Blog
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Plans for the first trip to Zambia
Just a short post today to point you in the direction of the plans for the first trip. This link should give you a good insight into what needs to be done both before and during our time in Zambia.
The key pre-trip activity is researching NGOs (non-govermental organisations) who we could partner with to run the schools on the ground. This will be narrowed down to a top two or three organisations who we will meet on the trip.
Once we’ve found one we click with (shared values, similar ways of working etc.) we’ll set up a relationship and together we will establish the first LearnAsOne community school project.
I’ll keep you updated on the research via this blog and twitter. Please feel free to leave any questions or suggest NGOs in the comments.
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Does aid to Africa really work?
My dad recently pointed me in the direction of Addicted to Aid, a Panorama programme featuring award-winning Sierra Leonean reporter Sorious Samura.
The basic question he asked was has the West got it’s aid model wrong? Billions of pounds have been pumped into Africa yet the number of poor people remains unchanged over the last 20 years. Has too little attention been paid to where the aid ends up?
Corruption, waste and inefficiency
Through a number of case studies he highlighted corruption, aid money being spent on the wrong things (e.g. building new schools in Uganda when what was really needed was to pay teachers to man them) and shops selling stolen aid supplies such as mosquito nets which were intended to be given to the local community for free, while the authorities turned a blind eye.
Hope
The final project however offered hope. A clinic set up to help amputees as a result of the bloody civil war in Sierra Leone. It was founded and is run by Dr. Mohammed Barrie who grew up in Kroo Bay, one of the poorest parts of the capital city Freetown. And it has proved to be amazingly successful with patients travelling from as far away as the neighbouring country Guinea.
Why has this project been such a success?
Well in the words of Dr. Barrie:
“We went straight to the community, we interacted with them, we tried to understand their basic needs and as a result they were very supportive in developing this project.”
One other thing really stuck out. Whenever Dr. Barrie got a cheque to support the clinic he photocopied it and make it easily accessible to his patients. They knew what money was coming in, so they could judge if he was spending it wisely.
What can we learn from this?
2 main things:
1) Listening to the local community is vital
They, and only they, know what challenges they face and where their needs lie.So if you want to improve the standard of education in a community do you just build more classrooms? Or do sit down with the community and discuss their most pressing needs? Maybe the teachers in rural schools are leaving because the living conditions are really poor compared to the city. Or the children are failing to turn up to class because they need to work all day to buy food.
Both problems can be addressed, by building basic living quarters and through a school feeding program respectively. But these needs can only be successfully tackled by working alongside the community to identify these needs in the first place. And it goes without saying, that every community will be different.
2) Transparency is a must
Both between us and you as potential or current supporters. And the community, ourselves and our partners in Africa who manage the project on a day-to-day basis. It’s your money and you deserve to see how it is spent.That’s why we are blogging and twittering about the behind the scenes stuff rather than just sticking a school in front of you and asking for money. When we get to Africa we’ll shoot videos, photos and interviews with the community and try to answer the questions you ask. And we’ll ensure there is a way for the updates to keep coming once we’re back home.
So does aid to Africa really work? We’ll let you be the judge of that.
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Second meeting with the Zambian High Commissioner
Just before Christmas I had a second meeting with the Zambian High Commissioner, Mr. Anderson Chibwa. He introduced me to a former colleague of his, called Njekwa, who works for a large multi-national NGO in Zambia and has specialist knowledge of the education sector.Establishing an NGO partner
After showing Njekwa a prototype of the new website (about 90% complete) we had a brief discussion about our aims and initial plans. A key aspect of this was our wish to find an established NGO partner in Zambia who has the capacity to build not one, but numerous schools. The thinking being that we can use our learning from the first school to build many other schools in the region. At least, that’s the theory!
Njekwa kindly offered to support us by using her local knowledge to research and shortlist a number of potentially suitable NGO partners, who we can then contact and visit on our initial trip. And from this we can select a partner to work with.
Numerous other things were discussed including how the relationship with the NGO and local community may work, through to issues we may face on the ground and very rough costings. Njekwa also suggested that we visit at least one well run community based school whilst on our trip to use both as a benchmark and to help establish best practice. A great idea! And one we defiantly hope to follow up if at all possible.
So the next steps are for Njekwa to carry out her exploratory research and then discuss and follow up what she comes back with.
Your ideas
Should you have any suggestion for a potential NGO partners, or anything else you thing may be useful, then we’d love to here it. Please add a comment or send an email to hello at learnasone dot org.
The initial requirements are:
- A local NGO specialising in education and located in Zambia
- Capacity to build numerous schools in one region
Thanks. More to follow as soon as we have it.