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Thursday, 29 July 2010
Graduating high school students in Kampong Cham province are fortunate to be situated near the nation’s capital, and thus several of the country’s best universities. Recruitment events are definitely in demand and hosted in high schools. However, increased access to information doesn’t necessarily mean those students know what the next four years of their life may be like. Kampong Cham-based Peace Corps Education volunteers found that many of their students weren’t clear on college life, mostly asking: How do I choose a major? How will I achieve academic success in my university? How do I live in Phnom Penh? What do I need to know about safety and security in Phnom Penh?
Seven Peace Corps volunteers working in rural Kampong Cham high schools and the RTTC (Regional Teacher Training Center) planned and implemented the first provincial-wide Real Ideas for Continuing Education (R.I.C.E.) Fair at the University of Management and Economics in Kampong Cham town on June 25, 2010. They brought alive these issues by inviting representatives from their local community and Phnom Penh, such as college students, professors, and speakers from fourteen organizations and universities.
Current university students hosted student panel discussions, where students and other guests from throughout the province, and interested students from Kralanh High School, Siem Reap, learned more about these hot topics. Choosing a major was hands down the most popular discussion. After hearing their insider advice, over 550 participants took away flyers, brochures, and promotions, and most importantly, formed realistic expectations of university.
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Read about PEPY's educational programs in Dubai's Woman Magazine!
Friday, 26 February 2010
Have you read our PEPY Philosophies? We'd love it if you would! Check it out and comment below, or click here for a permanent link.
In order to empower people to make changes in their own lives–to create our vision for a world where everyone has access to quality education, increased health and environmental awareness—we believe we need to:
Build capacity in people.
Partner with other organizations.
Share the lessons we have learned.
Allow flexibility in our programs.
Work with local government systems and power structures.
Overall, we believe that the changes we want to see in the world are only possible if we invest time in people. Changes won’t result from giving things away, they won’t result from throwing more money at a problem, and they won’t happen by rushing to reach more and more places without committing the time to create high quality impacts. We are just as impatient as the rest of the people looking to make change in the world, but what we have learned through our mistakes and our slow and small successes is that investing time in a team of passionate leaders will keep us on the path to reaching our vision.
Build capacity in people.
We believe in the power of individuals to make positive changes in their communities. Our most effective programs are those that invest in individuals, and we’ve learned the hard way that improvements in infrastructure and resources without capacity development components have little impact. Check out some of these programs to see how PEPY is investing in developing Cambodian capacity:
* Empowering communities to be involved in education.
Our Primary School Development Plan Program is a three year plan in which PEPY staff work with local school support committees, school administrators, and teachers to create and implement community-driven solutions to school problems. At the end of the three year program, we expect School Support Committees to be advocates for education in their communities, to understand their rights and ministry commitments, to be able to identify and solve school problems, and to serve as the monitoring agents for government school budgets. In addition, teachers and school administrators will have opportunities for extensive training in areas they identify. In this way, PSDP strengthens schools in the specific ways they need.
* Hire staff within our target areas.
We hope in five years that individuals from the communities where we work are running our programs. At present, we have not achieved this goal and our Cambodian program managers are mostly from urban backgrounds where they were able to achieve higher education. To build local capacity, we have hired project assistants and program officers from the Chanleas Dai area who work directly with each program manager. Over two thirds of our staff are from Chanleas Dai and the surrounding area. The goal is to have them take over all positions in the future. Our whole team believes in this concept, and that’s why we believe it will work!
* Support higher education
All full-time PEPY staff who work with us for over 3 months are eligible for a full scholarship to higher education, and they are taking us up on it! On our team, we have Sela (Office Manager) getting his master’s in Tourism, Kong (Guard) learning English, Kimline (Accountant) getting her MBA, Riem Bon (Program Assistant) doing his BA, Thy (Driver) studying computers, Rithy (Program Officer) getting his BA in English, Chim Seng (English teacher) getting his BA in English, Ratana (Education Program Manager) doing a master’s in Education, and An Em (Program Officer) doing a BA as well. In addition, we are supporting 16 teachers and youth from the Kralanh/Chanleas Dai area to obtain their high school equivalency degree through a weekend program at the District of Education.
* Building youth capacity
Our Child-to-Child Program is all about capacity building, investing in young leaders, and helping them find creative solutions to problems they identify in their daily lives.
Partner with other organizations.
We believe it is important to partner with both organizations we want to learn from and ones we want to help to improve. Our goals are to not only improve our own organization but to support the movements around the causes we believe in as a whole, which means we need to let others learn from our successes and failures and share the resources we create with others working in education. It also means that instead of simply being critical of others, we speak to groups we disagree with and try to learn from and share with them. We spent our first few years complaining when we saw other organizations harming education in the areas where we worked and then realized that complaining is useless unless we do it directly to the organization itself while also suggesting ideas for improvements. We believe that partnerships and cross-organizational capacity building can raise the bar for the development industry overall. It can also help us to expand our impact from one small area in rural Siem Reap Province to other places in Cambodia and around the world. Here are some of the ways we partner with other groups:
* Classroom libraries
Our Classroom Libraries Program was designed as a proposal to Room to Read (a nonprofit organization which has distributed many books and built libraries in Asia and Africa) as our idea for how to improve upon their reading room program. The new model brings books into each classroom and provides more extensive and ongoing teacher training for all teachers, not just a librarian, and shows them how to incorporate books into the classroom. This partnership has lead to Room to Read focusing on only Khmer Early Literacy books for the next two years of new book printing and has inspired other classroom library models across South East Asia.
*Early literacy
When we found out that BETT (Basic Education and Teacher Training) was making early literacy books, we had a little dance party in our office. These are the first Khmer books that are being created using early literacy best practices, leveled readers, patterning, featured “new words”, the whole shebang! BETT has spent nearly 4 years researching and making this book series, and we are so impressed with their commitment to doing this program so thoroughly. We asked to work with them to continue to learn from their work and to add value where we could. PEPY’s team took on the task of helping to choose books for the extension of the project: lesson plans for commonly found Khmer books for grades 3-6. PEPY has only played a small role in the lesson plan development process, but we are delighted to be a part of this program, which is currently awaiting Ministry approval for use in schools across Cambodia.
* XO laptops
Since we became a test school for the One Laptop Per Child project (aka $100 laptops) we have initiated group meetings with other organizations using the new green laptops so we can share ideas and progress from our programs.
Share the lessons we have learned.
We believe that sharing the struggles we have, failures we face, and mistakes we make will help improve the work of the industry. Honesty throughout the NGO world is something we hope for and we try to contribute to through this website and our work with partners. Here are some ways we share what we learn:
* Our Managing Director, Maryann Bylander, is a board member of NEP, an education network aimed at sharing ideas and lessons across the sector.
* Our founder, Daniela Papi, writes on her blog called Lessons I Learned.
* The PEPY team started voluntourism101 to share ideas and best practices in regards to volunteer tourism based on our experiences in Cambodia (site going live soon).
* On our tours we focus nightly on article readings and discussions on relevant topics we have learned about in our development and tourism work.
Allow flexibility in our programs.
While we of course would love it if our programs reached our goals exactly as we had planned, we know that cannot happen, and never will. Typical NGO funding models require that organizations show proof that they executed their plan as proposed, and many either stretch the truth about their activities or force their employees to enact the plan as proposed, even if it has proven to be an ineffective model. We believe this is causing many problems in development work. As a result we have turned down grants that we felt would limit our ability to change how our programs are designed if the need to do so became apparent. We are able to be flexible in our programs because we have:
*Individual donors like YOU
We are funded almost entirely by private funding. Past participants on our tours or donors who have an intimate understanding of our programs are our typical funders, and this allows us the flexibility to get on the phone with them and say “You know the money you gave to support math teacher training? Well, there was some extra money, and we’d love to use it to buy replacement books for our library. Does that work for you?” or to tell them that a program we have designed is not working as well as we had hoped and we would like to redirect their funds while we restructure the program.
*A commitment to put communities, not donors, first.
When we have the opportunity for specified funding, we first ensure that it will provide for the real needs of the communities we are working in. Where donor needs come first, or will lessen the impact of our programs, we say no. In 2009, an NGO approached us to give us significant funding to support our Primary School Development Plan Program, but it would require us to tailor part of the program to meet the requirements of a grant they had acquired. As the PSDP model requires flexibility in order to be effective, we felt that taking the money would constrain the program too much. As such, we turned down the money to preserve the integrity of the program.
* PEPY Tours
PEPY Tours funds a significant portion of PEPY Ride’s overhead each year, and donations specifically earmarked for M&G cover the rest. This allows our fundraising dollars to go directly to our programs.
Work with local government systems and power structures.
We think it is very important that the work that we do is supported by local leaders and contributes positively to the systems which will continue to operate in Cambodia long after PEPY leaves. We recognize that supporting government schools means that we are in many ways disempowering the government to do the same; some argue this is allowing the government to continue their sub-par support for education in Cambodia. We agree, but we think that supporting capacity building and training in schools is not something the government will be inclined to fund any time in the near future. We realize that this is both a Catch-22 and a “chicken or the egg” situation. We think that capacity building, support for local empowerment around education, and creating a demand for high quality education will lead to communities either demanding government school support in the future or continuing to implement some of these changes themselves.
Here are some ways we work with local government systems:
* Close relations with district and provincial authorities
We have a close relationship with both the District and Provincial Ministries of Education in the areas where we work. We meet with them regularly to get feedback and input for our programs as well as to find out ways to use their training and expertise to support our teacher training goals. In the Primary School Development Plan Program, the members of the District Office of Education as well as the commune and village leadership have played a strong role in both school selection and program implementation.
*Sharing with the Ministry of Education in Phnom Penh
PEPY’s Library Program and Chanleas Dai Primary Schools’ overall activities have served as model programs. On several occasions the Ministry of Education in Phnom Penh have sent representatives to visit, monitor and learn about our activities.
* Following ministry standards
We closely follow Ministry of Education policies. Our trainers use ministry policy and curriculum to build the capacity of government teachers, and the goals of our Education Program match those of the Royal Government of Cambodia. Wherever possible, we aim to support, not detract from, the government’s education plans.
A commitment to knowing our impacts:
You might call this “Monitoring and Evaluation." This is an area where, if you look at common practices of reporting, we are surely quite weak. Instead, if you were able to evaluate our team on how well they know the impacts of our programs and the changes that they need to make to fix any problems, we would rank fairly high. We of course write reports when we need to, usually for our own internal records and evaluative purposes, but our reports to donors are typically much less formal than they are to granting bodies. We would like to ramp up our reporting so that we can better share the work that we are doing with all of you who are reading this and keep more detailed written records for future staff and our own reflection process.
That said, we are comfortable with the amount of knowledge we receive about our programs’ impacts, as 75% of our staff live or spend the majority of their work days in the communities where we work and continually inform us of ways to improve. It took some time to build trust with community leaders and school administrators to get honest answers about the impact of our programs, local needs, their impressions of PEPY, and constructive advice. When you are viewed as dollar signs it is hard to get honest feedback. There has been a significant shift in how the community treats PEPY staff now that there is an understanding that we do indeed want honest feedback and will not remove our funding if we get criticism. . . . Instead we will happily receive it as it helps us improve what we do!
Friday, 27 November 2009
By Daniela Papi I just got back from the US.
Spanning two worlds that are so different, where I am perceived so differently
can be confusing for the brain. I can’t
decide if I prefer to do my visit to the US in one big annual chunk, as I used
to, or in more sporadic bursts of other-worldness as I seem to be doing this
year. Anyway, this was a long trip.
In over a month in the US, I contributed greatly to my
carbon consumption and deducted greatly from my bank account, visiting family,
friends, and PEPY supporters across North America. I also contributed to my knowledge and
inspiration accounts as I learned from many people on my journey, and I wanted
to share some inspirational quotes and experiences I had for this month’s
lessons learned section.
One of the highlights of my trip was joining the Adventure
Travel World Summit in Quebec, Canada. There were many
great speakers, but a few highlights worth sharing were Jeff Greenwald’s speech
where he basically said: *Tourism that
changes OUR lives, makes us better people and opens up new worlds to us, is
what many of us have been selling. But,
that’s no longer good enough. We now
need to look at travel as a way to positively improve the world around us, not
just ourselves. * Jeff’s organization “Ethical Traveler” aims to spread these
messages and includes 13 tips for the Accidental Ambassador to help us all become more responsible travelers.
Another speaker I really enjoyed at the ATWS was Dr. J.
Wallace Nicholas. Who wouldn’t love an
ocean conservationist who is now studying neuroscience and has dedicated his
life to protecting sea turtles?! His
speech was inspiring, describing how it hurt him to watch his two daughters
fall in love with nature, as he knows that their hearts will be broken. He said we all MUST fall in love with nature,
though, and help our children do the same, so that indeed, when our hearts do
break, we have the will to fight back against all those forces that are
destroying our planet, and help future generations still have something to fall
in love with. His organization, Ocean
Revolution, is working to create a revolution to protect the 71% of the earth
which is covered in water. He gave us
each a blue marble to pass on to someone else to spread his revolutionary message. (Consider yourself marbled – pass it on!)
On my first day back in the US, I attended The Feast, a
collection of inspiring people with a collective will-to-do-good fueled by
inspired do-gooders presenting their ideas and knowledge in TED-like short
presentations. Oh, and it is run by
“creatives”, a term that always sort of makes me jealous to hear. I want to be a “creative” – I think I’m
pretty creative! – but in the new form it seems to have taken it refers to
artists, musicians, web designers, etc – i.e. people whose stick figures look
and sing a lot better than mine do.
Anyway, the creatives running the show, Mike and Jerri, are pretty darn
deserving of the word, and they get 10 points for putting on an energy packed
event.
I listened to a talk by Elizabeth Scharpf, which had me
nodding the whole time… SHE gets it. More than any other group I have heard about,
I think the design and concept behind SHE (Sustainable Health Enterprises) is an
exemplary model of how social enterprise should be done. SHE is a lesson learned in and of
itself. All of the development lessons I
have learned are wrapped up in SHE: a program designed around community needs,
local ownership and buy-in, use of locally available materials, capacity
building/training/education as a key component, community components designed
to be economically sustainable. . . they have it all. Elizabeth reminded me of this lesson: stop,
listen and look around. The needs and
solutions are both in front of you, if you don’t push past them with your
preconceived notions!
Meeting Daniel Epstein from The Unreasonable Institute at The Feast reminded me how important names can be. Who WOULDN’T want to attend The Unreasonable
Institute with a name like that!?
(Pssst, they are accepting applications right now!) If they had named it the “Learning Center for
Responsible and Successful Social Venturing”, I might have been less inclined
to yell, SIGN ME UP at first glance.
I also had the pleasure of meeting Rafe Furst at The
Feast, as he was my “Micro-Sponsor”. In
other words, I only had to pay a little bit to join the conference and he paid
a lot to help me get there. Mike and
Jerri matched us up with our Micro-Sponsors based on our interests, and I was
reminded of how important it is to live a life you believe in through speaking
with Rafe.
The final speaker at The Feast, Brian Bordainick was by far
the most enjoyable speaker for me to watch.
Not because it was the most flashy or “creative” or unreasonable even,
but because it was honest and heartfelt and fabulous. A story he told, which really resonated with
me and many other entrepreneurs in the room I’m sure, was one I have and will
tell many times. Brian, who began
working in a hurricane damaged area in New Orleans through Teach for America,
had been appointed the Athletic Director at a school, though little to no
sports facilities or budget were available.
Step by step he began a project called The 9th Ward Field
of Dreams, aimed at creating a multi-million dollar sports facility in this hurricane
damaged area. One day, as he was walking
through the halls, depressed about a donation that had fallen through or
annoyed at the barriers he was coming up against, he grumbled about how nothing
was working out and he might as well quit, and one of his football players came
up and put his arm over his shoulder and said “Baby, ain’t nobody told you to
start this to begin with!”
Nearly everyone in the room laughed. Anyone who has started something that
sometimes feels like IT’S driving YOU, who has started a company or a business
or a project and felt so overwhelmed by it that sometimes they wish they hadn’t
started it, would laugh at this, because they know that feeling. They also know that Brian, like each of us,
quickly came around to realize that, despite the frustrations and struggle to perfect
that which we are striving towards, doing something you believe in beats doing
something less inspiring for someone else’s gain any day. I got back to
Cambodia a few weeks ago with my head full of new ideas and my inbox full of
unread messages. The transition back
into either of these two opposing worlds is always tough, but I have been
reminded over and over again of Brian’s quote as hey, ain’t nobdy told us to
start this to begin with anyway, so we had better be enjoying it and making our
time worth while, because no one else will!
I’m grateful to our amazing team here who constantly remind me that this
is indeed where I want to be and that, if we keep working hard and learning the
lessons presented to us, we can indeed make our work worthwhile. Happy Thanksgiving, and thank YOU for being a
part of why we do our work!
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Some people have asked us if our Bike-to-School Program is “sustainable." Clearly, the answer is no! The program will not be continued once we leave, so why did we start it? Is it causing more harm than good? What are the plans moving forward?
Read on to learn why we started this program, why we are continuing it for a bit longer, and how we plan to improve it into something we believe in even more. Our hope is to find the time to write out these program analysis for more programs in the future, so keep on the lookout! PEPY's Program: Bike-to-School ProgramProgram Overview: PEPY provides bicycles to students who are graduating from 6th grade as an incentive for parents to allow their children to stay in school through this point and to provide a means of accessing secondary school. Students must also attend monthly PEPY workshops as well as complete the government's final exam which allows students to enroll in grade 7. If there are students who attend school and the PEPY programs but do not pass the test, PEPY funds a teacher to be a tutor for the summer and the government allows them to retake the test.Stopping, Continuing, or Redeveloping: Redeveloping Internal Program Rating: This program is most likely our least sustainable program, both in the community’s ability to continue the program when PEPY eventually leaves the area and in the program’s ability to improve the capacity of the local community to solve their own problems. Problem: In the areas where we work, most families have only one or more bicycles and the wealthier families have a motorbike. There are two families within the center of Chanleas Dai that have a truck. As many families have only one bike, the parents often need to take the bike to get into the fields. With an average of five children, there is sometimes a need for different kids to go to different schools based on their grade. When students go to primary school, it is typically either only in the morning or only in the evening. When they move on to 7th grade in the lower secondary school, students typically need a bike dedicated just to them as they have to be in school for the full day. A bicycle can be about double the monthly income of a family living in Chanleas Dai. Broken bicycles or the lack of a bicycle is often the reason given by students who have dropped out of school or have taken a long break. Program Goals: Increased attendance. Increased duration of education. Increased enrollment in and completion of both primary school and lower secondary school. Some Factors Considered Before Implementation: We considered the fact that families might sell the bikes or use them for purposes other than sending their kids to school. As primary school completion -- which earns the student the bike -- is one of the program goals, the program will still be deemed successful even if the bike is used for other purposes, as having the child finish grade 6 is a higher level of education than over 50% of people in the commune will achieve. We considered the impact on the local economy; there are no bike shops in the commune, but there are at least two in the nearest town on the main road in the district. We considered buying the bikes from there, but the quality was much lower than those in the city. This is something we can and should revisit for the final years of BTSP implementation. We considered the fact that children and families might move to this village to be able to qualify for this program. As we have seen this already on a small scale, we are changing this program for its final two years to the junior high school, as this will diminish this problem in part. (see below) Alternatives: Nearly every NGO working in government primary school education in Cambodia has some sort of “scholarship program”. The government even took over one of those programs this year, which is a big step for the sustainability of this type of program. Most of these scholarship programs include these components: - a bicycle
- non-formal “fees” paid directly to teachers (these are fees the teacher charges for “extra classes” or to be allowed to take a test and anyone who doesn’t pay them isn’t able to pass. In this way, “free” Cambodian public school is not really free at all.)
- a uniform
- school materials
- some of the more damaging programs also pay parents to allow their kids to stay in school
As other PEPY programs provide for uniforms/school materials and PEPY’s Teacher Award Program removes the non-formal fees, PEPY is in effect providing a scholarship opportunity to all students willing to stay in school. Another issue we have seen in the area, is the lack of transparency available for these NGO groups to choose the right recipients and from what we have seen, they often do not. By making the program accessible to all, motivation becomes a determinant, but we recognize it also means that kids in lower grades who would be in need of such support are not able to access it. Another alternative is to focus on connecting the community to job opportunities requiring education. By making education more valued in the community by drawing direct correlations between increased education and the ability to access higher paying jobs, incentive programs will not be necessary as the incentive will be in the value of the education itself. We very much agree with this, and we are currently pursuing this avenue as well, connecting the community to scholarship programs alternate jobs, hiring local staff to manage PEPY programs, and looking for partners to help bring industry and additional jobs into the local areas. Success: Since the program started, we have seen nearly 1000% increase in 7th grade completion in the community due in part to the BTSP. There are other factors as well, and we are working to strengthen those factors and phase out the less sustainable BTSP, but in the meantime, we believe it is part of the reason Chanleas Dai’s secondary school has over double the amount of students staying on through secondary school than projected by local government officials. Future Plans: When we started this program, we committed to it for a 6 year period and we have done the program for four years. We will continue to run this program for two more years, but are changing it to a JHS based program rather than a primary school program. The difference is slight, but now that we are working more with the JHS, we find it more equitable to provide bikes to all entering 7th graders who can keep the bike for perpetuity as their own once they complete grade 7 rather than providing the bike to only one primary school’s 6th grade. The main way we are improving this program is by phasing it out and replacing it with our Bike Repair Clubs. These clubs will provide skills (both technical skills and leadership opportunities) for JHS students who will then work in small groups to repair bikes in their own school as well as surrounding primary schools. This means that students of all ages who are registered in school can benefit from having their bike repaired. It will also involve a mico-lending aspect. If students do not have the $1.50 needed to buy a new bike tube, then they will be able to put $0.13 down each week until they pay it back. One of the problems we were trying to address with the BTSP in the first place was that students would drop out of school if they didn’t have the funds to repair the broken bikes. In this way, the family does not need to wait until they have saved up to fix their child’s bike but can instead opt to pay back for the repair step by step while their child is still able to attend school. Plus, we can support kids in the lower grades where the highest drop-out rates typically are seen. We’d love to hear your thoughts on our analysis of this program’s “sustainability”. We hope to find the time to do more program analysis like this one, so keep checking back! --- Reminder: If any of YOU, who are reading this post, have traveled with us, or are interested in development, have any questions about our work/decisions or have ideas for how we can further improve our work, we’d be happy to hear them. Feel free to write us an email or add comments/questions below. Remember, KEEN will provide a pair of their fabulous socks each month to someone who writes a comment on our Team Journal! Help us generate more discussions on these topics we feel passionate about, share your ideas to help make us a better organization, and have a chance to have cool socks to keep your feet warm this winter! Or, come help us do all of these things IN Cambodia (where you won’t need the socks anyway, but might want their sandals!)
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