Partnerships

Deepening Civil Society Capacities for Education Advocacy

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From late 2003, ASPBAE has been implementing the Asia–South Pacific component of the Real World Strategies (RWS) Program.
The Real World Strategies programme is a unique demand-driven, context based capacity development programme which aims to strengthen the competencies of civil society organisations to develop and run targeted, time-bound campaigns and advocacy action with clear policy change objectives. It is built around the „real world‟ capacity development needs of participating education campaign coalition partners in 10 countries all over the Asia Pacific.
To date, the RWS programme coordinated by ASPBAE has made modest policy gains. Looking at a few snapshots in South Asia:
- In Sri Lanka, the Coalition for Education development (CED) has objected effectively to the closure of the schools ordered by government on basis of commercial viability.
- In India the National Coalition for Education (NCE) has emerged as a strong network raising various issues on the right to education as a result of which education has become one of the fundamental rights in India enshrined in the Constitution. Though the introduction of a model bill in 2006 was a setback (as it proposes to defer the role of central government and make states contribute more), NCE has worked towards circulating a critical manual on the Model Right to Education Bill 2006 and conducting campaigns all over India through CSOs and teachers‟ unions which led to the turning down of the Bill by the governments in several states.
- In Pakistan, Pakistan Coalition for Education (PCE) has consolidated its position and credibility by engaging the newly elected government on the Education Policy Document on educational reforms. The series of consultations on the draft education policy has brought the policy debates out of the ministries and into the public domain for wider discussions and validation. The recommendations have been shared with the ministry for inclusion in the policy.
Further, policy analysis and research undertaken by ASPBAE and its partners contributed to enhanced analytical competencies, sharper articulation of alternative policy approaches and positions and a deeper understanding of policy processes. Coalitions‟ representatives don‟t rush unprepared into policy conferences anymore. They strategize jointly, based on intensive policy analysis and are equipped with feasible policy recommendations while appearing at key policy moments, as evinced in 2008 in EFA MDA and CONFINTEA processes.
CSO positions and representatives informed by alternative research and policy analysis initiatives like the Education Watch are increasingly finding spaces on government, inter-governmental and donor committees and in policy bodies, for example in the MDA and other technical reports in education in the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia.
Education advocacy positions are gaining increased prominence in the alternative discourses of the broader CSO development community. Southern CSO advocacy positions are increasingly informing the international CSO debates and positions such as in the worldwide campaign against poverty marking the 2005 G8 Summit, the MDG Summit and the WTO Meeting. In the recent ASEAN Peoples Forum (February 2009, Bangkok) in preparation for the ASEAN Summit, participating coalitions along with international partners notably ActionAid, lobbied hard on issues of education quality, issues of exclusion particularly on securing the education rights of migrants and refugees, and on education financing. For perhaps the first time, these issues made their way to the joint CSO statement for submission to the ASEAN Summit.
Organisational capacities of CSO education campaign networks and bodies at national levels have grown even under highly challenging conditions of conflict and political instability.
Owing to all these, a stronger Southern voice in the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) processes has emerged.
Despite these gains as well as economic growth the Asia Pacific Region remains home to the largest number of poor people with the highest concentration of adult illiterates being in South Asia. It is home to the largest number in the Asia Pacific of out of school children – mainly poor; majority, women and girls.
This calls for increased and continued support to strengthen the work on education policy in the region.

A. ASPBAE-OSI Partnership for South Asia
In 2008, the partnership between ASPBAE and Open Societies Institute (OSI) began. The first phase has been completed in March, 2009. The partnership will continue until 2010.
The overall objective is to build the capacity of the national coalitions to translate the policy agenda into action at national and local levels by creating an effective frontline of EFA campaigners.
The key issues to be pursued in the period will include:
1) education financing including education budgets and ODA
2) capacity building on better decentralization and governance of basic education linked to SWAPs,
3) attention to the neglected goals of EFA especially Goals 3 and 4
4) protection of quality education provision in the face of climate change, food and oil crises,
and the global financial crisis.
Three sets of activities will be pursued:
(1) Country-level capacity building workshops on education ODA aimed at broadening awareness and understanding of education aid issues within the key constituencies of the partner coalitions in South Asia are targeted in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. These would also provide arenas to share the outcomes of the earlier country studies in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, nationally. These workshops are also envisaged to provide opportunities to bring in other campaigners and advocates on ODA to facilitate joint analysis and explore coordinated action.
(2) Three (3) case studies on SWAp in Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan are targeted – building on the earlier education aid studies. The studies will not be academic researches into SWAp technicalities, but rather organised as endeavours to identify policy entry points for the coalitions to engage with the governments and donors in meaningful dialogues, reflecting on a vital role in design, implementation and monitoring of the SWAps.
(3) A Working Group Meeting on Sector Wide Approaches in Education will be convened to discuss the outcomes of the country studies and to jointly strategize the appropriate advocacy approaches and capacity-building efforts needed to strengthen work further in this area.
In addition ASPBAE is keen to offer dedicated support to PCE Pakistan and GCE Nepal in their over-all capacity development efforts more broadly, and specifically through OSI support, in developing their core competencies around education ODA and tracking education budgets enabling their effective engagement on issues of education financing in their respective countries.

B. The Civil Society Education Fund
Governments have the fundamental responsibility to guarantee education rights for all their citizens, but that does not mean that governments can do it all alone. Governments can only prioritise education in a sustained way if there is public support for them to do so and if there is wider national consensus on the importance of investing in education. This is one area where civil society can play a crucial role, particularly where different voices are brought together under common platforms to make the case for education and to monitor the current policies and practice at the local level.

Over the past decade there has been a remarkable emergence of such coalitions or campaigns, linking parents, teachers, women‟s rights advocates, faith based groups, social movements, child labour activists, the media, community based organization and NGOs. These broad-based alliances can also play a crucial role in building genuine national ownership of education plans, as well as in monitoring their progress in practice, tracking budgets and ensuring transparency and accountability in government spending on education.
Predictable, sustained funding support is critical to enable strong civil society institutions to accelerate and carry through efforts to contribute meaningfully in policy development and hold governments accountable to ensure the right of all citizens to education of good quality.
In September 2008, the Global Campaign for Education made an initial presentation on the concept of setting up a Civil Society Education Fund (CSEF), a mechanism envisaged to enable continued support for CSO education advocacy at the national level, to the Education Program Development Fund (EPDF) Committee of the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) and requested permission to submit the CSEF proposal in December in Oslo, directly to the EPDF Committee.
At the EPDF meeting in Oslo the Committee agreed to fund the first year of the proposal. The Committee also agreed to prioritise two further years of funding for this work beyond this initial grant.
This project proposal to EPDF is designed to ensure that civil society organisations can fully assume the roles that they are expected to play according to the Dakar Framework for Action and specifically in respect to FTI country level processes. It‟s main objective is to provide support to the core work of national education coalitions in FTI and FTI eligible countries over a three year period so that they can more fully engage in the development of education sector programs with government and donors and track the progress of national governments and local donor groups in working towards the EFA goals.
The Global Campaign for Education will act as the executing agency for this project, recruiting a small secretariat to have overall oversight of three regional secretariats as well as funding committees which will award grants to national civil society coalitions.
For the first three years, Regional Civil Society Education Funds will be established in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These regional funds will support a competitive process whereby national civil society coalitions proposals enabling them to; (i) assume an active role in FTI and other education policy processes; and (ii) create National Civil Society Education funds to sustain this work in the longer term.
Three regional coalitions (ANCEFA in Africa, ASPBAE in Asia and CLADE in Latin America) will act as host agencies, employing small secretariats to promote the regional funds, prepare papers for funding committees, follow
up national coalitions to ensure punctual reporting / accounting, promote experience sharing and offer capacity building support as needed.
Three regional funding committees / boards will be established (in Africa, Asia and Latin America) each made of credible individuals from across the region. These will be the decision making bodies for the allocation of funds but they will not manage the funds.
Three financial management agencies have been identified (Oxfam in Africa, Education International Asia Pacific in Asia, ActionAid in Latin America) to ensure sound financial management. They will manage the funds and will be responsible for distributing the resources to the national coalitions in line with the decision of the three regional funding committees provided that they are satisfied with the level of financial reporting from the country.
This proposal has been developed by GCE in close coordination with ANCEFA in Africa, ASPBAE in Asia and CLADE in Latin America and provides details of the key agencies and individuals who will be involved (see Appendix for full details).
The following are members of the Asia Pacific Regional Funding Committee:
Aloysius Mathews is Education International's Chief Asia /South Pacific Region Coordinator. Lalita Ramdas is the international Chair of the Board of Greenpeace International, a renowned international environmental campaign organization. Edicio Dela Torre is a Board member of the Global Campaign for Education and President of E-net Philippines. Dilli Chaudhary is the founder of the Backward Society Education Organization (BASE), a nonprofit agency dedicated to advocating on behalf of Nepal‟s 200,000 bonded labourers. Priyanka looks after the Policy Advocacy work of the Global March Against Child Labour. Farah Kabir is the Country Director of Bangladesh Programme of ActionAid International Lilian (Lan) Mercado is the Country Director for Oxfam Great Britain in the Philippines. Usa Duongsaa is a lecturer at the Faculty of Education, Chiangmai University. An HIV/AIDS education activists and campaigner, Nani Zulminarni: National Director of PEKKA, Indonesia and Ashoka Awardee for her work on empowering livelihood opportunities for poor women. Maria Lourdes Almazan Khan: GCE Vice Chair, ASPBAE Secretary General.
The Guidelines for Application to the Asia Pacific CSEF will be available at the ASPBAE website.

ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) in Practice

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Our work with the Asia-Pacific Cultural Centre of UNESCO (ACCU) as one of the five Centres of Excellence (COE) for ESD since 2006 is one arena where the integration of EFA and ESD is being operationalised.
Since October 2006 Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE) has been part of the Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU) Centre of Excellence (COE) Program for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). ASPBAE is one of five COEs in the Asia-Pacific Region, and aims to promote ESD in the UN Decade for ESD (2005-2014). For the duration of the Program ASPBAE‟s main objectives as a COE will be to promote ESD to its members, partners and networks, build capacities of national education coalitions in research and advocacy and linking national to regional education advocacy efforts, promote indigenous peoples issues and act as a model COE.
Over the past two years ASPBAE as a COE has undertaken new steps in promoting and linking ESD concepts directly to ASPBAE‟s regional programs, strengthening its networks and partnerships, continued capacity-building of national education coalitions such as Papua New Guinea Education Advocacy Network (PEAN), strategizing to develop ASPBAE training modules to integrate ESD components, and expanding the preparation and writing of status papers on Indigenous Perspectives on National Education.
Prior to the World Conference in Bonn, Robbie met with Ms. Tomoko Shibao from ACCU and Prof. Yoshi Nagata from Sacred Heart University in Tokyo to discuss the monitoring and evaluation outcomes of the ten Innovation Projects that were conducted as part of the ACCU-UNESCO ESD Program.
ASPBAE as an ESD COE participated in the monitoring and evaluation of the Innovation Projects. Santi Phongsavan, ASPBAE Program Officer in Canberra was part of the monitoring team that went to Malaysia in late 2008. Robbie who was a member of the ACCU-UNSECO ESD Experts Panel since 2005 (prior to becoming ASPBAE President in 2009) was part of the team that went to Bhutan and Thailand also in 2008.
By Santi Phongsavan and J. Roberto Guevara

UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development: Reflections through an ASPBAE lens

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“Nothing new!” was how one of the participants described the how he felt at the end of the UNESCO World Conference of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) held from 31 March to 2 April in Bonn, Germany. The UNESCO World Conference was organised with the aim of taking stock of the achievements of the first half of the UNESCO Decade of ESD (DESD) and identify challenges that need to be addressed as we prepare for the second half of the DESD.
“That is not a fair assessment,” was the response of another participant. She explained that for individuals who have been involved with the key global environmental education conferences from Tibilisi (1977) to Stockholm (1980) to Rio (1992) and most recently in Johannesburg (2002), the key principles may not be new. I agreed, saying that for me (and possibly a significant number of ASPBAE members) who have for year been involved in adult and community education that has been holistic, participatory, contextual and transformative, the ESD principles are not new. However, there were for me a number of significant differences, achievements and challenges of ESD that the World Conference identified.
A key difference I would argue that that the global context has dramatically changed since the last major gathering in Johannesburg. One example that was often mentioned is the global financial crisis – with a discussion in one of the workshops I attended about whether this crisis was a threat or an opportunity in advancing the goals of ESD. I argued that for most of our members in the Asia-Pacific region this is not a new crisis – most of the communities we work with have and continue to live in poverty and this „new‟ financial crisis will merely make things worse. However, the crisis is an excellent opportunity to learn more about why the current economic models have not worked and this provides a platform to apply the holistic perspective of ESD based on the interrelationships between the three pillars - economic, social and environmental dimensions. Note that in some countries politics is a fourth pillar and in some culture is added as an underlying dimension that impacts on all pillars.
The other key difference that I would also consider as an achievement is that ESD has moved, even though very slowly in little steps, to being acknowledged as a key element required if we are to achieve long-term and equitable development for all. A key indicator that was often mentioned at the conference was the number of countries that sent official delegations to the conference. The UNESCO ESD website
(http://www.esd-world-conference-2009.org/fileadmin/download/News/Report_on_World_Conference.pdf)
reported that “900 participants from 147 countries with 123 (with 3 Associate members) UNESCO member states were represented. Those who have been involved in previous ESD-related global conferences identify this as a significant change.
I would add that aside from the usual suspects from the environmental education practitioners, there were individuals and groups that came from a wide variety of interests. This was highlighted by one of the workshops that I attended together with Heribert Hinzen from DVV that looked at the shared goals of ESD and Education for All (EFA). Central to the discussions at this workshop were the important role that adult literacy has in achieving the goals of both ESD and EFA and the shared commitment to quality education that needs to be available, accessible and affordable. I think this is an achievement, which is consistent with the principles of ESD about the need to involve a variety of stakeholders and education practitioners in the creation of what I have often called simply „good‟ education that acknowledges a shared vision of a sustainable future.
I would like to emphasise that I strongly believe that for us in ASPBAE, this is not about all of us becoming ESD educators, in fact I would argue that maybe unconsciously we have all led the way into shaping ESD – whether we were conducting literacy classes, gender-sensitivity trainings, HIV/AIDS awareness-raising seminars, indigenous people‟s rights workshops, or our own ASPBAE Basic Leadership Development Course. We in ASPBAE have always been committed to an adult learning that has been contextual, participatory and transformative – which is how ESD would describe as quality education.
The challenges identified for the next five years of the Decade are overwhelming – climate change will continue to be a major global problem in search of new ways of learning and acting and the financial crisis will continue to put pressure in funding formal and non-formal education, to just name two. The Bonn Declaration (also accessible in the website above) forwards a number of key calls. One key call to action that is relevant to us in ASPBAE is the need to continue to develop stronger links between EFA and ESD. In the Asia- South Pacific region, we are best placed to work with our membership in developing the capacities of individuals and institutions to see that achieving EFA goes hand in hand with the achievement of quality education informed by the principles of ESD.
I believe that as an organisation that has been responsive to the changes in the global context in the last 40 years, we as a network of committed practitioners and our global partners will continue to respond and lead the way in developing not just of quality education but in advocating for quality education as a basic human right – a clear integration of the EFA and ESD agenda.
By J. Roberto Guevara, ASPBAE President

DVVI: Asia Partners Meeting

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The ‘DVV International Partners Training and Planning Workshop’ was held between the 10th and 14th of October, 2009 in Bali, Indonesia, hosted by PPSW. The main aim of the workshop was for all DVVI partners in the region to discuss the various aspects and activities related to:

Conference on Sustaining the Education & Economic Momentum in Africa Amidst the Current Global Financial Crisis

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Faced with a unique set of economic and education challenges, like the dramatically changed circumstances created by the global economic slowdown, July 2009 saw the gathering of senior policy makers from both the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education and the representatives of various development agencies in the ‘Conference for African Ministers of Finance and Education’ held in Tunis, Tunisia.