Working in the jails

It was a very good experiences and a nice project we did in 2006-2007 in the Central Jail (Female section) in Kathmandu. We provided sewing machines to more than 40 prisoner women, technical training, management training and legal assistance. We supplied them with all materials useful to produce garments for their family and children. The second step was to tailor boto (the tradition child dress) which we distributed in the Bal Bikas (Early Childhood Dev. Centers) we created in Timal (Kavre) enrolling more than 800 children. All children got a sort of uniform which was a good help for the family.
The last step should be to start production for the local market directed to foreign tourist wih the idea to channel garments to international fair trade market. The Women Tailor Group after one year of working and training were able to produce some nice garments from which we had selling agreements with local shops.
All was stopped by the donor (CCS Italia INGO) with no reasons in 2007. Even the brand we studied was put in a corner as well the works and hopes of the women involved.
This project was a namuna (sample) which could be extended, as our intention, to other jails in Nepal, and we did it in coordination with Jail authorities. The objective were to assure a little income to the prisoners, give them job opportunities out of the jail and a something to do during detention in order to avoid violence and bad attitudes.
To create opportunities and hope (it was the brand for the Inmates Cooperative) is the only way to help prisoners during detention and to help them to be reintroduced in normal life.
A recent survey showed that the situation in Nepali jails is deteriorating form many point of view and few activities are running to help the prisoners which are detained in over crowded structures.
This research shows that 38% of the prisoners it had surveyed had access to drugs even behind the bars in different parts of the country including the Central Jail, Bhadra Bandi Griha, Bhadra Mahila Bandi Griha, Dillibazaar Jail, Nakkhu Prison, Biratnagar Prison, Pokhara Prison and Birgunj Prison
Total of 351 prisoners living in the eight jails were surveyed and 15 per cent of the respondents were women.
Of the people who use drugs in the jails, 20 per cent said they use marijuana, 20 per cent brown sugar, 10 per cent injections and the rest 50 per cent said they use many kinds of drugs.
The survey stated that 50 per cent of the Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) in the jails share same needle. Half of the IDUs in jails had visited treatment and rehabilitation centres and hospitals at least once while the another half had never gone to either a hospital or any drop-in centre.
Legal assistance, income generating activities might be the way to give a reasons of life to these people.

Increased the number of Community Schools

During the past years we worked to enforce the role of the community in managing schools and ECDs (Early Childhood Dev. Center). They are managed by a SMC (School Management Commitee) formed by representatives of teachers and families. It is a good way to link quality on education, enrollenmnet and controll on teachers work. The SMCs have to be helped in improving their capacity and so we did by an agreement with lawiers and accountants from Tribhuvan University. We believe to do a good work transferring resources to SMCs (teachers salary, schools building and repairing, library, dicactical materials, etc.) and helping them to have a good accountability. In the VDCs where we worked each year during Baisach (nepali end of year), the SMCs did a community auditing to explane to the communituy how they spent our funds. People partecipated in a great number, it was also a feast where we distributed copybooks, pen, and other materials to children.
Now the process started in 2004 to hand over the management of public schools to community is going on. Over 8,000 public schools across the country has been handed over to local communities. According to the Department of Education (DoE), as many as 8,002 public schools had been handed over to the communities by March 13.
DOE declared that 2,604 schools have been handed over to the communities in the eastern region, 2,284 in the central region, 1747 in western, 627 in mid-western and 740 in far-western development region. Among them, 5,471 are primary schools, 1,695 are lower-secondary schools and 836 are secondary schools.
More schools have been handed over to the communities in Kavre, Morang, Illam, Udayapur, Nawalparasi, Baglung, Nuwakot, Jhapa, Rammechhap and Dolakha districts.
The school handover programme was first launched in 2003/04 in 15 districts and has been expanded to all 75 districts now, according to Nepali. The government has allocated Rs 2,035 million for the community-managed schools in the current fiscal.

namaste from ccs nepal web site

The blog of CCS Nepal has been closed as their message below. We are a group of people working since many years in Nepal (and Cambodia) both Nepali and foregneirs. Most of us worked with CCS Nepal or are still  consultants. We created a group called Community & Development Nepal to share in this blog our experiences and practices on Cooperation & Development.

Dear Friends

Many people from Nepal, Italy and abroad visited our blog  in these months but now we are going to close it.

A formal and written request has been made by Mrs. Chanda Rai, Country Director of CCS Italy INGO. The new people of Italy HQ and the Kathmandu Office dont like our critics directed to a better implementation of the projects we started in 2003, we apologize for this. In the last days it seems our critics have been able to change some plans of CCS Italia and, fortunately, to work again with community instead put money in official baskets. We cannot say more but only best wishes to all

Drops of Nepal: images of people, places & projects

We post a documentary on our activities, with  images of people and places of Kathmandu, Kavre, Timal, Chitwan. Projects  on health and education for Tamang and Chepang children. The film has been shooted by Italian volunteers.

about quality in education

The Ministry of Education has been telling the public that there are 60,000 vacancies for teachers in schools. But there are more than 300,000 people with valid training certificates and teaching licenses waiting for an opportunity to serve as teachers. School education, in Nepal, remains dismal also because of unnecessary government intervention in educational establishments from time to time. Last year, the government decided to recognise ten months’ training after SLC as equivalent to grade 11. Moreover, they have also announced that ten months’ training after grade twelve will be considered equivalent to B.Ed first year. At a time when the undergraduate degrees in most countries across the globe require four years of study, the government seems ready to award B.Ed degree in two years’ time
Worse still, the training contents and methodology at the Education Training Centres (ETCs) are below par as com pared with the academic ones. This will only produce incompetent and unskilled teachers but also have an impact on the quality of students produced. In our own neighbouring countries, a primary school teacher requires a Bachelor’s degree plus a year or two years’ training. In our context, SLC pass-outs fulfil the minimum qualification for teachers of primary schools. The School Sector Reform programme envisages 12 years of schooling as minimum qualifications for the primary school teachers. On the pretext of upgrading the qualifications of teachers, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has made a wrong decision to equate the ten months’ training with academic degree.
As per the government provisions, aspiring teachers are required to sit for exams that certify them to be allowed to work as teachers. However, it is also true that the government has distributed teachers’ licences to all and sundry, without actually assessing the qualifications and performance of the candidates. It should be noted that only such candidates, who have undertaken trainings, are qualified to sit for teacher’s examinations. That means licensing examination is the second layer of quality control. Recently, Education Minister Renu Yadav announced that the Ministry of Education has decided to scrap the teachers’ licensing examinations. If implemented, this will be another erroneous and irresponsible move that will still degrade the educational system.
From an article of Dr. Mana Prasad Wagley

Trainings, reports and workshops development

In a recent article it has been pointed out the paradox of local level governance in Nepal is that much money and effort have been poured into it over the decades but with no visible improvement.
In 1996 UNDP and DANIDA pushed on the government to introduce the Local Self-Governance Act 1999 which failed to include the vital provisions regarding the user groups which showed good performances in managing the forestry community development which has been fully domestically managed by local community.
With no provisions regarding the formation of local groups, the enormous fund to decentralization has been managed by, as the article points, local bodies were invariably composed of the hand-picked favourites of the village elites.
As a result, the billions of rupees that went through the DDCs (District Dev. Office) and VDCs (Village Dev. Office) in various tied and untied grants over the years made little dent on the problems of poverty and deprivation that continue to remain rampant in Nepal’s villages. The same seems happened for other local authorities as DHO (health) and DEO (education).
The misuse of huge funds and the needs of a serious reforms of local body, most of them not working or bad working due to that lack of elected officials and good mnagement should suggest to international donors to go directly to the primary stakeholders: it means community through local user groups (for specific projects), community schools, etc.
This work should be a priority for INGOs and NGOs which must operate gross route level as their guiding principles should require. Unfortunately this is not happening for some of them. It is the case of Centro Cooperazione Sviluppo INGO (CCS Italia) which during the last two years left good community tied projects in Kavre moving towards funding the local DEO (district education office) and DHO (district health office). This negative attitude seems directed to void the role and capacity of the local NGO working in Kavre since many years. The reasons could be the strong critics  the local NGO moved regarding the ineffective use of Italian fund and donation made by the officers of the INGO and their incapacity to operate directly with the community. Maybe also their laziness and high salaries.
The same misadventure which is running, in a great scale, DANIDA. They decided to support a 10 million rupies project (19 months) project entitled “Promoting Local Governance for Effective Service Delivery” in six selected districts.
It was said to be “supply-side” governance strengthening initiative and comprised workshops for government officials, local politicians, NGO/CBO officials, and “service receivers”. The project developed training manuals, formed coordination committees and “good governance pressure groups”, and held public hearings with government officials including the CDOs in attendance.
It seems the same trend followed by Centro Cooperazione Sviluppo (CCS Italy) in which instead to work in the community, it is easier to work through local bureaucrats. It is the training and workshop development which is the main activity wide spreading among INGOs and institutional donors.
This kind of “projects” doesn’t need many activities, fieldwork, and accountability of service given.
The single most important contribution that the government and donors could make to promote good governance and development in the villages is to empower the stakeholders and assuring effective service delivery and the only way is to go in the villages working with people. 

Guna Dhakal- Social Worker-Kathmandu

Fighting Aids, but alcoholism…

The celebration of World Aids Day at Tundikhel (on 1st december) has been a public and political event reinforcing the role of various organizations and funds engaged on this issue.
From a recent World Bank Report by the middle of 2008, more than 1750 cases of AIDS and over 11,000 cases of HIV infection were officially reported, with two times as many men reported to be infected as women.
In the last days, a Report issued by Patan Hospital revealed that almost half of Nepal’s 25 million population consumes alcohol thus not only straining the country’s health budget but giving rise to social tension. And Increasing number of youths giving to alcoholism which is comparatively more serious a problem than drug abuse affecting the life of the alcohol-addicted’s entire family.
A standard three-month recovery program costs between Rs 3,000- 5,000 a month. Those who can afford to, go abroad for confidentiality
No organizations have never been done a study in Nepal about the social and economic cost of alcohol abuse. Neither is there any reliable statistics regarding alcohol consumption.
The new rule set by the Government regarding limitation of alcohol selling could be a first step if it will be seriously implemented.
Despite the enormous social problem of alcohol in Nepal, nor NGOs or INGOs or other development agencies have specific projects on the matter. Nepal face the worst alcohol problems in South Asia and the social costs of alcohol abuse is far higher than the combined ravages of drugs and Aids. But this issues overshadowed other health problems in funding and in public recognition.
Probably due to the officialdom, liquor lobby and media the voices, especially coming from village women have been denied. But because of its cultural acceptability, experts say, alcoholism has become the single biggest medical and social problem in Nepali society today
As wrote by some scholars, the initiatives against the abuse of tobacco, liquor and such other injuries of capital and market that complicate gender, class and ideological positioning tend to be either deferred or altogether discredited.

Nina Tamang-Kathmandu

NGO needs credibility and efficiency

Some past posts criticized the work and the role of some INGO operating in Nepal. we receive this article on the matter from Syed Mohammad Ali, Pakistani Researcher

Engaging in a debate about the role of NGOs should not be confined to questioning their credibility, but also their ability to deliver services efficiently and in a sustained manner
A landmark Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness was put forth in 2005 which acknowledged that international development aid needs to respect the priorities of recipient countries and that donor organisations must begin to coordinate their activities with one another. In development terms, this understanding implied the need for donor alignment to improve the harmonisation of aid.
Three years have passed since this declaration was signed, yet the overall ineffectiveness of development assistance continues to evoke much criticism. International non-governmental organisations perhaps remain the harshest critics of aid effectiveness. But what about the effectiveness of these NGOs in utilising aid for development purposes themselves?
After all, international NGOs receive large shares of aid from donors, which adds to the funding generated by them privately and amounts to a significant sum. In some donor countries, the share of NGOs in the expenditure of official development aid is as high as 20 percent. The aid granted by NGOs from OECD nations alone amounted to a total of to almost $15 billion in 2005. A similar amount was given to them in 2006.
Some of the larger NGOs now have budgets bigger than longstanding government donors. The overall budget of ‘World Vision International’, for example, exceeds the aid budget of Italy. The ‘Save the Children Alliance’ spends more money on development than Finland.
Given the enormity of funds involved, a closer look is needed over how NGOs are spending this money meant to assist developing countries. Some recent research in this regard indicates that there is due basis for concern.
Generally, international NGOs are considered to be able to target aid more effectively than state-run development agencies. This confidence is based on the assumption that such entities are more aware of the needs of poor people – since most of them directly cooperate with local level civil society groups, enabling them to circumvent corrupt governments. It is also claimed that international NGOs are less influenced by donor governments’ commercial and political interests, and more responsive to on-ground needs.
However a look at cumulative NGO activities indicates that like official donors, international NGOs are also very subjective in where they chose to spend their money. Ethiopia, for example, has been found to host 5 separate affiliates of World Vision, 7 Oxfam agencies, 6 Care International and 12 Save the Children offices.
Similarly, in other relatively small countries such as Guatemala, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, more than 40 of the 60 largest NGOs have a presence. This is in stark contrast with other deserving countries like Congo, Yemen and the Central African Republic, where only a handful of these international NGOs operate. Therefore, like official donors, NGOs also ignore the income position of recipient countries and their genuine requirement for aid.
Partially at least, the evident concentration of NGO presence in selected countries is explained by their dependence on government donor priorities, which earmarks official assistance for specific countries. But then if NGOs from donor countries have a tendency to replicate the aid allocation of official donors, surely it must also limit their independence in terms of decision-making.
There are also other indications illustrating that international NGOs lack serious resolve in making their programmes more responsive to needs felt on the ground. For instance, there is little evidence that NGOs are better at respecting the priorities of their local counterparts than of official donors.
In the directorial boards of 55 of the world’s largest development NGOs, only 6 per cent of members have been found to belong to developing countries. This power differential is compounded by the fact that local NGOs themselves lack direct access to international aid, since most official donors restrict their funding for NGOs to organisations based within their own countries, instead of routing this aid directly to NGOs in developing countries.
It is interesting to note that the Global Accountability Report for 2006 found that the World Bank and even the corporate sector have better procedures for managing complaints than international NGOs.
It is about time that international NGOs take a critical look at their own activities instead of using most of their energy to convince donor nations to abide by the principles of aid effectiveness. Engaging in a debate about the role of NGOs should not be confined to questioning their credibility, but also their ability to deliver services efficiently and in a sustained manner.
This ambiguity concerning the effectiveness of NGOs working at the international level has also percolated down to the national level. There is a growing undercurrent of scepticism in the general public about the role of all types of NGOs. In the case of Pakistan for instance, the entire sector is often seen as attempting to propagate and impose the values of a foreign donor agency on an unsuspecting local populace.
While development practitioners must acknowledge that some problems do exist within this sector, and that the efficacy or design of many initiatives can be questioned, the entire sector however cannot be written off as being corrupt, bureaucratic or inefficient.
Moreover, not all local NGOs are recipients of international aid. According to research done by the Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy some years ago for instance, Pakistanis themselves were found to have given five times more funds to non-profit organisations than what these organisations had received in grants. Nonetheless, the need to bridge the credibility gap concerning internal governance, financial accountability and the participatory approach of NGOs is vital if they want to remain legitimate stakeholders in the process of international development.
A voluntary NGO certification programme has been initiated in several developing countries, including our own, which is a good thing. Scrutiny of international NGOs at a broader level through aid effectiveness forums is also a welcome move.
Ultimately, NGOs must be able to fulfil the needs of the local communities more responsively and expediently than larger international development agencies, or else there is be no real justification for their profusion.

Suggestions on education projects

We received

Dear NGO
I remember with joy when we collaborated in 2006 with your NGO in planning new methods to increase quality education in the schools you are supporting in Kavre District. My friends in TU and me  were very sad to know of changing programs and management occurred from 2007 in CCS Italy INGO which stopped our projects and some of yours.
As we agreed, your fundamental work to improve educational structures in Timal, building and restoring schools could not be completed without an efforts in improving the way and quality of studying as several works suggest.
At that time you and TU (Tribhuvan University) team were engaged to create a new sample of training methods for teachers and principals in order to establish new relations among students and teachers and new ways of teachings.
Remembering those discussion and positive ideas, which are still on date, I should like to share with you some suggestions coming form a study on education in India, hoping that our government too start to consider education and its quality a priority in political agenda.
In India as in Nepal enrolment has increased tremendously in the past couple of decades and today parents largely see it as a bounden duty.
In India some data are really impressive: The number of students enrolled in elementary education (classes 1 to 8) was about 1.9 crore in 1951. It is now estimated at over 13 crore, about seven times more.
The proportion of students enrolled for class 1 to 5 in the total number of children in the 6-11 years age group, called the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for that age group, is about 107%. That means virtually all children in this age group and some who are older but in these classes are enrolled in schools.
But as in Nepal, for class 6 to 8, this proportion, for the age group 11-14 years, falls to about 70%. It continues falling in the next stage of class 9 to 12 also – just about touching 40%. By the time we reach higher education, the proportion of students has fallen to an abysmal 10%.
This data, as you know, are similar to Nepal and we discussed the way to avoid the drop-out. You implemented the project to establish an higher secondary school (10+2) in Timal to assure high education opportunity for poor and remote students. That was a way to reduce the drop-out and it is very negative that CCS Italy INGO suspended the support to this project.
No opportunity to access to higher education create and perpetuate endemic divisions that make one section of people disadvantaged or under-privileged especially in remote areas. This comment means that in both countries a large amount of young people are out of the system and without education.
This is represented in India  by the rural-urban chasm. Back in 1951, 35% of urban residents were literate, but only 12% of rural people. In 2006, 80% of urbanites were literate but in rural areas the literacy rate was still far behind – at 59%. The gap is almost of the same order as in 1951. The same data is found in Nepal.
Another persistent division leaves the most socio-economically backward castes and tribal communities at a disadvantage. Among scheduled castes, the literacy rate was 55%, while among scheduled tribes it was 47% in 2006. These are way behind ‘other backward classes’, which have a literacy rate of about 66%, and all the remaining castes, which have the highest literacy at over 78%.
We appreciated, in fact, your work in Timal and your attention to alleviated the burden of education (through distribution of materials to students, coaching classes, and teacher salaries in community schools) to the poorest family which belong to Tamang, Magar and Dalit groups. According to an ASSOCHAM India survey, the costs of sending a child to school have risen by 160% in the last 8 years and without support to family the drop-out rate is going to increase as you showed in your study which compare the state of education in some Timal VDCs before your project and after. So it is really a shame CCS Italy INGO decided to stop books distribution to children in Timal with the new italian management.
In fact, the Indian survey states, there is the rich-poor divide. Among the poorest third of our society, literacy is only about 46%. In the middle third it improves to 65%, while among the richest third of the population, it is over 72%.
In India they did:
-The high rates of enrolment at the primary stages across the country, and their continued stability, has a ready explanation – the mid-day meal scheme, launched by the government in its present form after a Supreme Court order in 2001. As unfortunately you did in Timal before it was cut by CCS Italy INGO.
-Another event that will have a long-term effect is the inclusion of the right to education as a fundamental right in 2002. The provision, in its final form was restricted to children in the age group 6-14 years This has led to the government dragging its feet in getting it off the ground. Implementation would mean that the government would be accountable to the courts if children were left out

Thanks to these general provisions India was able to improve  quantitatively its education system. But some data suggests that quality in education is still low. Then there is the question of relevance of education – after all it is being sought primarily to get a good job. A recent National Sample Survey report found that unemployment among youth was highest among graduates, post-graduates and technical diploma or certificate holders – in the range of 19-20%. This is way above the current unemployment rate of about 6% for this age group. The reasons for this are that in most cases the educational qualifications and job requirements don’t match.
This is the reason it would have been wise to work on our project on quality education. I hope the new appointed and too much  paid officers of Centro Cooperazione Sviluppo INGO sleeping in Kathmandu office begin to learn how to be useful for people and not only for themeselves.
Friendly wishes
Dr. Satish Koirala
Educationalist-Kathmandu

nutrion with DEO Kavre

As in our integrated project on education, from 2005 we provided integration daily meals to around 880 children enrolled in Bal Bikas Kendra (ECDs) we created in 5 VDCs in Timal area (Kavre District).

We provided them a daily allowance of Nrs. 2.5 each children managed by the School Management Committees charged of the ECDs. In the past post, it is underligned as daily meals for children helps enrollment and attendance to the ECDs as well it is a support for poor family.

Actually we had the idea to create Ama (mothers) Groups charged to produce and cook pito (high nutrient flour) and to distribute it to the children. Unluckly Centro Cooperazione Sviluppo ONLUS severely reduced the amount stated for this project from Rs. 2.5 each children daily to only Rs. 1. With this amount is very hard to give any good food to the children.

We received

Dear Friends

I am a teacher of Narayansthan and i was really involved in your projects in my VDC, they were very useful for children, family and schools. I know and I read on your website that quite all acyivities are collapsing due the mismanagement of Centro Cooperazione Sviluppo INGO. This is very sad and  we are very worried too because several teachers before supported by CCS Italy INGO were laied-off.

I really don’t understand which is their ideas and their future programs. They are destroying years of work and also all well has been done by your NGO which is formed and directed by people of the community. They speak about partnership at community level but in the Coordination Nutrition Committee of DEO (District Education Office) of Kavre they obliged you to leave the seat for a member of CCS Italy, one of the well-paid officer of Kathmandu which has not knowledge of our Timal.

This is really a pity which I hope the italian sponsors of our children will let to Know.

Friendly regards

Binod Kumar