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Karsten and Irene van Riezen with Robert and Margaret Hunt
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INTRODUCTION There is much talk about "community-based" and "community-owned" projects. In practice you do not see much of this really happening. In this article, we describe our experiences during the past year. In that time we made a serious attempt to setup a literacy project that is owned by the people themselves. What is the actual situation after this year? Although the SIL team still has input, the project is community owned to a large extent. The Matigsalug Literacy Education Incorporated is an officially recognized nongovernmental organization (NGO). Ten villages have a Village Education Committee that runs a class. There is a Filipino project coordinator, a secretary, and a bookkeeper. The staff moved from the house of the SIL team to a rented office. The first check from the Department of Education, Culture, and Sports is about to be released. However, there are still many constraints and questions about the progress
of the project. Will the communities really manage to run their own class?
Can the project find capable Matigsalug supervisors to monitor the classes?
Is the staff equipped enough to manage such a complex NGO? Will the board
be able to handle the money by themselves in the future? We do not know
yet. BACKGROUND The Matigsalug language team, Robert and Margaret Hunt, were planning to start a literacy project in 1996. They could use some help. Karsten van Riezen was looking for a place to get some more experience in literacy before heading to South Asia. The two parts met together, and a year of internship was arranged. In January 1996, the literacy person from the SIL team, Margaret Hunt, had already designed many of the literacy materials. Robert, her husband, had thus far worked on translation. He planned to set one year aside to setup the literacy work. Robert and Margaret had worked for six years in the area and knew the language and culture well. The other members of the team, Jeff and June McGriff, were on furlough at that time. Karsten had visited a few literacy projects in Asia while working towards his M.A. in Education. He wanted a community-based literacy project but did not yet know how to work that out. The setup of the project can be divided into nine steps. The different steps often overlap. Still the division into steps will make it easier to follow the different stages in the implementation of the project. Figure 1. Matigsalug language project statistics
STEP 1: GETTING TO KNOW THE COMMUNITY During the first months of 1996, many visits were made at various levels of the community. We met with local and regional government officials, local NGOs, pastors, mission organizations, and tribal leaders. During these visits, we made notes about the organizations and the people involved. In the office we started to develop two databases. In one of them, we listed the people we had met or heard about. We filed their name, location, job, function, religion, language, and interest in literacy. In the other database, we sorted the different organizations that existed in the area. We listed governmental, nongovernmental, religious, and private organizations. From each organization we wrote down their purpose, activities, location, contact person, and relation to other organizations. We also made some write-ups about the leadership structure. For the existing SIL team, it was interesting to discover that there
were many more organizations in the area than they had known about. STEP 2: MOBILIZING THE PEOPLE During our visits and archiving, we looked for people with an interest in literacy. If we found a person with a potential interest, we would visit this person a few times more. We would talk about such topics as different aspects of literacy, experience in other areas, and spiritual interest. From February onwards, we invited interested people for "literacy input meetings." There we discussed things like the teaching method, the organizational structure, the pilot area, and the start of a board. These meetings also gave us the opportunity to observe the participants. We wanted to know who could fill various roles, such as who could be a possible board member, who could be asked to do practical jobs, and who could possibly become a staff member. During these meetings we were rarely in charge ourselves. We always asked one of the group to lead parts of the meeting. We would help them to plan the activity and to evaluate it afterwards. In this way we trained various individuals and learned their capacities. It was good to see some of them developing their skills, but others fell through. By trial and error we gradually got a group of potential helpers around us. Mobilizing people is an ongoing process. We did not manage to find a
potential coordinator until after September. Even now we always observe
people. If we meet someone on the road we ask ourselves: "Who is this?
It might be someone with potential." STEP 3: SETTING UP A STRUCTURE In March, we started to talk about a good organizational structure. We did not want SIL to be "the boss" of the project. We wanted the Matigsalug to own their own project. Our first idea was to work through the churches. We thought that the local pastors could become the teachers, the church circuit leaders could become the supervisors, and the church board could be a kind of literacy board. This idea did not work out. We never found a pastor excited about literacy. They all were too busy trying to survive while running their churches. We could not sense a vision for outreach through literacy. We switched from the churches to the wider community. But how do you get the whole Matigsalug community to own the project? We decided to ask seven local agencies to select a representative for a board for the Matigsalug Literacy Project. As a result, we got a representative from the municipality, the barangay , the tribal organization, the Department of Education (DECS), the churches, and the NGOs. Beginning in April 1996, we started to meet with them on the first Saturday of each month. Some of the people we had contact with did not fit in a board position, but they would be willing to do practical jobs for the project. These people we called the IMPLEMENTATION TEAM. This official status made it logical to invite them to every board meeting, too. The organization structure was totally flat at that time. The board, the implementation team, and the SIL team were working as equal partners. Everybody had the same influence in the policy design. The organization structure looked as follows. Figure 2. Initial organizational structure
At the first meetings, we discussed items that had to do with the philosophy of the project. In their August meeting, the board selected a chairman, vice chair, treasurer, and auditor. They asked Robert Hunt to become a board member. He was selected as the auditor. They selected a non-Matigsalug as the treasurer. We also started to talk about the structure in the villages. We wanted the classes to be owned by the local communities. We raised the suggestion of starting VILLAGE EDUCATION COMMITTEES (VEC). These committees would be in charge of the class. They would be responsible for the classroom, the teacher, and the students. The organization structure we designed looked as follows. Figure 3. Revised organization structure
This structure turned out to be confusing. It has the board on top of the Village Education Committee. The coordinator and supervisor felt responsible for teacher allowances, class conflicts, and other class problems. This was meant to be the responsibility of the VEC. So in November we came up with another diagram. Although it has its limitations too, it still seems to work better. This diagram appears on the next page. Figure 4. Final organizational structure
This diagram shows clearly that the Village Education Committees and
the Matigsalug Literacy Education Incorporated (MALEI) board are on the
same level. They both have their own responsibilities. As of April 1996,
MALEI is only responsible for the technical support. For the second area
in which we established the project, we decided to make these responsibilities
formal by a contract. The contract is included in the appendix. STEP 4: STARTING A PILOT PROJECT In March we conducted a survey of a possible pilot area. The survey was organized by some members of the implementation team. Robert and Karsten joined the survey but did not say anything during the village meetings. The team did a puppet show, led the discussion, and answered the questions. It was great to see that the team got the vision that this project was theirs. During the survey we stated clearly that the project would only supply the materials, training, and monitoring. It would not pay allowances to the teachers. The village had to form a Village Education Committee, select a teacher, come to a two-week training course, and come up with a 150 peso deposit for the books. This idea of partnership was new in the Matigsalug area, so we expected only two or three villages to join the pilot project. To our surprise, during the follow-up survey, six villages told us that they wanted to join the project. In September, we organized a teachers' training course. We had participants from all six villages. Margaret, as the designer of the method, was mainly responsible for the teacher training. The last requirement, coming up with the 150 peso deposit, turned out to be a hard one. Nevertheless, at the beginning of October, only one week later than planned, all the six classes were running. After a few weeks, we went on a supervision trip to observe the classes. During this trip, we trained the new supervisor. All the classes were running well. Still, we discovered quite a few weak areas that did not (yet?) work well. For example, some teachers had difficulties following the instruction sheet. Most VECs were not yet very organized, and some students rarely came to class because the VEC had enrolled them without informing them. These problems gave good suggestions for the follow-up training sessions for the VEC members and teachers. The following supervision trips showed that the teaching improved. The students made good progress, still the average class attendance was lower than we had hoped for (about eight out of fifteen students). The VECs were still not functioning properly in half of the villages. In some villages, however, the VEC met regularly and managed to support the teacher by working on her fields, planting a garden for her, or giving her food. The staff had been very clear about the fact that the project is not
responsible for paying allowances, yet in many cases, the supervisor received
requests to give allowances to the teachers. Maybe because we were "Westerners,"
the people never really believed that we would not give some money in the
end. To their surprise, this project really expected participation. STEP 5: ORGANIZING AND TRAINING THE BOARD During the first board meetings in April, May, and June, we did vision-building activities. We discussed, for example, different statements about development, let them phrase a vision, and discussed cases in the area of financial management, task management, and personnel management. Options for management structures were discussed, and we had lectures about educational topics. We tried to get "all the noses in the same direction" (Dutch saying). Sometimes the meetings were very encouraging, and we had the feeling that they had caught the vision. At other times, only half of the group turned up, and the discussion did not really take off. After the election of the different board positions in August, the meetings became more formal. The SIL team was no longer in charge of the meetings, although we still helped considerably in setting the agenda. Every meeting started with a time of reporting. Implementation team members, and later the staff, reported about the progress and problems in the project. We had a formal time of training after that. That was nearly the only time an SIL team member was up front. We covered topics like bookkeeping, fundraising, community-based management, project philosophy, and networking. We suggested making three committees in the board: Education, People and Equipment, and Finance and Fundraising. The last committee was later split in two. Each committee had a board member as chairman. Other committee members could be either board or team members. There were about four people in each committee. A diagram of how its organization looks is on the following page. Figure 5. Board of Directors committees
Board meetings were very time consuming for us. Board members needed to be visited many times to make sure that they would not forget the meeting. Then, there were the preparations for the meeting, i.e., setting the agenda and discussing it with the chairman. The SIL team's secretary, who later became the project secretary, had to type up the minutes in two languages. During the year we saw a slow increase in concern and commitment. The board itself requested a retreat to catch the vision again and to become more connected with the project. Already in September, the board expressed the need for becoming officially
registered. This took several trips to the Regional Capital, Cagayan de
Oro. The registration eventually got finalized in April 1997. STEP 6: TRAINING THE STAFF During the start of the pilot project, we observed the performance of the implementation team members. In particular, the survey trip and training activities gave us an excellent possibility to look for their attitude, skills, and knowledge. For example, we gave a potential supervisor responsibilities in monitoring trainees. We asked a potential project coordinator to manage the logistics of the teacher training. We visited other people and asked their opinion about their qualities. In September, we approached a potential supervisor and project coordinator. We also asked the SIL team's secretary if she would be interested in "changing boss" and transferring to the Matigsalug Literacy Education Incorporated. During the board meeting of October, we submitted those people to the board. The board assigned them all on a part-time basis. The project coordinator and supervisor have a few years of primary education and Bible school. The secretary is a Bible college graduate. Later on we assigned a bookkeeper, too. From that time on, we tried as much as possible to discuss every problem with the new staff members. We asked them to do jobs like writing letters, leading meetings, and accompanying us on public relations visits. For these jobs we prepared them, let them do it, observed them, and evaluated it together afterwards. We often had good discussions about the project philosophy and about practical things. We have had many good discussions about the fact that we do not pay allowances. The coordinator would often ask us difficult questions, like what to do if he meets a friend on the bus. Could he invite him for lunch and pay that with project money? To his agony our first reaction to this type of questions was always: "What do you think?" We tried to help him to form his own opinions. This was part of the training on the job. Later, we discovered that this sometimes could be difficult. Sometimes we did not agree with his opinion. In such cases, it is not easy to decide when to intervene and when to let go. At the end of November, we started weekly staff meetings. This was a critical step in making the staff more independent from the SIL team. Until then, most of their activities where guided by us. The staff meetings were meant to help them to evaluate and plan their own activities. We made an instruction sheet on how to prepare and lead a staff meeting. After several weeks of leading the meeting with our help, the project coordinator was able to be in charge of the meetings himself. Robert joined the staff meetings whenever he was available. Every office day started with planning. The staff did their own day planning. After that we discussed these plans with them, and then they started their work. From January 1997, the staff was able to plan and carry out many of their activities. We made instruction sheets for different jobs. Until January of 1997, the staff worked in the house of the SIL team.
A major step for the staff was when they rented their own office. Halfway
through February, they moved into a room elsewhere in the village. It certainly
gave the staff more prestige, and now they had to make more decisions by
themselves. STEP 7: BECOMING FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT We were happy the board elected a very capable woman as treasurer. She is the director of another local NGO and knows much more about handling money than we do. She asked the SIL team to monitor the finances closely during the first stages of the project. Her experience is that handing over the money too quickly causes problems. For most of the board members, it is the first time that they have been responsible for such large amounts of money. Many projects in the area collapsed because of money issues. So, for the meantime, Robert is both auditor and cashier of the project. It is not a perfect combination, but it works. The pilot project started before the fundraising was taking off. Fortunately, Karsten's mission board in the Netherlands wanted to help with funding the start of the project. We asked the project secretary to send them a letter with an official request for money for the project (not for SIL). The mission board accepted this and corresponded about the money primarily with the staff and not so much with the SIL members. Still the money was channeled through SIL. In September, we invited a local cooperative to conduct a training seminar about bookkeeping. The board and staff learned how to fill in all kinds of forms and books. From then on, every transaction needed to be recorded and confirmed by signatures. Although this involved much work, it worked well. So far, no money has been lost. This financial grant from the Netherlands was excellent for a start but was just a one-time contribution. For the project to be self-sustaining, funding needed to be raised from the community. Therefore, even before the start of the pilot project, we started to do public relations visits. Some of our activities included visits to the Department of Education, Culture, and Sports, the mayor, the Office of Southern Cultural Communities, and other agencies. We continued these visits every month. We invited officials to meetings and responded to invitations from them. These public relations contacts took a good deal of time, energy, and money. One problem was that it was impossible to make appointments without telephones. Also, several times our documents became lost, or our contact person was replaced. Thus far we have not yet received any financial agreement, still we are encouraged by some contacts. The Department of Education, Culture, and Sports has a possibility for NGOs to be sponsored for literacy classes. We are also talking with other donors, for example, the Office of Southern Cultural Communities. For the costs that are not so popular for funding agencies, we approached the local government units. The province and municipality have shown interest in shouldering the staff wages. For the office furniture, we have sent a proposal to the New Zealand Embassy (the Hunts are from New Zealand). A problem is that each donor has its own agenda. We do not want to alter our approach for each different donor. Actually the networking resulted in more than financial contacts; the
contact with the Provincial Planning and Development Office worked out especially
well. This department organized a health seminar for our teachers and sent
a medical team around our villages. As a result of this, they plan other
development work in the area. They are also looking for funds to support
the literacy project. STEP 8: EXPANDING THE PROJECT In December 1996, we conducted a survey of a possible new project area. The coordinator, a potential new supervisor, a board member, and Robert visited several villages to present the project. All villages said they were eager to join the project despite the counterpart contribution we expected from them. The implementation of this second area was quite hard. We had hoped it would go more smoothly, because we were more experienced. Actually, the opposite happened. We had quite a few problems getting the classes started. Although our goal was to have teachers for six villages, we only got four. These teachers were older and less educated than in the first area (averaging about two years primary school instead of four or five). Most interesting was that some of them were not Matigsalug, so they did a terrible job in spelling and creative writing! Another problem is that even now, some of the Village Education Committees have not come to pick up the class materials. We do not know if they have problems coming up with the 150 pesos deposit, if the travel distance causes the problem, or if motivation is lacking. The implementation of the project in new areas has been revised several times. A copy of the area approach plan is included in the appendix.
Handing over responsibilities started the moment we initiated the project. It was an built in feature of the implementation. Still, we were doing plenty of preparation for meetings and thinking through the policy. During the last three months of his internship, Karsten wrote down as many things as possible and discussed these with the coordinator. It was hard to keep a balance between producing a volume of papers small enough that they would be utilized and yet passing on ample, essential information. We were very happy that the board asked for a retreat on the project
philosophy in March 1997. This retreat gave the handing over of the responsibility
a more visual point. Board, staff, and volunteers realized that now they
had to carry on without an on-site literacy consultant, such as Karsten.
Robert promised to assist the staff for two days a week. The board expressed
the need for another consultant. EVALUATION It is still too early to determine which aspects of the project are successful or and which are not. This requires more time, which is our main criticism. Taking one year to set up such a project is insufficient; the setup should have taken at least two years. On the other hand, the fact that Karsten could say, "I am here for just one year" helped the process of taking over. The staff and board realized that time was limited, so they needed to take their tasks seriously. We are quite happy about the community ownership of the project. We still doubt if we can justify that we have established a secular board in a quite Christian area. On the other hand, we have tried as hard as possible. The advantage of the system now is that the project is much more embedded in the Matigsalug society. We prevented jealousy from other agencies, because they have been included. Having, for example, a representative from the DECS and the municipality in the board works excellently for networking. Another point of criticism is that the setup of the project is very western. The implementation is done according to western theories. The whole organizational structure with a board, committees, supervisors, and staff is typically western, too. Why not use the indigenous management system? We would have liked that, but we could not see how it would work. The indigenous systems do not reach farther than a few villages. To reach 20,000 people, we needed a wider structure. By giving responsibility to the villages, we hope that at least on the local community level the traditional leadership structure will work. In most VECs, the communities selected a number of datus (traditional leaders). Still we would like to make it more "cultural." One thing we have to work on in this project is the communities. We have underestimated how difficult it is for a community to get organized. A major task for the supervisors will be to strengthen the communities in such a way that they feel confident to run their own literacy class. The future years will show if the people are happy to own their literacy project. The challenge for the SIL team will be to decide how much to steer and how much to "let it go."
1. CONTRACT EXAMPLE MALEI-VEC CONTRACT WITH ______________
. 2. MATIGSALUG LITERACY PROJECT AREA APPROACH PLAN
Karsten and Irene van Riezen-Grunewald work in South Asia as a literacy and translation team. Karsten worked as a primary school teacher in the Netherlands and received his M.A. in Education from the University of Utrecht. His focus was on nonformal education, for which he did his research in South Asia. Irene has an M.A. in Semitic Languages and Linguistics from the Free University in Amsterdam. They did their SIL training in the United Kingdom in 1994-95. Robert and Margaret Hunt are New Zealanders who began their work in the Philippines in April 1989. They have been working with the Matigsalug Manobo cultural community since 1990. Since April 1995, they have been involved in producing literacy materials and helping organize the literacy program. Before going to the Philippines, Robert worked as a software engineer, and Margaret trained in zoology. They trained in linguistics, translation, and literacy with SIL in New Zealand and Australia. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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