NN40, May 2008
Education for Sustainable Development? Or The Sustainability of Education Investment? A Special Issue
NGO sustainability in an aid dependency situation
By Mogens Jensen, consultant, formerly with Danida
Email: info@omega-consulting.dkUCEP, the Underprivileged Children?s Educational Program, is a leading Bangladeshi NGO. It strives to inculcate marketable skills among the hardcore poor, urban working children and adolescents through general education followed by vocational/para-skills training and on-the-job apprenticeship in close collaboration with potential entrepreneurs and enterprises/industries throughout Bangladesh.
The origin of UCEP is connected with a philanthropic New Zealander, Lindsay Allan Cheyne. In 1970, he came to Bangladesh to establish a health clinic in the wake of a disastrous tornado. The clinic had just been established when the war of independence broke out in 1970, but the destruction caused by the tornado paled beside the tragedy of human misery left by the war. Along with relief operation duties, Cheyne assisted, with the Directorate of Social Welfare, in planning an educational programme for the underprivileged, homeless, poor children. He worked on finding a sponsor, and the Danish government responded to the appeal and extended financial assistance to launch a three-year project. The Government of Bangladesh provided a building to house the programme.
Since 1972, UCEP has expanded to comprise 32 general schools, 4 technical schools and 8 para-trade training centres. During the period 1972-2000, UCEP extended support to as many as 128,116 poor urban working children. Out of them, 16,771 students completed vocational training and 4,800 completed para-trade skills training. At present, 25,000 children are pursuing general education and vocational and para-trade skill training at the UCEP schools and training centres.
Providing real opportunities for the poorest will always be expensive and require dedicated funding. There is no real exit strategy for projects such as UCEP, because real poverty reduction needs dedication and the commitment of very substantial funds. Presently, UCEP is dependent on a consortium of donors including Danida, DFID, the Royal Norwegian Embassy and Save the Children. These donors have repeatedly requested a higher degree of self-financing from UCEP, but the fact remains that UCEP is almost as aid-dependent as it was at the outset, although the aim of UCEP is to diversify its revenue base, ultimately becoming self-sustaining. In 2002, an evaluation of Danida?s assistance to vocational education and training found that there had been insufficient attention by the donors to securing financial sustainability of the project and, indeed, donor ?goodwill? has almost conspired against this. However, this kind of project targeting in particular the underprivileged is probably not one for which government would readily have taken financial responsibility, even if the donors had pursued this much more vehemently as a condition for their continued funding. Also, the concept of ?non-formal education? has been gradually grounded in UCEP as a useful approach to improving the condition of poor out-of-school children who are considered to be an ?especially disadvantaged group?, and government would probably be reluctant to include this concept in the formal school system or to run it as a parallel system. However, in the national context, replications are many, some in partial form, and others conceptual. Very recently, the Ministry of Labour and Manpower, underscoring the need for disciplined, well-groomed skilled manpower, has come up with a project for establishing schools for hardcore poor children. No doubt, UCEP?s proven model has influenced the decision-makers to pay due attention to that same model [1].
As an alternative to dependency on external sources, involvement of the private sector, including employers of UCEP graduates, and community sources in the financing of UCEP could have been explored more vigorously. However, it will not prove easy to rapidly build a strong local community base or private sector base for a project that for more than three decades has doubtless been seen as generously foreign-aided. Nor will it be easy to engage in various forms of income generation, although UCEP is doing better in this aspect than most mainstream VET institutions.
The sustainability message of UCEP is probably rather simple: a project such as this, successfully targeting the poorest, will not be sustained by regular funding. In a way, it is a demonstration project, showing that tens of thousands of the very poor can have their own and their families? lives improved by this kind of dedicated funding. But there is no guarantee that it will continue through local funding.
Notes
[1] The strong sense of discipline, integrity and etiquette that is imparted to each and every UCEP graduate through the socialisation process that takes place in UCEP schools has been noted by employers, who often advertise ?UCEP-graduates preferred?.
References
Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Danida: Evaluation. Danish Assistance to Vocational Education and Training. Copenhagen.2002.
www.ucepbd.org.
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