LearnAsOne

So now comes the hard part. Deciding who to work with. I’ve seen 4 very different and interesting NGOs who are all doing amazing work to help children go to school in Zambia.

Trust is key

The LearnAsOne model is to work closely with a partner NGO to spend any money you are kind enough to give. This obviously needs to be done effectively and efficiently.

One of the key (and most expensive) needs of basic schools is construction: of classrooms, boreholes, sanitation blocks and teacher’s houses. Whilst talking with the 4 different NGOs I’ve asked for the costs to build a classroom block, all using the same official government plans. Rather alarmingly the costs have varied significantly with the most expensive being nearly 100% more than the cheapest.

Now in some cases the community are expected to provide skilled builders (as part of their contribution) and in others contractors are used. But even if these labour costs are excluded there is still a noticeable difference in price for no obvious reason. I’ve also been lucky enough to meet an ex-pat builder who is helping to fund a school close to where he lives and I’ve been able to compare his prices with the NGOs to give me a further benchmark. It’s safe to say we’ll be choosing one of the NGOs who are happy to offer costing transparency and prices we trust.

Community involvement and sustainability

All four NGOs I met were very keen to tell me about the community contribution to the project, which is fantastic to hear as schools only have a chance of success if communities want them in the first place. There is no better way to prove this than by volunteering time and material resources during the construction process.

In all cases the community is expected to provide free unskilled labour, plus locally sourced sand and stones which they make into bricks. A skilled builder is also required who must be approved by a Buildings Officer from the Ministry of Education. In some cases the community is expected to provide the the skilled labour and in others a contractor is used.

If a community is happy to provide a skilled builder themselves then this shows a total commitment to the project. It also saves a significant amount of cost.

Type of projects

As mentioned through out the blog post I’ve seen all sorts of schools this week. From town schools to rural schools. Basic schools to half built schools and High Schools. The need is great in all areas but we’ve decided that we would like to start by helping to tackle the Millennium Development Goal of providing free basic education to all children from grades 1-7.

We also want to work with a very basic community who are at the very beginning of their education journey. One key thing I’ve learnt this week is that there are two types of schools. Government and community. Trained teacher’s are supplied for free to government schools only. But it is possibly for a community school to become recognised by the government. It’s done on a case-by-case basis but some of the key criteria are that a basic classroom and a teacher’s house must be present. If we can help to get a community to this stage then there are very obvious benefits regarding the quality of teaching.

The updates

The final key part of the LearnAsOne concept is providing you with regular updates and stories from the community so you can meet some of the people who your donations are helping and see exactly what your money is being spent on.

It only makes sense for teams from LearnAsOne to visit Zambia a few times each year so part of this responsibility needs to fall on the NGO. There are two key criteria. Effectiveness of communication and the quality of updates.

Now it’s hard to make a judgement on the quality. All the NGOs showed me photographs from the field, of varying standards, and non really used a video camera. But this can be trained.

Effectiveness is much easier to see. I’ve been planning this trip for many months and the responsiveness of the NGOs to questions over email has varied enormously. One NGO has also been happy to text and voice chat on Skype making communication extremely simple and effective.

So the decision

I’ve avoided naming any names up until now. The good news is that one of the organisations ticks all the key boxes and I feel we also have a strong back-up should there be any problems or we want to expand in future.

The NGO we’ve decided to go with is Response Network.

They work with very communities who have very basic schools, are very easy to communicate with and their entire model is based around self-help and community empowerment. They are also the only organisation who insist on the community providing the skilled labour. I was initially sceptical about this, but I’ve learnt that the builder must be approved by the Ministry of Education before any work takes place. This approach shows a total commitment to the school by the community and maximises it’s chance of success.

So all that awaits now if for Adam, Brenda and Nerys to join me. Then on Monday morning we’ll be heading up to Kalomo to start documenting our first project live!