Recognizing the Need
June 14, 2009 - Phnom Pehn, Cambodia
Next stop, World Education, the Boston-based NGO funded by USAID. Very insightful meeting. The director, Kurt Brendenberg, has lived in Cambodia since 1996 and has built his approaches to supporting education from the ground up. I like him. He makes more sense then anyone else with whom I’ve discussed the dysfunctional Cambodian schools. He agreed that our grassroots approach is effective and has depth and impact in a way that larger programs don’t. He also agrees that our 5-year commitment is prudent. He showed me statistics that the Aural District of Kampong Speu province where we work has one of the lowest student retention rates in the country – a problem we are trying to solve. So I feel very encouraged that we are on the right track.
I talked with Kurt about SSI working as a sub-grantee of World Education. There is potential for some of our needs to be met in this way, but only a small portion, mostly because of USAID’s geographic restrictions and the focus on lower secondary education. Yet, our objective is the same – to get more kids into secondary school. In the region where we work, where less than 20% of students go onto 7th grade, that just isn’t possible without strengthening the support and student retention at the primary schools first. He hands me a CD containing a “toolkit” of solutions to many of the problems that rural schools face. “Fish Raising” looks promising. Great. Love it. But wait…this all costs money…where is the plan for empowering the community to economically support these programs long after the donor is gone? There isn’t one. Why are we the only ones who recognize the need for SUSTAINABILITY and RELIABILITY in education?
I am not always thrilled with being forced to innovate. I find it frustrating that when people discuss the problems of education, no one seems to want to acknowledge that it is about money. Fact: the biggest contributor to student absenteeism is teacher absenteeism. The reason teachers are absent is that they need more than $45 a month to live on! USAID actually has rules against supplementing a government employees salary. What? So we can work to strengthen a school in every way EXCEPT the most obvious and effective one, which is to PAY THE TEACHERS MORE? Supposedly, we’re waiting for the government to do that. Ummm…yeah, we’ve been waiting 10 years for that…how many children have failed to learn to read in that time? How many of them have ended up scavenging dumps or trafficked into brothels? Since the government won’t do it, the community must, that’s out motto…it’s their children and their future at stake.
I am even more convinced that Sustainable Schools International is the only organization on the planet that is willing to take up the challenge of Sustainability in Education. I did not ask to be a pioneer, but one is sometimes forced to do what needs to be done.
Who’s with me?
