Presented by Richard Geeves, WEP
on behalf of
The interim Board of the NGO Education Partnership
As a nominated member of the NEP (or NGO Education Partnership), a fledgling group representing NGOs working in various fields of education in Cambodia, I wish to state that NGOs want to work as part of a co-ordinated effort in education in the country. This has been a point of view expressed many times over the years by statements from the EDUCAM, a much broader grouping of organisations working in education in Cambodia, and has now been borne out in the formation of the NEP. My colleague, Graham Lang, has spoken about this earlier today.
Graham has also talked about the distinctive character of NGOs, their independence and diversity. To some planners this diversity can be a source of irritation as they try to work NGOs into a system-wide plan. It can also result in NGOs choosing at times to work outside overarching plans. This is not necessarily a bad thing - they may bring fresh and valuable insights from their unique experiences. One excellent example which many of you may know about is an NGO-run school in Phnom Penh in which disabled teachers, trained outside a system they are at the moment unable to enter, despite their level of qualification, have achieved outstanding results in working with disabled children.
So we believe that independence and diversity can often be as worthwhile as partnership and close co-operation with government.
But we do also strongly believe in co-operation and, in this regard, I wish to inform the participants at today1s meeting that we believe we will be able to address many of the tasks suggested in for NGOs in the Workplan document presented to them as part of the ESSP process. There will be some changes to timelines because we as a group are working as volunteers and do not have a secretariat to assist us complete them. The NEP will be communicating with the Minister in detail about our commitments and out timeline but I would like to say here that we intend to deliver papers on :
• some comments on the ESSP Appraisal process that we have been involved in over the past two weeks
• our response to the recent NGOs in education study;
• a plan for formalising the structure of the NEP;
• a paper on the experience and human resources of NGOs interested in working on specific parts of the ESSP with the MoEYS and an indication of those interests;
• and a paper on the role of NGOs in promoting and implementing small scale pilots and innovations.
We will also work with the Ministry after the presentation of the paper on piloting innovations to agree on policy and a forward plan for such schemes.
As Graham has explained, we also hope that there will be an ongoing involvement of individuals from the NGO community in the detailed development of implementation plans for different sectors under the ESSP.
NGO staff believe that they may be able to assist MoEYS colleagues translate, literally and metaphorically, the ESSP documents into working plans.
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to today's proceedings. I hope you all have found these comments constructive.