing as well 
as to sustainable application of final products. 
Additionally, in the realm of the common computer-based information tracking system, the 
question has arisen as to the ability of consortium members to use these tools given current limits 
to computer access and the unreliability of the electricity supply. It was also a concern for DCOF 
technical staff that software developers may not have given sufficient attention to the key design 
variable of time required on a daily and weekly basis to complete data entry. This has proven to 
be a key feature in the success or failure of other similar information system initiatives globally. 
Another challenge facing consortium members is that there does not appear to be a clear 
understanding of what capacity building is, nor what some of the broad indicators of success in 
this programming area might look like. Audited quarterly indicator tracking tables showed 
almost no discernable results under Objective 3 (despite significant anecdotal evidence of 
achievements in this area in narrative reports), and many groups seem unsure of how to capture 
or measure results in this domain. In another DCOF-funded, capacity-building project focused on 
organizations working with street children and orphans, participating organizations were able to 
measure progress by tracking changes in two broad indicators—the increase in the number of 
children served and the increase in the funding base of each agency—as a way of capturing 
meaningful impacts of this work11. Another approach is the use of participant defined quality 
11 See “Assessment of the Street Children and Orphans Component of the Pact NGO Sector Enhancement Initiative 
in Ethiopia” http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pdabs670.pdf. 
13
tools to capture change in the quality of services from the perspective of staff, beneficiaries, and 
other key community/organizational stakeholders. 
Another significant concern that the DCOF team raised in relation to the achievement of the third 
objective is that project efforts have focused on increasing the day-to-day operational capacity of 
the partners but have not addressed their longer-term “viability.” Almost 64 percent of the total 
budget of Project NINA is designated for sub-agreements, so, on the positive side, CRS is 
making substantial funding available to its local partners. The down side, however, is that it 
appears that these funds are being used almost entirely for staff salaries and other operational 
costs. Consequently, it is not clear that funds are also being used by the partners to strengthen 
their ongoing operational capacities and effectiveness in ways that have or will enable them to 
attract funding that will enable them to continue and increase their results after the current 
project period ends. One noteworthy exception, however, is that two of the partner organizations, 
because their profile and credibility has been raised through Project NINA, have been able to 
secure modest one-year grants from the Ministry of Education. Of significant concern to DCOF 
is that it appears one member (Caminante) has around 50 percent of the operational budget 
sourced from Project NINA funds. The rest of the partners rely on DCOF funds for between 20 
to 40 percent of their budget. This apparent dependency in some cases raises the possibility of a 
significant decrease in their staffing and operational capacity after the project ends. 
Objective 4: Community and political alliances strengthen community support and 
protection of the rights and needs of vulnerable and displaced children: Another area of 
important progress for the Project NINA consortium has been in the establishment of new 
opportunities for advocacy and dialogue with government entities (such as CONANI, the 
Ministry of Education, and the Justice Department) along with new forums for consultation and 
discussion with community-level stakeholders. Project NINA has, according to many, raised the 
profile of street children programming at the national level, and some initial success has been 
achieved as a result of joint advocacy efforts. Speaking together with one voice via the 
consortium structure has opened doors for member institutions – the two grants from the 
Ministry of Education are an example. Progress with CONANI has been slower – though no less 
important – and the consortium expects to have a memorandum of understanding with that body 
in place within the next six months. 
Once again, impact in this area is not currently well captured or measured by current indicators 
or via the existing quarterly indicator reporting table. Results under Objective 4 have not been 
adequately documented and work needs to be done to revise and focus outcome indicators for 
this important strategic objective. 
CRS’s Leadership Role 
A final cross-cutting area to address is CRS’s role as the convener, technical secretariat, and 
overall program manager for the Project NINA consortium. CRS’ leadership team spoke in an 
eloquent fashion to DCOF and USAID personnel about the significant challenge they took on at 
the start of Project NINA – both because of the complex nature of programming for street 
children, and because it represented a new area of work for CRS in the Dominican Republic. 
They also spoke in a convincing manner about the challenges of working with such a diverse and 
14
varied group of implementing partners, and of their careful attempts to build flexibility and 
responsiveness into the original program design and final program description. 
Project NINA consortium members spoke in consistently positive terms about CRS’ leadership 
style and identified a number of important qualities among CRS’ current technical leadership 
team, namely: 
• An ability to provide direct and challenging feedback without being disrespectful or 
controlling, 
• A willingness to follow-up patiently when documentation is delayed or work incomplete, 
• A capacity to coach and accompany consortium members as they take on new 
responsibilities such as the development of quarterly work plans, and 
• A respect for the diversity of consortium members, while at the same time developing the 
discipline of members to communicate and act in close collaboration. 
DCOF’s technical team saw evidence of this positive collaboration between CRS and consortium 
members and recognized the important coordination and administrative support roles played by 
Eric Gomez and Ivelisse Reyes Durán, her assistant. 
However, a number of challenges and shortcoming were also identified by DCOF’s technical 
team, especially in the area of project management and oversight: 
(i) It seems that the reach, depth, and quality of developmental impacts on children and their 
families are seemingly neither at the forefront of strategic planning efforts, nor at the heart of 
the current M&E system. CRS’s technical leadership in this domain seems to be in need of 
further focus and follow through. 
(ii) It was of significant concern to learn that consortium members have not been systematically 
and comprehensively using quarterly indicator tracking tables to capture and measure 
ongoing and cumulative impacts of project activities. The absence of completed tables from 
all partners for all project quarters is a substantial deficiency that must be addressed. CRS’s 
oversight of partner reporting seems inadequate in this regard. 
(iii)It is of additional concern that three of the project’s six key deliverables under Objective 3 
are still in preliminary or draft form as the project moves into its third year of work. It is 
understood that there were some significant delays to program roll-out in the first six months 
of Project NINA, but is it expected that CRS will dedicate the management, technical 
support, and administrative support resources required to complete the deliverables in a 
timely and comprehensive manner. There also seems to be a need to clarify the broader intent 
of capacity building efforts, and to track the overall institutional viability of consortium 
members beyond the life of this current grant. Finally there is a need to carefully track the 
rate of project expenditures to determine whether the full budget allocated to project NINA is 
15
expended by the contractual close of program activities on August 31, 2007 or a timely 
request (with a strong justification) is made for a no-cost extension. 
The DCOF technical team appreciated the statement of commitment to ensuring the success of 
this project made by the senior management personnel of CRS/Dominican Republic – both as a 
platform for ongoing work with street children in the country and as an important contribution to 
work with vulnerable children in other parts of the LAC region. DCOF requests that 
USAID/Dominican Republic forwards a copy of CRS’s written plan for addressing the six 
recommendations described in this report and considers carefully any requests for further DCOF 
technical assistance. 
16
APPENDIX A: SCOPE OF WORK 
Project NINA: August, 2006 DCOF Field Visit 
Scope of Work for Street Children Advisor (David James-Wilson) 
A. Background: 
Since late 2004, DCOF has been supporting a consortium of street children serving NGO’s in the 
Dominican Republic who have come together under the umbrella of “Project NINA,” a three￾year initiative designed to: 
• Increase the capacity of vulnerable and displaced children to exercise their rights and develop 
their skills and abilities. 
• Successfully re-integrate children into family and/or community settings – including the use 
of foster families. 
• Develop the technical capacity, and institutional viability of the 5 consortium member 
organizations toward making a sustained contribution to serving and protecting vulnerable 
and displaced children. 
• Foster a more supportive policy environment that promotes the protection of children’s rights 
and the meeting of their basic needs – while at the same time building support among the 
broader community for sustained funding and political support for street children 
programming 
Project NINA is now reaching the mid-way point of its initial DCOF grant, and the lead local 
organization (CRS) along with the local USAID Mission team, have asked for technical support 
from DCOF in order to build on emerging strengths and to address identified gaps in 
programming. 
Since 2005, DCOF has been concurrently engaged in a review of its portfolio of Street Children 
serving projects. This review has included a desk study, a series of field visits to existing street 
children activities, along with the ongoing development of a guidance document on DCOF’s 
funding of street children programming. The objective of this review has been to ensure 
coherence and cross-learning among DCOF projects in this area, and to enhance DCOF’s grant 
making work in this sub-set of displaced children programming. 
B. August 2006 Field Visit 
In order to both fulfill the technical support request of the local USAID Mission and CRS 
leadership team, and to advance the work of DCOF’s internal review of Street Children funding, 
DCOF is sending a two-person TDY team to the Dominican Republic with the mandate to carry 
out a series of technical review sessions and related site visits. The overarching goals of this field 
visit will be to: 
 Contribute to DCOF’s internal review process by answering questions such as: What can 
be gleaned from the DR grantees in terms of their potential contribution to the network of 
those DCOF supports in similar programs? What can be learned from sharing preliminary 
thinking from DCOF’s guidance document with Dominican Republic (DR) partners? 
17
 Better understand project NINA’s common data gathering efforts (including the planned 
upcoming application of common evaluation instruments) in order to address questions such 
as: Can the team evaluate the quality of the data currently collected? How do the grantees use 
the data? Is it shared among the partners? Is it something worth sharing outside the DR? How 
are they positioned to collect data on: 1) #’s of kids in specific sectors, e.g. social protection, 
education, health, etc., 2) # of people trained/ # of organizations strengthened, etc. 
 Assess the financial sustainability of the consortium’s work by addressing the question: 
What percentage of other money supports these programs? 
 Clarify the emerging emphasis within Project NINA on enhancing “self esteem” among 
participating children -- with a view to addressing the following guiding questions: What 
does CRS mean by ‘self-esteem’ (from the 3rd narrative report: “self-esteem-development 
activities . . . we believe them to be a key element in the lives of children and their families”) 
and how is the concept being incorporated into actual programming/service delivery 
 Determine priorities for ongoing technical assistance from DCOF as part of an overall 
strategic review of projects NINA’s progress to date and agreed upon areas for 
improvement/enhancement in the consortiums portfolio of activities 
This field visit will be carried out via three principal phases of work, each of which is described 
in more detail in the following LOE chart: 
18
C. Deliverables and LOE for Street Children Advisor: 
Deliverables: Time Frame LOE 
Phase 1 – Preparation for Field Visit: This will include: 
(i) establishing communication with the CRS leadership team in order to negotiate the 
agenda for the field visit; July 2006 
(ii) following up with USAID personnel in order to finalize the itinerary for site visits; 2 days 
(iii) preparing all of the logistics for the visit, along with a SOW; and, 
(iv) doing background reading / training design related to the technical support priorities 
identified by CRS and the USAID team 
Phase 2 – Field Visit This will include: 
(i) Initial meetings with the Project’s Coordination Team 
(ii)Meetings with the projects Directors and Leadership Team at CRS 
(iii)A one day joint Capacity Building Workshop for Project NINA members and July 31­
collaborating partners in the government and NGO sector August 4 5 Days 
(iv) A SWOT analysis session for key CRS staff, USAID staff and project NINA consultants 
-- reviewing progress to date and identifying areas for improvement 
(v) Site Visits in Santo Domingo 
(vi) Final Evaluation session and planning re ongoing technical support 
(see attached draft itinerary for further details) 
Phase Three: Field Visit Follow-Up: This will include: 
August 2005 
(i) Drafting of Trip Report 2 Days 
(ii) Immediate follow-up re technical support to CRS leadership team 
(iii)Briefing of DCOF team re field visit findings and implications for internal review of 
street children projects / guidance document 
D. Timeframe 
The work of this SOW will be completed between July 1 and August 31, 2006. 
19 

APPENDIX B: ITINERARY 
(July 31 - August 4, 2006) 
Monday July 31 
Location Activity 
USAID -Initial orientation session with Norma Paredes 
Quedate Con Nosotros -Site visit by DCOF and USAID staff 
Tuesday August 1 
Location Activity 
CRS -Initial briefing by CRS staff re project’s progress to 
date 
CRS -Initial orientation session with Project NINA 
Coordinators from each of the 5 consortium members 
USAID -Briefing by Mari Castillo, USAID HIV/AIDS &TB 
Activities Manager at the mission regarding USAID– 
funded activities related to HIV/AIDS and children in 
the DR 
USAID -Daily de-brief with Norma Paredes 
Wednesday August 2 
Location Activity 
Clarion Hotel -Full day workshop/colloquium hosted by Project 
NINA for NGO and government stakeholders focusing 
on approaches to the “Initial Contact” phase of street 
outreach work 
Esperanza -Briefing by Executive Director, Carlos Pimentel 
Sanchez, on the microfinance services provided by 
project Esperanza to marginalized families 
Hilton Hotel -Daily de-brief with Norma Paredes 
Thursday August 3 
Location Activity 
Consultant’s Offices -Briefing on the ongoing development of a common 
information tracking software package for Project 
NINA 
Hilton Hotel Discussion with Peter De Wannemaeker, family and 
child psychologist, about the Circle of Security 
approach to working with children and families 
CRS -Review of quarterly results/ indicator tracking tables 
from Project NINA consortium members 
Yo Tambien Site visit by DCOF and USAID staff. 
CRS -Briefing by CRS Management Team re overall 
progress of Project NINA 
-Discussion of preliminary findings from DCOF 
Technical Team 
CRS -Modified SWOT analysis session with Project NINA 
Coordinators from 5 Consortium members 
Hilton Hotel -Daily de-brief with Norma Paredes 
Friday August 4 
Location Activity 
Hilton Hotel -Elaboration of preliminary recommendations 
CRS -Presentation of preliminary recommendations to 
Project NINA coordination team 
21

APPENDIX C: RESOURCE DOCUMENTS 
David James-Wilson, “Building Bridges to Mainstream Opportunities for Street Children in the 
Dominican Republic: A report on the DCOF Engagement Mission with Project NINA and Its 
Consortium Members – Dominican Republic, April 5-9, 2006.” 
“Project NINA, Guaranteeing Quality Services for the Protection of Children and Adolescents in 
the Dominican Republic, Third Narrative Report October 2005-March 2006.” 
USAID Grant Agreement 517-A-00-04-00114-00 with Catholic Relief Services for “Improving 
the Quality of Life for Vulnerable Children Living in the Streets of Santo Domingo (Project 
NINA),” August 31, 2004. 
23
U.S.Agency for International Development 
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 700 
Washington, DC 20523 
Tel: (202) 789-1500 
Fax: (202) 204-3042 
www.usaid.gov