Prior to 2008, programs for children who are orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS assessed their interventions primarily by tallying the numbers of children served, as well as services provided to those children/households through the programs. At that time, there was an absence of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tools to guide such programs in determining the needs of children, monitoring children’s well-being, and assessing how programs were making a difference in the lives of the children they served. To assist these programs in collecting and using information about the well-being of vulnerable children, the Child Status Index (CSI) was created in 2008. The CSI was designed to meet demand for a tool that could be implemented by lowliterate (typically volunteer) community caregivers to periodically capture children’s status across the six domains of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) programs for children who are orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS: food and nutrition; shelter and care; child protection; health; psychosocial; and education and skills training.