Promoting sustainable education practices in Mozambique through volunteer-led programming

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

World Education, Inc. (WEI) harnesses the power of volunteers to enact positive change for vulnerable children within their communities across Mozambique. Models of volunteer recruitment, training, support, and retention vary greatly within the unique contexts of our projects and the social, economic, and geographic diversity within the 10 Mozambican provinces. Despite the differences in contextualized volunteer support models, the ultimate goal of our volunteer interventions in Mozambique is to: 1. Help volunteers transform themselves into leaders and change-makers within their communities; and 2. Make lasting and sustainable positive impacts on communities throughout Mozambique in the areas of health, social and child protection, economic strengthening, and education.

Community volunteers are well-positioned to effect positive change because as insiders, they have an intimate understanding of their own communities’ needs and strong connections to other community members that facilitate outreach on the importance of education, children’s and girls’ rights, and sexual and reproductive health, as well as service provision and referrals. While there are low literacy rates and high poverty levels in most of the communities where WEI works, community members with limited formal education can be equipped with the fundamental knowledge and skills needed to effectively promote literacy, early childhood development, economic strengthening, case management, and life skills and empowerment. Community volunteers, who are sometimes program beneficiaries, or their family members, are often motivated to contribute their time and energy because of the positive program benefits that they have experienced or seen themselves. Volunteering also presents an opportunity to gain personal and professional skills along with respect and recognition. In addition, in some cases, World Education, Inc. offers small financial stipends to incentivize the continued participation of volunteers.

In the absence or discontinuation of financial incentives, however, it can be difficult to keep volunteers motivated to continue their vital work. Many volunteers do not have ample time to work for free and expect or depend on stipends, so when these are no longer provided through project funding, they may have to halt their volunteer work and seek other economic opportunities instead. For instance, in the realm of community health, US Global AIDS Coordinator Deborah Birx has declared that reliance on volunteers is not sustainable, as exemplified by a case in South Africa, where the government immediately fired 10,000 stipended health volunteers that had been supported through President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funding which the U.S. was planning to withdraw at the time. To address this challenge, WEI works to encourage government buy-in to volunteer-led programming and secure stipends through district and provincial-level governments. Alternatively, WEI has also experimented with using non-monetary incentives for volunteers.

In this presentation, WEI will share experience with using volunteers to amplify program impact and contribute to sustainable positive changes in communities, with a focus on effective strategies, challenges, and lessons learned.

First, the Gorongosa Girls’ Clubs program will be examined through the lens of the National Park’s commitment to conservation and the surrounding communities. More specifically, the panelists will discuss the park’s use of age and gender diverse community volunteers as mentors and club facilitators in Girls’ Clubs; context-specific models for volunteer motivation and retention; and volunteer contributions toward the greater objectives of the program and of the Park.

Next, the panel will present the Peace Corps Community Library Program. Questions to be addressed in this section of the panel will deal with community volunteer motivation and retention; how community libraries can impact reading levels in the community setting; program strengths, challenges, factors of success; and policy and programmatic implications for community library programs. This section of the panel will share results from the Final Evaluation Report, based upon EGRA testing conducted from 2016-2018 and compared to the USAID|Aprender a Ler (ApaL) “control” and intervention groups.

Lastly, the panel will present evidence and key findings from its Forca à Comunidade e Crianças (Community and Child Strengthening) program that highlight the positive effect that community volunteers have on educating and empowering families to seek, access and obtain critical health and social services. The presentation will focus on the role of community volunteers who educate and link vulnerable populations to a range of health, social protection and economic services. It will also share project results to illustrate the key elements needed for self-sustaining models of volunteer initiatives.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Karen Rowe, World Education, Inc.

Individual Presentations

• The role of Girls Club volunteers in Gorongosa’s conservation and community education efforts - Yuri Machkasov, World Education, Inc.

• Evaluating the Impact of Volunteer-Based Community Libraries in Mozambique - Madeline Rose Brancel, World Education, Inc.

• Empowering community volunteers to provide and link vulnerable communities to health and social services - Kayla Caldwell, World Education, Inc.