cong kubuna

Kubunina Program A sustainability model for schools in the Congo

Program Description & Budget Narrative November 2012 PREMISES AND OBJECTIVES OF THE PROGRAM “Give a fish to a man and you will feed him for a day.

Teach him how to fish and you will feed him for his whole life”.

This ancient Chinese proverb well summarizes the core of the Kubunina program: to provide Congolese people methods and tools in order to make them develop sustainable capabilities.

Capabilities helpful to make their dreams happen… Dreams like guaranteeing free access to school to their children, dreams like teaching their youth how to plan autonomously their own future…

Our Kubunina program has a twofold objective: the first is to improve the education of children and young people in Congolese schools, guaranteeing free access to schools to the weakest segments of population. The second objective is to promote the teaching in Italian and Congolese schools of the principles of solidarity and respect for others.

In Congo the program aims to provide an example of social reconstruction starting with the enhancement of the right to education supported by self-sustaining business activities, having a close connection with the land and the environment, and by project management principles and methods.

Education increases the chances of entering the world of work, allows to achieve economic self-sufficiency in adulthood and increase susceptibility to send children to school, recognizing the fundamental importance of education. For this reason, investing in the education of children today also means contributing to the welfare and development of future generations. Investing in the diffusion of a project management culture will allow Congolese communities to feed themselves for the rest of their lives.

The program will be not limited to the transfer of the technical competencies but it will transmit a new way of thinking, a forma mentis characterized by the capability of self-organizing and self-managing in order to achieve any goal.

It’s a real challenge if compared to a situation where the most important planner that should be the State is not doing it at all.

The Congolese context For better understanding the Kubunina purposes it is useful a brief introduction to the context. The Democratic Republic of Congo, one quarter the size of Europe and rich in natural resources, forestry and mining, is one of the largest countries in Africa, having a population of about 70 million people. Its history, marked by conflicts often aimed at the control of its immense wealth, passed from the invasions of Portuguese and Belgian colonizers to the thirty-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko which came to an end in 1997. Recent history has recorded, from the nineties to the present day, the bloodiest conflict since World War II, marked by the invasion of the armies of neighboring states and mercenary troops who have supported and fueled the civil war and fighting across the ethnic borders of the provinces.

War, unemployment, poverty, disease, the high cost of education and many other factors have contributed to a drastic increase in the numbers of street children. Indicators on the status of the lower segments of the population are dramatic in a country where there are more than 30 million minors and more than 13 million children under five years of age: of these many are malnourished, and for every 1,000 births, 205 children die before their fifth birthday. About 34% of children are not registered at birth and are thus deprived of all rights of citizenship. Only 10% live with their parents and 4.7 million children, including 2.5 million girls, have no access to primary school. Widespread poverty and instability, especially in the eastern regions, prevent 1.4 million from completing their studies.

In general, the situation of the poorer segments of the population is critical and the fundamental rights of women and children are systematically denied or violated. Education is supposed to be compulsory from 6 to 14 years of age; the male adult literacy rate is 80% and it is just over 50% for women.

In Congo, the salary of a teacher is well below the threshold of survival. This implies that the school system must levy a fee, even if a minimal one, on students. For many children this is an insurmountable obstacle in accessing education; the situation is even worse with regard to ethnic pygmies.

In this context, the Kubunina program intends to propose a model of sustainability for Congolese schools by creating income-generating activities, capable of being replicated by many other schools.

Many humanitarian missions have been organized to provide for food and money but it has been always lost the most important gift: teaching local populations the way to be autonomous and the necessary tools to feed sustainable development for their people.

These limits are our points of departure and make of our Kubunina program a very innovative one. A team of volunteers willing to donate part of their time and competences to a sustainable humanitarian program. Volunteers from two non-profit association with strong expertise in rural development projects and in project management. The goal is to teach Congolese people – personnel from local NGOs, teachers, committee of parents from the schools involved – how to organize, plan and schedule their projects; how to manage risks, control and measure the work flow in order to reach the desired results. The best way to do this is through the diffusion of a project management culture that we aim to diffuse in the program area.

SPECIFIC PROGRAM OBJECTIVES The specific objectives are to: •

Create income-generating activities to support free access to, at least, six primary schools and one high school

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Build two school libraries in Congo

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Promote a twinning program between the Italian schools and the Congolese ones, while using the basics of the PM

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Implement the project management kit “Projects From the Future” in Italian schools, using micro-projects to support the Congolese schools.

PROGRAM NAME AND DURATION Program Name: Kubunina. A Sustainability Model for Schools in the Congo.

Duration: 24 months. From January 2013 to December 2014.

PROGRAM GLOBAL BUDGET Kubunina program budget USD 278,400.00 This budget is not considering, as dollar value, the contribution of the volunteers, both from the Congo and from Italy.

In Congo the volunteers work come from the “committee of parents” who will donate their time for free in the Income-generating activities project.

Additional we’ve to consider the value of the In-Kind contribution that the volunteers will give to the program. Currently, in Italy there is a team of 10 people and the program will receive as well occasional contributions from other professionals. Particularly, the in-kind contribution will come from:

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the time the AVEC-PVS volunteers will dedicate to coordinate and monitor the projects from Italy;

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the time the PMI-NIC volunteers will dedicate to support the PM activities and the follow-up of the Schools projects in Italy.

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The fact that the experts that will participate in the missions in Congo will receive only a daily reimburse, which represents less than a third of the value their normally receive as professionals in normal non humanitarian projects.

There is furthermore an additional small group of volunteers in France that are involved in the Book Drive Campaign.

PROGRAM WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE – HIGH LEVEL The high-level program WBS is shown in figure 1.

Figura 1 - Kubunina Program High-level WBS

• Income-Generating Activities Project In order to achieve the goal of free education, an indispensable right in any society, the program will implement "income-generating activities" in the beneficiary schools.

Officially, education in Congo is free. Actually, teachers’ salaries are insufficient for their survival, so in order for schools to operate, families must contribute financially. School facilities are almost always in poor condition, except in the few cases where international cooperation has created new buildings. Textbooks and teaching materials are very scarce or totally lacking, as is school furniture (desks, blackboards, etc). A school meal is supplied only when food is provided by the WFP (World Food Program); however these emergency interventions, while valuable, are not sustainable over time. Children often travel many miles to get to school so a minimal meal at least should be served.

This situation penalizes the most vulnerable parts of the population, including ethnic minorities such as pygmies who are often completely excluded from education.

In such a context the creation of income-generating activities can contribute effectively to improving children’s school conditions, especially in the poorest villages.

All these activities will be managed by the "committee of parents," who will dedicate their time for free in order to ensure the sustainability of the activities that are to be created with the technical support of Italian and local NGO experts.

The income-generating activities are of three types: •

Horticulture. In each school a vegetable garden will be created using crops suited to the climate, whose products will be sold at local markets at a price that will be fair to buyers and sustainable for schools. We seek to cultivate species for which there is no dependence on the purchase of imported seed, which do not use chemical fertilizers and minimize, or if possible eliminate, the use of pesticides and insecticides in favor of more sustainable techniques such as crop rotation and biological control.

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Manufacture of fruit juices and preserves. Two units will be built for the production of canned fruit that will serve multiple schools both to produce "snacks" for children and to be sold on the local market.

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Beekeeping and honey production. Honey is a valuable food and beekeeping is feasible in the areas of intervention. The idea is to facilitate a transition from the activities of "honey hunters" who procure honey in the jungle, often exterminating the bees, to a beekeeping activity. This latter method is far more sustainable, as a family of bees can produce honey for human consumption and at the same time ensure its own survival.

Revenues from income-generating activities will be managed by the committee of parents under the supervision of the School Director, and during the implementation phase of the project, under that of our local team.

The priority will be the remuneration of teachers in order to eliminate the contribution that families are obliged to make and so ensure free access to school for all children. Secondly, the food produced (fruit juices, jams, honey, fruits, vegetables) will provide a meal for the children.

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Libraries’ Project

The Library Project, as part of the Kubunina program, involves the construction of two libraries and the provision of equipment needed for their operation in the two different areas covered by the initiative.

The libraries will support school activities and become gathering places to local communities.

As for the other projects in the program, the ultimate goal of the Libraries’ Project is to help create a sustainable model which can ensure the continuity of the operations even after the completion of the initiative. For this reason, the program will support the creation of two Internet Points which revenues will fund the salary of the staff working in the libraries as well as any maintenance costs.

The project involves the establishment of a mobile library service so as to bring reading matter to the children of remote villages who often do not have the possibility to move around easily.

A campaign to collect books in French is part of the project thanks to the support of the friends from the southern France chapter of the Project Management Institute.

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Schools’ Projects

The School Projects involved 7 Congolese Schools and 7 Italian ones, and cover a mix of elementary, middle and high schools.

The goal in the schools is twofold: • •

to make children aware of the principles of solidarity and respect for diversity through the study of the culture and geography of their respective countries, Congo and Italy; to teach children the basic principles and methods of project management through practical application in small projects - such as a year-end theater, an exhibition, the twinning program, etc.

The program will transfer to Italian and Congolese schools – to children, youth and teachers - the basic principles of project management by making available the "Projects From the Future" kit for primary schools, developed by the PMI-NIC chapter. The kits aim to: •

introduce in schools “practices” usually applied in different professional contexts;

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support the teaching body in its search for new ways of “teaching to learn”.

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to teach children the basic principles and methods of project management through practical application in small projects.

The “Projects From the Future” kit for primary schools, will be adapted to the following needs: • to teach PM to youth of the Middle Schools. One of the project deliverable is the new version of the PM kit “Projects From the Future” to the middle schools; • to teach PM to the youth of the High Schools. To this end one of the project deliverable will be the new version of the PM “Projects From the Future” adapted to high schools; • to teach PM basics in the Congolese context. A project deliverable will be a new version of the PM “Projects From the Future” adapted to the Congolese schools and to their specific context.

Twinning activities The cultural exchange, promoted by the twinning project, is an educational approach that allows children to learn about a totally different environment and cultural perspective. It is used as a tool for growth, in order to take advantage of each other’s culture and realities, always respecting and appreciating the differences.

Within the framework of a twinning program, a school from a developed country establishes relations of friendship and cooperation with a village school, through an exchange of correspondence between the children of the two countries. The correspondence gives rise to friendships among children and young people who live in places so distant and different, favoring the establishment of a strong sense of solidarity. It also offers the opportunity to enrich each other's knowledge, bringing together different cultures, traditions, different geographic and climatic situations. The exchange of letters will not be too frequent to give time to work on the material received and to prepare responses.

Twinning, in fact, is more than a simple exchange of letters. It is an opportunity to work on a common project where there will be not only the possibility to compare ethnic and cultural diversities but also social disparities, and learn from them.

Establishing a friendship between children from "far" schools is a practical and effective way to start an educational and creative process.

Some examples of the twinning projects that will be carried out in the Kubunina program, already discussed with some schools, are the following: • an exchange based on the topic of the music: children will exchange typical instruments, will talk about local music trend. They will try to develop in their own school the songs of the twinned one so that the Italian children will sing Congolese songs and vice versa; • an exchange based on the knowledge of the territory. Each class in a country will deepen the study of its own territory to illustrate it to the “twinned” class in the other country. Issues like environment, nature, traditions, will be afforded.

All these activities will be carried out thanks to the contribution of the PM tools such as the brainstorming and the tree of activities, or WBS, that our experts will transmit to teachers and follow-up during the implementation of the sisters’ school projects.

The twinning program concern also the exchange of all the materials developed using the tools of the PM such as the flipchart with the brainstorming, the calendar and the scheduling. In this way the children can also share the experience of the implementation of the project management methodology.

We’d like to stress that the implementation of the whole twinning program will be followed and guided by the Kubunina team. A twinning kit will be developed as a deliverable of the project with guidelines that will be offer to teachers in charge of the coordination of the Sisters’ school activities.

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Communication & Promotion

The communication and promotion activities aim to spread knowledge of the program both in Italy and in the Congo.

In Congo, the objective is to ensure that other schools will be encouraged to replicate the same model of income-generating activities.

In Italy, canvassing activities will be addressed to companies and individuals and aim to raise additional funds to help extend the program scope by increasing the number of Congolese schools involved.

During the whole program life a series of promotional material will be produced.

Furthermore web marketing activities will be carried out to promote the program and its website and to encourage people to contribute to Kubunina with on-line donations.

In Congo we aim to organize a demonstration event addressed to other schools and a final mission trip with the involvement of teachers from Italy and of the people who will contribute to the project.

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Project Management Diffusion

In relation to the PM diffusion project, the training activities will be transversal to the whole program and will involved all the projects.

First of all, the program will take care of the PM training for the NGO personnel involved in the program: they will be the engine of innovation and progress. One of the focus of the PM training will be the transfer of the appropriate PM methodology and tools which will help them to maximize their current and future project efforts . To make them to do at their best by themselves also in future programs.

Another focus area will be one of the Income Generating Activities project. The program will supply PM training to the committee of parents to teach them the basic principles of PM useful to organize their activities, to manage time, cost, quality of their production as well as to take into account project risks.

The PM training, done by one of the PM experts directly on site, will be a key element in order to plan and manage all the activities, to control them, to deal with risks and to make the whole effort sustainable and repeatable in the future. A good example is represented by the “School garden Laboratory”, a little area in the garden that will be addressed to the experimentation of the new crops, before its extension in large scale, in order to minimize the risk of sowing inadequate crops.

PM training will be offered also to the personnel in charge of the management of the local libraries, in order to improve their ability to reach the sustainable goals defined with the libraries’ project and the internet point that will fund their operational costs.

The diffusion of the PM in Italian and Congolese schools is better explained in the specific paragraph. School coordinators, teachers, children and youth will receive PM training while in the PM Kit implementation project and in the Twinning, or sisters’ schools, activities. The Kubunina team will follow the whole implementation while teaching the teacher how to manage the kit and how to promote a PM culture among children and youth.

DELIVERABLES Following a summary of the main deliverables of the Kubunina program, subdivided in its main projects.

INCOME-GENERATING ACTIVITIES PROJECT (IGA)

Main deliverables of the Horticulture Work Package: • Business model (draft version and updated version) •

Operational procedures (draft version and updated version)

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Training material and formation for parents working in the School Gardens

Main deliverables of the Apiculture and Honey production Work Package: • Training material and documentation •

Hives built

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The first swarms in production hives for 1st and 2nd area documentation.

Main deliverables of Fruit juices and preserves manufacture Work Package: • Production model document •

Project design of the production line

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Training material and formation

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Document of business model for manufacturing sustainability.

Main deliverables of the Libraries Project (LP) • Description of the book drive campaign •

Digital catalogue of the books collected

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Building design

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Bill of materials for libraries and internet point

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Business model for Libraries sustainability.

SCHOOLS PROJECT (SP)

Main deliverables of the Schools Project (SP) are: • Presentation of the PM deliverables from the implementation of the kit in primary, middle and high schools in Italy •

Summary and lesson learnt document for future implementation of the kit in Italy

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Version 2.0 “Projects from the future” Kit adapted for high schools in Italy

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Version 2.0 “Projects from the future” Kit adapted for middle schools in Italy

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Presentation of the collected documents to be exchanged for the twinning program – primary, middle and high schools in Italy

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Summary and analysis' document for future implementation of the twinning program in Italy

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Kubunina program results' presentation in schools

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“Projects from the future” kit adapted for primary, middle and high schools in Congo

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Computer equipment for Congolese schools provided

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Schools material in Congo provided

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Presentation of the PM deliverables from the project kit implementation in primary, middle and high schools in Congo

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Summary and analysis' document for future implementation of the PM kit in Congo

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Translation of twinning program guidelines document in French

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Presentation of the collected documents to be exchanged for the twinning program – primary, middle and high schools in Congo

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Summary and analysis document for future implementation of the twinning program in Congo

COMMUNICATION & PROMOTION PROJECT (CPP)

Main deliverables of the Communication & Promotion project are: • CD illustrating the Congolese context •

Brochure

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Promotional Postcards

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Video documentary

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Kubunina Program presentation

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Report of the final event in Italy involving all the actors of the Program

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Report of final demonstrative event in Congo

PROJECT MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES

For all the projects mentioned before, the PM activities will produce: • A project plan (including Gantt, risk analysis and communication plan) • Quarterly Project Status Report • Quarterly Report budget • Final Project Budget • Lessons Learnt report for each year of the program.