Critical Views
Are PEPY’s Programs “Sustainable”? (Part I of II)
By: Daniela Papi, Executive Director
We recognize that many of the projects we have taken on in the past, and even some of the programs we are still doing now, are not “sustainable”. In next month’s newsletter, we will look at how we at PEPY define that over-used-and-not-often-attained concept. We will highlight which of our programs we think are the most “sustainable” based on what we have learned over the past 4 years of implementing PEPY programs and which are the least, and why. We will also examine what changes we are making in some of our actions to make our programs “more sustainable” and in which areas we think “sustainability” is a poorly-defined goal.
All that next month. . . for now, we wanted to highlight a bit of the history of PEPY and the path we have been on as we worked to continually improve our impact. When we first started PEPY, our organization didn’t exist apart from the fundraising we did for other groups’ programs. We funded the first PEPY-backed school through an organization that builds schools all around Cambodia (in partnership with the World Bank, though we didn’t understand those logistics at the time). We funded much more than our original goal in that first year, and eventually co-funded the construction an additional school as well as started an English and Computer program, as that was the next step our partner was willing to facilitate.
What we found when we showed up to see the school we had spent a year funding to build was that it looked like the building might not have been needed after all. The rooms were empty, or half empty, very few teachers were in sight, there were not nearly enough students to fill all of the classes (as our funding provided a new 5 classroom building added to an already existing 7 classrooms). The only class where the teacher showed up regularly was the English/Computer course we had funded. The teacher also happened to be the first college educated person almost anyone in the village had met.
Very quickly, dreams changed from “shop keeper” to “English teacher”, from “finishing grade 6” to “finishing grade 12 and then going to school in Phnom Penh like our English teacher did.” Soon kids were reading in English, writing their names, and sounding out English words on the board. It wasn’t until we decided to try to find a way to do baseline tests of the education levels at the school that we realized that many of the kids who seemed the brightest in English class couldn’t even write their names in Khmer. No one had taught them—or at least they hadn’t had the right techniques, taken the time needed, or found a way to deal with the diversity of levels within their classroom to help the majority of students learn to read.
We soon realized that we were doing a huge “disservice to these students” by helping them learn English before they could learn Khmer, quoting Doug Beacom, a volunteer in Cambodia the time. We also realized we had supported development techniques we no longer believed in: coming in with ideas strictly from the outside, deciding what the “needs” in an area are by limited observations or statistics, and taking action without working with the local communities involved. You might be thinking, “You mean neither PEPY nor the group you worked with ASKED if a school or English program was wanted?” Sure, someone probably asked, but we have learned that asking, when you hold the purse strings, is never enough. The answer will almost always be whatever is perceived to be the right answer to keep the purse strings around. Plus, who wouldn’t want a new school building or English classes when the option was on the table? That doesn’t mean that those things were priorities or actually verbalized “needs” in the area.
We asked ourselves: What use is a $50,000 investment in a school, if students are still not being educated? We looked around at what other groups in the area were doing and tried to find programs that were building the capacity of teachers, not just building schools. We found some great programs, like KAPE, but most of them were working in areas far from Siem Reap. Although we surely weren’t qualified to be making decisions about education in rural Cambodia, we knew that the programs we had been exposed to in the area could be improved upon. We knew we had the opportunity to bring in more funds for education, but didn’t want to build more buildings before we felt confident that the building was housing improved educational opportunities. We would need the power to hire local staff and make our own decisions, so we registered PEPY as its own NGO in Cambodia, and decided to focus more on Khmer Literacy. We began hiring local staff, not merely from Cambodia, but from the areas in which we were working, as we learned that the urban/rural divide was nearly as insurmountable a chasm in some cases as the foreign/local divide.
We recognized that there were barriers to the opportunity to access schools, and began perhaps our least “sustainable” program, the Bike-to-School Program (BTSP). Rather than focusing solely on the more long term and arduous process of building up school programs to the point where education is at a high enough quality that would garnish increased outside demand for the programs, we grew impatient and wanted to make sure that the kids in the village could access school NOW, so we started the BTSP. We recognized that students needed to “earn” the bike, but our efforts to make that seem to be the case meant we kept the bike as a carrot for 6th grade completion, even though the majority of students were being lost way before that point.
We saw that new schools and bikes and more student attendance did not increase the level of education being offered at the school, and that investing in teachers was the key area we needed to focus on. We debated what support we should give to government teachers. When would we be undermining the responsibilities of the government and when would we be asking too much of people not paid enough to commit to doing their jobs full time? We began looking for any teacher training opportunities we could find, but found that it was much easier to find “Origami Training Classes” (not joking!) than early literacy classes and much easier to find funders to build schools than it was to find programs designed to help teachers improve. We hired more of our own staff and began to design our own training programs while at the same time grabbing any opportunities we could find for outside training.
Many ideas still came from “the outside”, and many still do. We had internal debates about when that was ok, and when it wasn’t. Some of us thought it was ok to bring in new concepts like starting a “literacy camp” when the idea of a summer camp was a foreign concept, while others advocated community-led decision making and research methods like PRAs (Participatory Rural Appraisals) rather than surveys. We tried both. We hired a Cambodian manager for our programs, and she brought her own ideas for sustainability, focusing on developing the capacity of the community’s young leaders. She brought us the Child-to-Child program, which she had been trained in many years prior and conducted our first PRAs. We began to learn what the community thought of our programs, how they really ranked their own needs, and what ideas they had for the improvements they wanted to be a part of.
We began to see change, incrementally. A library program and later a literacy program began to change how children viewed books and how the classrooms were used during free time. Teachers began to request that PEPY conduct training on this or that rather than the requests for radios, tv’s, and teacher laptops we had previously heard. Teachers started coming to school more often, in many cases nearly twice as often, and students stayed in school longer.
And yet, we were still giving stuff away with limited accountability or investment from the community and making many decisions without community involvement. It’s hard to be patient. Our programs seemed to have diverged down two paths, the “invest in the now and see results soon: in this class, in this person, in THIS generation” path, and the “don’t do, teach; don’t give, inspire: incremental change will happen” path. In many ways, we are still moving along both of these paths, something we will discuss further next month in this series.
Next month we will look more critically at the design of our programs and answer the question: What is PEPY doing now, and how “sustainable” do we think those programs are? In the meantime, thanks for YOUR part in the learning outlined above. Thank you for teaching us, supporting us, and allowing us to change and adapt our programs as we find new and better ways to improve the opportunities for rural communities to provide high quality education to their students. And thanks for continuing to push us to learn more and be more responsible. One of the best lessons we have learned over the last four years has been that we can ALWAYS do things better, and that when we become complacent and think “it’s good enough” we lose our ability to strive for great changes. For our part in this newsletter, we will continue to strive to keep you informed about our work and provide a more critical look at the decisions we are making, if you will promise to keep reading. See you next month!
(For those who ARE reading this, why don’t you make a comment about our work and enter our contest to win free gear from Eagle Creek?!)
Lessons Learned: Common “Metrics for Success” are not successful metrics at all
by PEPY Executive Director, Daniela Papi
Building on the last “Lesson Learned” I wrote about with regards to partnering to make changes, this article is about is another lesson we are continuing to learn: how can we rate the success of the partnerships and programs we implement?
One of the dangerous myths about NGOs is that their success can be rated on their “Program to Overhead Ratio”. Not only is this wrong, as in this ratio does not help distinguish good from bad NGOs, but relying on this ratio is actually harmful to the NGO world. Why? Two reasons:
1) This number can be manipulated in so many ways, it is shocking to those who consider those numbers as representatives of static facts. The first time we filed our taxes at PEPY and I was asked by accountants “how do you want to split up your office overhead?” I was confused. “Isn’t office overhead, ‘overhead’?” Nope, turns out it’s not always. Actually, since our office is in Cambodia and the reason to have the office there is to operate programs in Cambodia, we could legally claim ALL expenses incurred in Cambodia as program costs. ALL! You can take your rent and divide it by floor space, by hours used, by any systematic way of saying what part of your rent (and hence then internet, water, etc) goes to which program. And, like I said, legally ALL of our in-country operations could be considered programs. We do not file our taxes that way, but for many big organizations, with offices in Cambodia, New York, etc, the ENTIRE expenses of the offices overseas in the areas where the work is being done are written off as program expenses. 100%. So if you look at the financials of one of those organizations and say, “Wow, well this is a ‘good’ organization, they only spend 15% on overhead” consider the fact that that 15% is likely the costs of just those things they consider “overhead” within their foreign offices and all of the offices, including things like thousands of dollars per floor for “decoration expenses” (not joking, these exist in many INGOs), etc are all incorporated into their program expenses. That 15% no longer looks so “lean”, does it? By deciding to donate strictly based on program to overhead ratios this is incentivizing some groups to misrepresent their actual spending and can lead to investing in programs which are not so effective at all.
2) Not “following the plan” does not mean the NGO did something wrong….. more often they did something right! If you haven’t already, go out and read the first 15 pages (at least) of William Easterly’s book, “White Man’s Burden” to understand why judging an NGO by their ability to successfully follow through on their pre-determined plan is not only wrong but harmful to our planet and its people. I am glad that I read his ideas after I had already been working in development for a few years and had already made my own perceptions with regards to how the majority of the NGO world functions. When I did finally get around to reading through the initial chapters of his book all I could do was smile, agree whole heartedly and want to make his book required reading for ANYONE planning to donate even the smallest amount of money to an NGO. He had put into words what I was seeing and living every day – the NGO world is DESIGNED to promote inefficiencies. How do I mean? Let’s look at large grant making. Here is an example process of how a large multi-country grant might be funded/executed:
1st – Someone comes up with an idea for change (often times a government official or an academic and very often someone far removed from the areas meant to be served)
2nd – A larger body, perhaps a UN agency, comes up with a plan and “log frame” – or a set of actions and metrics for success which the recipient organizations are meant to follow.
3rd – Layers of NGOs apply for a grant and are required to set their log frame and measures performance metrics before they have even started the project to know of these numbers and this process are reasonable. Even if they DO know already, based on past experience, that the process or metrics are flawed, it is unlikely as you get down the chain that the NGO would be able to alter the defining grant structure at this point so they have to choose to accept the grant or not based on it’s entirety, thereby forcing NGOs to either turn down money or accept that they will be inefficiently using funds before they even start. (I was just at a meeting of education NGOs this morning where we were discussing how we might collectively apply to a grant which defines success in a way that most of us agree is not completely in line with how we currently define it. Do we comprise, or look elsewhere for funding?)
4th – The funding filters through a few layers of NGOs perhaps down to a grassroots group enacting the project (with of course significant funding going to cover administrative costs to the filtering NGOs all along the process)
5th – The NGO finally starts working. Just after start, they might realize that the assumptions from which they have been operating were wrong, i.e. they need to dig different kinds of wells because the ones budgeted for break too easily or the education program they started is too complicated and they will need a more community based approach to get people involved etc.
The problem is, they now are not able to change the way their project is run, or not easily at least, and if they do try to change it or do not complete the task as originally outlined it is likely that they will not receive all of the funding and will surely not be eligible to receive more funding next year. Hence, NGOs that apply for grants in these types of systems are currently incentivized to continue on with projects even if they have identified the project is flawed, could be done better, and in some cases, is causing harm.
3) Investing because of the WRONG metrics does nothing to incentivize NGOs to focus on the RIGHT measures of success. What are the right ones (in my opinion)? Things that further them along on their mission. If NGOs are incentivized to take actions which further their mission, then investment decisions in NGO work can focus on choosing the mission that fits with your own view of a better future as well as measuring an NGO’s success at working towards those goals. For example, an NGO whose mission is increasing literacy in an area might monitor these metrics for success: changes in literacy rates, enrollment in literacy focused classes/schools, density and use of libraries, survey public opinion about the reading and its value in society etc.
(Note: a whole different lesson we have learned is on setting the RIGHT metrics for success. Often these are not the measures that large organizations report. For example, would an NGO whose mission is to bring quality healthcare into a rural area be best judged on: a) the number of clinics they built in a given time or b) the frequency that those clincs are used, hours the doctors are present, number of patients cured, etc? More often funders focus on the former, for lack of ability to monitor large projects and because quantitative data is often seen as more valid than qualitative experiences. Unfortunately, from what we’ve seen on the ground, whether it’s a clinic, library, school or training center buildings can and often do sit vacant. In my opinion one successfully operating health clinic is way more worthy of investment than 100 non-functioning ones, but I digress…)
4) If we are judging NGOs based on their ability to work towards fulfilling their mission, how do we determine what metrics we should use which are in line with that mission? We should let NGOs set their OWN metrics for success, I believe. Why? Because we just won’t get it. THEY are there and they know more about the barriers and needs they are dealing with in a certain area.
For example, with PEPY’s Bike-to-School Program, some might think “success” would be measured by the number of kids who ride their bike to junior high school vs. their parents using the bike or selling it. I would define success as how many parents allow their kids to stay in school LONGER to get the bike in the first place, no matter what is done with it afterwards. In the first part, you would be focusing on junior high school records, in the second, primary school records. PEPY’s Bike-to-School Program might be deemed “successful” by me looking at 6th grade graduation rates and “unsuccessful” by someone focusing on junior high school attendance, for example. (Though in the case of the real Bike-to-School Program, I think we would rate it success on both accounts, but I digress again….)
Granted, it is within our rights, or I would argue, it is our obligation, to ask for clarification from NGOs on the hows/whys of their decisions (see “Is PEPY making the right decision?” for an example of our donors and supporters doing the same for us). If we don’t agree with the logic in the NGOs decision making or don’t think the metrics for success are indeed measuring progress towards their mission, than it is our obligation to once again take action: a) learn more and feel comfortable with the clarification, b) make suggestions and requests for change, c) invest in only the programs we believe in and remove our funding from the ones we don’t.
We get to “vote” with our money. Which do YOU think is a good NGO? Go out and support those ones and cast YOUR votes. By aligning our investments in NGOs with our own vision for a brighter future and our own thoughts on measuring success, we can move towards the changes we want to see in the world. By recognizing that common metrics for determining an NGO’s success can often point us in the wrong direction, we need to first educate ourselves and the general donating public about these misconceptions and then go out and ask more of our NGO sector, get in a dialogue with them about how the define success, and cast our votes accordingly. Then, when all of the funding starts flowing to the NGOs that are transparent about their decisions, admitting their mistakes, and aligning their actions with their missions, we can change what it means to be a “good” NGO and start investing in the projects which are having the biggest and best impacts.
"Volunteering" or "Voluntourism" - who cares! It's how you design it!
by Daniela Papi - PEPY Tours Founder
There is a discussion about volunteering/voluntourism going on here, Part 1 and here, Part 2.
I decided to add my long-winded and opinionated post obviously tainted by working in Cambodia and being passionate about the responsibility implicit in these issues.
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This is a debate I often find myself in, as I run what could be considered a “voluntourism” organization in Cambodia. As I know “volunteer” is the words people are searching for, much more than “service learning” or “experiential education”, I had allowed the word to stay on our website, but I don’t like our guests thinking of themselves as “volunteers”, as that highlights the “giving”, and what I want to highlight for them is the “learning”. We don’t call them volunteers when they arrive and when we discuss our programs with them. Our goal is that they walk away knowing that their FUNDING helped sustain things which will last far longer than their short stay in Cambodia, and their knew KNOWLEDGE will help them be advocates for the causes they came in contact with and will hopefully alter how they travel and give in the future. We let them know that their future actions will dictate the additional impact this experience adds to the world outside of funding something on-going which they got a chance to visit.
The visual I put in this post does a better job of illustrating my thoughts on when/how volunteers are helpful.
http://pepyride.ning.com/profiles/blogs/assessing-volunteer-tourism
I want to add a totally different perspective: I think more voluntourism (as I define it below) is actually what we NEED to responsibly herd all of those looking to "do good abroad" these days, and the fact that they PAY is indeed the key, rather than more of this short term "volunteering" I see happening. And yes, I agree, people who pay to simply "volunteer" (vs. voluntour) are often doing the most harm.
Where do my biases come from:
- I live in Cambodia and have lived here for nearly 4 years. I run an educational NGO called PEPY which we fund, in part, though "volunteer" and adventure tours.
- Cambodia has the highest (supposedly) ratio of NGOs per capita
- This also means there are TON of "volunteers" - many of whom are making hundreds times more than a local salary even though they are "volunteering" (take UN Volunteers for example) - which is a whole different topic, but does put into context the overuse and poor definition of the word "volunteer" in Cambodia. Many Cambodians want to "be a volunteer" when they grow up as the "volunteers" they see are the ones driving the SUVs, but I digress
- More and more short term volunteers are either a) staying here and making volunteer positions for themselves with little to know knowledge of Cambodia or development (I would have been in this category 4 years ago and made many many mistakes because of it) or b) paying to volunteer for a short period of time (often times with groups who also have little to no knowledge about development themselves)
- From what I've seen in Cambodia (and I will highlight below), these are having the least impact and often the most harm.
In order to understand better where my perspective comes from, let me tell you how we operate our trips.
How do PEPY Tours work: People pay a fee to join our trips (as they should, because it's a TOUR at it's core and they should pay for the experience to be involved in our work as we don't want to take any passer-by non-paying person along to our projects as that takes our time and money and also doesn't add value if not facilitated) and then they have a required fundraising minimum. That fundraising/donation amount goes straight to our programs. Hence, they are paying for an experience and then donating money ($500 minimum per week per person) to make sure that the projects they see are sustained long after they visit, by LOCAL people who aren't popping in and out as many volunteer-run programs are.
What do people get involved in: Either hands-on support for our programs and/or what we call "facilitated interaction" with the people/programs our ongoing work supports. We do not tell our guests months in advance that they will be painting X classroom or watching a lesson on Malaria performed by Y child club. Instead we let them know that the interaction they will have with our programs will be facilitated by our staff based on the on-goings and the needs at the time. Yes Steve (from the last post), there might be "murals painted" if a new school has been built and that is what the teachers are looking to do at that time with their students with their own designs, but we aren't doing things like "you will build a fence on your trip next December" and asking the community and programs to sit around and wait until the foreigners, with no fence building experience, get there to "help". My thoughts on how we design our trips here: http://pepyride.ning.com/profiles/blogs/pepys-geotourism-entry
What we have learned in our time in Cambodia, after doing MANY trips and programs wrong (see www.deedaproductions.com for a film called "Changing the World on Vacation" which highlights many of our mistakes) is that development work, ANY development work, in order to be most effective, should be defined by the constituents who are supposed to be the "beneficiaries", should have their support and input, not just in the planning stages but in the enacting of the project (either financially, in-kind, through their labor, etc) in order for it to be valued, and should take their local input into account in the monitoring and evaluation stages as well. This is, in my opinion, how development PROGRAMS are most effective. I capitalize program to highlight that volunteering, or visiting a project for any short term, or really any term at all, is not a PROGRAM. It is an input into a program.
Distilled: a volunteer, or voluntourist, short or long term, is only going to be as effective as the PROGRAM designed to bring them in. If the program is designed well, if the program defines if the "volunteers" need to have certain skills or not, and if the facilitation is designed to integrate the visitors into ONGOING programs in a way that is non-disruptive to the long-term goals of the project, then FABULOUS! Call it what you like, -tourism or -teer, the visitors will be able to add value, because it was DESIGNED that way.
How do I personally define these words:
Volunteer: anyone who is giving their time, unpaid
Volunteer Program: a program which involved unpaid people giving their time over any period of time
Short-term Volunteer Program: anything that is a few months or less - in some cases they have to pay to "volunteer" for a week or two. These people are paying to "volunteer" and are being sold "volunteer programs."
Voluntourism Program: anything that involves touring as well as "volunteering" - giving back to a program or supporting an on-going project. The worst cases define their "volunteer" portion as giving things away, though I would call that Philanthropic Tourism, and a poor version of it at that. People who pay to "see the sites and also give back" are likely being sold a "voluntourism program".
Why do I think "voluntourism programs" are having a better impact in many cases than "volunteer programs", especially short-term volunteer programs where you pay? Because in the definition of voluntourism, you are saying you are here to SEE things, you are a TOURIST, you are not just here to "give" when you don't know anything about the best ways to do that. In being defined as a tourist to begin with (something people who should be defined as such often take offense to) there is implicit in that the notion that you are NEW, and you DON'T know everything. You are here to see (and ideally to learn).
If you are paying a "volunteer program" to take you around, especially a for-profit one, their goals must include to "make money", as any for-profit business must do to survive. When the goal of making money overtakes the goal of supporting development responsibly, as I often think it does, volunteer program operators start selling things people are demanding, as if the volunteer market economy thrived on the same suppl and demand graph as canned beans. The problem is, when you add social responsibility into the mix of demand/supply, you are also adding another factor which is less necessary with the required product labels and content discloser requirements when packaging beans: KNOWLEDGE. Volun-shoppers often don't have the knowledge required to successfully do their cost-benefit analysis as volun-opportunities don't always come with a package that says: "Includes 1 part responsibly identifying partners, $1000 per person going directly to our well chosen charity, 4 parts looking after your safety, etc" - but it SHOULD. If volun-operators were responsibly marketing their programs, there would be full disclosure about what, if any, of the money is going to the programs visited, how the programs were chosen, any problems in the past and how they have been resolved, etc. The problem is, no one is demanding this, and until we, as consumers, do, people can still pack stale volun-programs into an unmarked bean can and sell it based on cost comparisons only. Us shoppers need to be asking questions, and we are not finding what we want, we need to talk about it, demand more information, or vote with our money elsewhere.
In Cambodia, there are many places where you can "volunteer", some paid and some unpaid. Straight up volunteering through one of these volunteer programs implies that you are there to "give" and I have to say, from what I have seen here in Cambodia, sometimes the "givers" are taking a lot more than they are able to give.
How many orphanages take volunteers here to "teach English" for a few weeks or a few months? A ton? How many kids get to learn "head shoulders knees and toes" month after month from a new face? You get the point.... And yes, Darin from the last post, this IS how a lot of those programs get their funding, and I would argue that is a HUGE problem. They expose their students, who they should be prioritizing as the beneficiaries of their work, to new faces and new people sometimes unskilled unsupervised and in short succession, often invest more time in the volunteers themselves to "bring in more money", and get so trapped in the cycle that they often don't recognize that there would be other ways to bring money in, fund a local teacher to have ongoing continuity for the children, and be able to focus on their core mission. Some, in the worst cases, keep their children looking as poor as possible as they know that uneducated -teers and -tourists will give MORE because the kids "look so poor." My thoughts on orphanage tourism in Cambodia here: http://pepyride.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sometimes-we-take-ourselves
The paying issue: If people PAY to be tourists and give back through their time, that funding can be used to support things like locally owned hotels/responsible restaurants, and the residual funds can be used to operate the long-term development programs long after the volun-people leave. Unfortunately all too often the money is used, even by groups touting themselves as NGOs, to make a profit, and little to no money is given to the projects visited. VOLUNTEERS ARE NOT FREE! Hosting a volunteer, skilled or unskilled, takes time away from the core mission of the organization as their mission, in few cases, is defined as taking care of a visiting tourist.
It all comes down to how the program is designed and if the needs and sustainability issues of the development programs and their beneficiaries are put FIRST, above the desires of the volun-visitors. If a -teer or -tourist program is DESIGNED correctly to begin with, to support the long-term work of groups and programs following best practices in development, the impact will be highest. And, as long as the money is ending up in THOSE places, not in some operators pocket (or at minimum in addition to that), then why would PAYING be bad? In reality, the money that goes into these projects is often having more of an impact than the people themselves!
(Please do not respond to me, as an operator of a big, shall I say politely least impactful and least-responsible "volunteer" organization did when I said this: "but if we give MONEY to these groups, we could be adding corruption." Are you kidding me!? We, as operators, have the RESPONSIBILITY, to pick non-corrupt groups, to send volunteers OR to send money. Yes, we will make mistakes, so then we need to MONITOR and then CHANGE if/when we do. If we write ourselves get-out-of-jail-free cards simply because are sending "volunteers" and not funds and think that gets US off the hook for "aiding corruption" we are obviously completely disconnected to what happens when people volunteer. THEY give their money. And they THINK that any group they have paid an arm and a leg to travel with has done their due diligence and research for them, so why would they not want to give money to these groups? If the program is DESIGNED well, with best development practices in mind, it will also not create a "dependency" on these funds. That is the responsibility of the operator as well as the partner/NGO group when defining the program/relationship to begin with -there needs to be parameters. Should groups be able to visit a school to volun-stuff? Sure, if the program is defined well, the students are safe, and it isn't disrupting class. Should these same people be allowed to come "do good" at school every day? No, not if is distracting from the work. There needs to be parameters set/followed/monitored/changed as needed. For example, at PEPY we allow three groups per year to visit our schools, but that was even defined when our tours were way more disruptive. Now we still limit the visit s but also time them with class presentations, school trips which allow for interaction, etc.)
If we do good work based on best development practices and only allow visiting helpers (be they long or short term) in when they fit the PROGRAMS needs (not the visitors desires), when we wouldn't have to be having this discussion to begin with. Those who came to help, would be doing so, and I wouldn't have to watch "volunteers" disrupt and harm development here in Cambodia.
PEPY members and friends are starting voluntourism101, a site sharing these types of ideas and thoughts... .coming soon.
(Forgive the length of this. I am obviously, I hope, more passionate about development work and responsible volun-programs than I am about brevity, spelling, and proper use of punctuation!)
Sustainability and New Models: Lessons Learned
by Maryann Bylander - Managing Director
When we began working at Chanleas Dai in 2005, we did so without background knowledge about the area, and without a plan that aimed at sustainable, community-driven programs. We made many mistakes, always intending to “do good” but lacking the understanding of what that really meant. What we quickly realized was that intending to do good does not always lead to positive end results, especially in international development where there are no standards, oversight, or regulations to ensure that best practices are being followed. Though our English, computer, Bike to School, and literacy programs have been very successful in many ways, we recognize that there is very little sustainable about these programs. If PEPY closed its doors tomorrow, we would have helped a great many individuals, built 6 schools, and provided jobs and training for hundreds. Is that enough? Or should our goal be to create a change that is less about numbers and more about lasting impact? What we are aiming for now is facilitating changes in education that outlast our organization, and can become self-sustaining programs run by the communities within which they are located.
Sustainability is a question that plagues any responsible NGO that is trying to work themselves out of a job. What’s the exit strategy and how can you make sure that your influence doesn’t end when the money stops? We’ve been busy learning over the past several years, networking with others that we see are making sustainable impacts, and trying to learn as much as we can from models that work. Some of the lessons have been obvious, and easy to see in Chanleas Dai: infrastructure matters, but training, resources, and investment in individuals matters more. Systems matter, community engagement matters, root causes such as health, disease, and food security matter. Relationships and participatory decision-making matters. Trust matters.
Other lessons have come through networking, through seeing innovative models which have been developed both here and across the globe. The models we like best are those which rely on community engagement, perhaps provide capital costs, and then offer training and support. We’d like to share some of these models in more detail; because they embody values we respect and believe in. We’re also looking to pull from parts of each of these models in our future work.
Through the process of working with our Child Clubs, Eco-clubs, and school construction projects, we’ve been slowly forming relationships with the 6 primary schools of Chanleas Dai Commune, and the communities surrounding them. In the next school year, we’d like to strengthen these relationships and expand our work to several primary schools in Chanleas Dai, however we know we’d like to start and continue any primary school program in a very different way than we begun at Chanleas Dai. These models have been what we’ve been learning about, and discussing for any further expansion of PEPY Programs. Though they are quite different, they all focus on capacity building, the provision of needed resources, and strong elements of participation and local ownership.
Income Generation for Ongoing Projects
READ Global in
Schools for Children of Cambodia (SCC)’s Primary School Development Program works in 4 schools in Siem Reap. The PSDP Model is a holistic approach to identifying a community’s primary, and preschool education needs, focused on mobilizing community members to implement school development plans of their own making. Instead of supplementing teacher salaries, providing their own supplementary classes, or bringing all of their own ideas into the schools, SCC works on a three year long process developing School Support Committees to be their own agents of change within the schools. They work together to create a school plan, develop and lead community workshops, coordinate extra training opportunities through the Ministry of Education and local NGOs, and provide resources in partnership with community donations. One-time needs like school construction or kindergarten resources are provided, but only after the plan has been created, including a community contribution (finances, labor, etc) to supplement SCC’s financial support.
After three years, SCC’s goal is that School Support Committee has the capacity to plan, monitor and implement projects within the school, with the experience to problem-solve when they encounter roadblocks.
Training, Training and more Training
Caring for
No model is perfect, and I’m sure READ, SCC, and CFC have their own challenges and questions about the sustainability of their programs. We’re also still learning, still asking questions, and still working on creating the best fit for PEPY to make our programs sustainable.
Will that be a 3 year primary school development program that ends at completion in all 6 schools of Chanleas Dai? Investing in the high school or junior high and bringing skilled work to Kralanh through partnerships or a for-profit venture? Is it creating a system of teacher trainers and mentor teachers? Is it a small-scale community based organization running on income generating projects? Many or all of the above? We don’t quite know yet, but we want all of you out there to know that it’s always in our minds.
A priority to us is working with our team, and the community to work out the most sustainable way we can find to make a difference in education in Chanleas Dai, including an exit strategy for our programs to ensure that their impacts will be around longer than we will be.
Is PEPY making a good decision? Let us know your thoughts.
This post looks at some of the major questions NGOs must ask themselves: When are we getting to far from our mission? Can you help work on changing attitudes and changing a whole system while also picking out individuals to support, or do the efforts negate each other? What amount of money is "too much" for each project and how to you measure "impact" when it comes to education and opportunities for individuals? Is the quantity of the impact or important, or the quality? When do you need to say no, even if the opportunity is a good one?
Daniela shares her thoughts below on the decision to offer students from Chanleas Dai Commune a chance to go to summer camp in the US. This was an opportunity brought to PEPY by the camp director, Jed, whom the PEPY staff knows very well and trusts. Should they have said "No, thank you." Please share your thoughts after reading.
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For those of you who have been following along closely with PEPY, you may have noticed what might seem like irrational decision making on our part given our current circumstance. What the close observer to our emails and team journal would see would be:
- A struggle to fully fund the construction of Chanleas Dai’s first primary school
- A large drop in tourism to
- A concurrent initiative to raise significant funding to send four students and two teachers to the
Here are some of the responses we have gotten from those of you who are following along:
Read more...
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