Ensuring Local Ownership from the Start for Sustainable Impact: Getting Community Buy-In for Children’s Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Thurseday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Getting community buy-in for children's education

Proposal

Ensuring local ownership at both the community and national levels from program inception through completion is essential for successful graduation from donor-supported to locally-owned programs. Community focused development approaches that promote positive behavior changes regarding the value of education, involvement in school management, and accountability of school administrators and community members is especially important in the context of developing countries, where government resources for schools are insufficient in meeting basic school needs and where cultural and/or socio-economic pressures frequently prioritize income generation and early marriage over education, particularly for girls. Without positive change at household and community levels, promoting children’s education and improving schools’ ability to do so faces significant hurdles and constraints.

Since 2001, PCI has been a USDA partner and implementer of McGovern-Dole (MGD) programs in Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Tanzania, reaching over 1 million students, with the aim of improved literacy among school-aged children. Within PCI's MGD programs, sustainability is the backbone of program design and includes integrated plans and tailored local capacity strengthening (LCS) for each schools’ progression towards community-owned school feeding and literacy programs. Through rigorous case studies within its MGD programs, PCI has identified important milestones and best practices necessary for local ownership. This presentation will dive deeper into PCI/Tanzania’s programs to focus on applied research findings and experiential learning highlighting PCI’s sustainability approaches and key milestones to consider for ensuring community buy-in for supporting children’s education.

In Tanzania, PCI partners with the Government of Tanzania (GoT) and local communities to implement the USDA-funded MGD program and a complimentary USDA-funded Local and Regional Procurement (LRP) program in Mara Region, reaching a total of 247 primary schools and 182,383 pre-school and primary students. The programs are grounded in the close collaboration and partnership among community members, school staff, and with national, regional, district, and local governments. During program design, stakeholders, including community members, helped define and plan for sustained program impact and developed a checklist for monitoring graduation and sustainability readiness. Among the responsibilities identified for stakeholders to uphold, the distribution of daily school meals by community-contributed commodities was identified as essential for supporting children’s education. Through PCI’s sustainability cascade meeting approach, the project continues to raise community awareness on the importance of education, gain commitment of parents and local governments to support school activities, and develop action plans for the gradual transition towards a locally-owned, integrated school feeding program. Utilizing results from the sustainability readiness monitoring, PCI continues to monitor progress and partner with the GoT to tailor LCS and accompaniment efforts to support stakeholders’ progression towards successful graduation.

Highlighting the experiences in Tanzania as a case study, this presentation will highlight PCI-developed methods, lessons learned, and best practices in ensuring community buy-in and local ownership in supporting children’s education; results of the sustainability readiness checklist to demonstrate progress towards graduation and how results are used to tailor LCS interventions; and considerations and recommendations for how to address similar challenges and achieve similar successes in getting community buy-in for children’s education.

Author

• Stephanie Gaffney, Project Concern International Staff