About Us

Little Angels Network Society (LANS) exists to ensure optimal and sustainable protection of vulnerable children. This includes promotion of family and community based care of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). Such children are often marginalized yet they should be at the very centre of society, receiving extra nurture and protection. Their vulnerability requires nothing less than this. We protect and ensure these children’s welfare and wellbeing through the following programmes:

  1. Adoption
  2. Kinship
  3. Foster Care
  4. Mediation
  5. Family preservation and strengthening

Little Angels Network subscribes to the global agenda in the child protection arena to promote family based care and upbringing of children. We are passionate about seeing every child growing up in a family. We recognize that a major focus of this shift away from the use of residential care for children is not simply about reducing the numbers of institutions and removing children from there, but also about establishing better preventive and family support services to reduce child-family separation and stop children going into alternative care in the first place.

Since our inception in 2002, we have worked towards connecting children living in institutions with families. We strongly believe that a loving family is the best place for a child to grow up in as it is best suited to ensure the holistic development of the child.

Initially, our focus was on strengthening charitable children institutions (orphanages and children homes) to improve the quality of care given to children in institutions. We did this through capacity building (trainings, formulation of child friendly policies and procedures plus financial support). We worked closely with children homes, churches, together with the government and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to promote family based care of children. This mostly entailed foster care and adoption of children who had been completely separated from their families.

We believe that all children are created with inalienable rights including the right to identity, belonging, and nurture. Each child arrives with a bundle of rights that cannot be taken away from them. It is therefore imperative that the society at large makes every effort to ensure that the basic rights all children are protected. LANS has molded its work after the universal children rights aspirations contained in various instruments e.g UNCRC, ACRWC, Children Act 2001 and UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of children (1990). These instruments provide clear aspirations that provide us with a steady compass. Our focus is on the right of every child to grow up in a family where they receive; love, nurture, protection, discipline, and where all their basic needs are met.

Caring for Children During Conflict

In 2007/2008 following the tragic Post Election Violence in Kenya that left many people dead and many children separated from their families, we worked together with Kenya Red Cross and other organization to protect children affected by the clashes. In particular, we identified school going children who were due to sit for their national examinations that year and provided them with shelter, trauma counselling, education and preparation for their national primary and secondary exams. This helped them to pursue their education with minimal interruptions.

We also conducted family tracing to find their families who were either dead or living in IDP camps. After completion of their exams we returned them back to their families.

This project gave birth to our kinship care /Re-integration project which we have been running since then with support from SIDA, FIDA and presently FFIA –Sweden. Our project seeks to re-integrate children in institutions back to their families and communities. We empower the families to take care of their children through livelihood support and psycho-social support. Over 700 children have benefited from this project.

Our programmes are undertaken through the following strategic approaches

  • Advocacy: Advocate for enforcement of appropriate policy and guidelines in line of the new constitution on alternative care.
  • Partnership and Networking: strengthen partnerships through sharing of best practices and Lessons Learnt.
  • Capacity Building: Identify relevant training needs and develop capacity of staff, partners in adoption and kinship care.

Page Quote: “The soul is healed by being with children.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist and philosopher.