This NYT article profiles a creative program that caretakers in poor countries are using to better care for orphans’ physical and emotional needs. In an effort to care for the 50 million orphans in Africa, a result of high death rates in pregnency and child birth and the legacy of AIDS and other diseaess, some orphanages are employing a new program that differs from the traditional model of orphan care in the developed world. 

At the Berega Orphanage in Tanzania the children are not put up for adoption nor kept at the orphanage indefinitely. Rather, infants stay at the orphanage for 2 to 3 years, until they are old enough to eat regular food and strong enough to return to their villages and live with their extended family. 

The innovative part of this model is that many of these orphans have teenage girls from their extended families, often a cousin or a sister, living with them at the orphanage. These young women, known as  ”bindis,” come to love the children and will look after them when they leave the orphanage. Ms. Ute Klatt, a German missionary and nurse who founded the United German Mission Aid began recruiting relatives to move into her orphanage about five years ago and explains that the bindi system is an attempt to provide something close to a normal childhood for the children as well as an education for the young female caregivers. 

The Bindis, some of whom have never been to school, gain an education. Ms. Klatt provides schoolbooks, and the young women study and teach one another in the evenings. Many arrive illiterate and leave knowing how to read. She also teaches them the basics about health, and they learn sewing and batik, and share the cooking. 

Ms. Klatt said that before the bindi system, many children experienced attachment disorders and children were not well-integrated back into their famlies and communities. With the care of the bintis, life for these orphans becomes less institutional and the orphans get the strong emotional bonds necessary for healthy development. 

On a recent visit to the Berega Orphanage, the children seemed to be thriving.