In cooperation with its sister organization in South Africa (Worldwide Children's Aid Network - WeCAN); ICAN is focused on meeting the needs of orphans and vulnerable children on the African continent. Our goal is to shelter, feed, clothe, educate, and provide medical care to orphans on the African continent.

In 2001, Dr. Bill and Barbara Peters built the first of eleven multi-use community centers that served as daycare and education facilities in some of the poorest townships in Gauteng Province, South Africa. By 2004, they recognized that the multi-use centers were not fully addressing the major African humanitarian crisis created by the AIDS epidemic. With as many as 35 million children on the African sub-continent having lost one or both parents to AIDS, a greater commitment to orphans and vulnerable children was needed. In response, the Peters founded a non-profit corporation called the International Children's Aid Network, Inc. (ICAN).  In July, 2005, ICAN began to directly address the orphan crisis by raising funds to purchase a brick-making machine that could not only provide materials to build a Children's Village orphanage, but eventually could help make the Village self-sufficient through a brick making business.