Lorena Zamora

1
Private Sector Support for Education American
Chamber of Commerce of Nicaragua School
Sponsorship Program

• Lorena Zamora
• Program Coordinator
• Amcham

2
Who We Are?

• A group of Amcham member companies whose mission
  is to strengthen the quality of the education
  system by giving direct support from the private
  sector to schools.
• Our goal is to contribute to improving the
  quality of education by getting other sectors
  involved.

3
Why are we involved in Education?

• Nicaraguas high levels of poverty result in
  lower investment in the education system.
• Education is the foundation of the Nicaraguan
  economy
• In a global marketplace, Nicaragua must be more
  competitive.
• We have poorly qualified human resources to reach
  our goals of economic growth and to attract
  foreign investment.
• We have business know-how that can improve
  education.
• We need to improve the education system to better
  meet private sector needs. In addition to basic
  academic skills, young people need workforce
  readiness skills including critical thinking,
  problem solving, team work, and a grounding in
  democratic principles

4
How we support Education

• School Sponsorship Program
• Engaging companies to sponsor schools
• Providing financial, volunteer and other in-kind
  support in order to improve the quality of the
  education system
• Directly involving the sponsor in the day-to-day
  activities of the school
• Bringing business culture to education
• Helping schools learn to become more financially
  independent
• Introduce business practices such as
  performance-based incentives

5
How we Support Education (cont.)

• Lobbying on behalf of education
• Raising the issue of education at the national
  and local level.
• Influencing public policy through panels and
  conferences to support education reform,
• influence policies and curriculum so that the
  workforce has the skills and knowledge required
  by the private sector.
• Helping schools resolve problems such as the lack
  of land title
• Helping make education more relevant
• Introducing new school activities to give young
  people the skills needed for todays economy
• Getting other sectors involved in education
• Bringing together resources from the private
  sector, universities, foundations

6
Some Corporate Sponsors

• Empresa Energetica Corinto
• Cisa- Agro
• Exportadora Atlantic
• Desarrollo Sooner
• Central American Fisheries
• Europa Motors
• Lafise
• Kola Shaler Industrial
• Servicio Agrícola Gurdian

• BANCENTRO
• Fundación Nica France
• Café Soluble
• British Tobbaco Company
• Fundación Pantaleón
• Esso Standard Oil Company
• Fundación Padre Fabretto
• Amanco
• Coastal Tipitapa Power
• Censa

7
Inauguration of the 2004 school yearWho are our
partners?

• USAID
• Japanese Embassy Ecuadorian Embassy

• Ministry of Education, FISE
• 50 Businesses
• Catholic Church

8
Partnering to Expand Our Impact

• In 2002, Amcham joined forces with USAID, the
  Academy for Educational Development and the
  American Nicaraguan Foundation to create an
  integrated program of education reform in 130
  schools
• Project combines private sector support with
  proven educational reform program (Model School
  program) and greater community involvement
• Adds education quality component to school
  sponsorship program and creates unified approach
  supported by government, private sectors, school
  directors and communities

9
WORKSHOP FOR SMALL BUSINESS TRAINING
10
Technology Project

• We initiatied a Technology Project in 30 schools
• We arranged an agreement with BellSouth and
  Telcor to provide free Internet access for two
  years and to donate additional computers.
• AED GDA provided training on the use of the
  Global Learning Portal to help teachers access
  new materials and collaborate with each other

11
Impact of the Partnership

• Better collaboration between the community and
  the private sector at the school level
• Business are more committed to the schools and
  the sponsors support is more sustainable
• Project brought new innovations and better
  materials
• Amcham became more focused on the quality of
  education
• Amcham brought new innovations into the education
  sector such as introducing small business
  projects to support school fundraising

12
What we have accomplished?

• 5 years of schools sponsorship with 77 schools
  with support of more than 1.5 milion
• Corporate sponsors are more empowered to support
  education
• Better school environment
• Better management capacity of the school
  directors
• students have improved in their learning,
  measured in their skills in language 75.3 and
  math. 69.3. This is higher than the national
  average.
• There is less absentism, desertion and repitance
• Better transparency and accountability of
  schools.
• Small business training and activities so schools
  can raise funds,, cyber schools
• school garden program to teach agriculture
• Leveraged other donors (Japón, Bellsouth/Telcor,
  Ecuador, UCA)

13
What have we learned that is relevant to other
countries?

• Businesses are more likely to support education
  if they can see tangible evidence of the impact
  of their donations. (Businesses are unlikely to
  provide funding for budget support).
• Business are more likely to support schools that
  have some connection with their company.
• Having companies participate in a larger program
  gives them greater confidence in knowing how to
  support education and creates peer pressure.
• Integrating private sector support to broader
  education reform efforts creates synergy, leads
  to more effective use of donations and better
  collaboration between government, the private
  sector, school managers and parents.

14
New Challenges for the Private SectorWhat more
can we do?

• Get more involved in providing guidance to the
  Ministry of Education on how to make education
  more relevant to private sector needs (e.g.
  helping set competency standards)
• Introduce programs to give students greater
  exposure to the world of work (e.g. school to
  work programs, mentoring programs, visits to
  employers, etc)
• Continue efforts to get more companies involved,
  particularly with rural schools.

15
Differences of Private sectors participation in
education

• For us, its an investment. For others its a
  job.
• We dont get paid for our involvement. Must of
  the people that make decisions in education, they
  are doing it as a job. For us we are doing it
  because we anticipate that the future requires
  the skills that they are not getting and we need
  to assure that this is not ignored.
• In our partnership with GDA, our time gets
  accounted for and it results in funds, but
  contrary to most of the people in this room, this
  accountability is not going to our own benefit,
  but instead, we give, whatever is recognized to
  the schools. Basically, this salary paid with
  the matching funds is donated to the schools,
• The public policies respond to recommedations of
  international agencies that have failed
  dramatically in making education whatever it
  should be.

16
Lets get serious

• Program funding have meant justification of high
  salaries for a lot of consultants and in the end,
  what finally gets to the shools is a very low
  percentage of whatever was budgeted. This has
  meant a big lie of the resources oriented to
  education. We have not focused on the students
  themselves but we got lost in the planning,
  studies, etc.
• Thats why we decided not to fall into that
  parttern, and from day one we have resisted to do
  more studies. We can cover Nicaragua with the
  sterile studies that have being made to
  diagnose our poverty.
• We decided, that we didnt need papers to tell us
  what we already know that we were behind. We
  were very concious with the human resources that
  we have employed in our companies. The voids are
  so serious that we cannot get the quality we want
  and that limitation had to be taken care in the
  early stages of the education ladder.
• Most of our schools are primary schools, and a
  good percentage are rural schools, where we have
  worst conditions, not only because of the
  historic culture, but because the end
  beneficiaries dont believe in the need of
  education.

17
Where to put your resources

• Most NGOs operate with a of the donations that
  are destined to very wonderful intentions.
• They function as a private business with the
  difference that instead of generating their own
  resources, they receive them from donors. Again,
  how much gets to the end product?
• Our partnership has proven that we use almost
  none of our matching funds for administrative
  expenses. In fact we even co-share the salary of
  the manager of the program with AMCHAM. We
  consider unacceptable to claim expenses out of
  this funds. I can tell you that probably 98 of
  the funds are spent in the projects we have
  considered we want to have in our schools.
• The partnership with AED/GDA has been so crucial
  to us, because they added up the value of
  education knowledge that we lacked, and together,
  we are packaging a product that might prove its
  benefits, we hope, in a very short time.

18
The Private Sector is a potential
One of our concerns is the two year term of the
program. That tells us. ones more, that all this
is viewed without the seriousness of the problem
and the astoning added value of the private
sector Its very easy to talk about Social
Business responsability when sitting accross the
street. Another thing is doing it. Besides our
responsabiity as businesses that generate jobs
and provides goods and services, we are incurring
in a field that prior to this experience, was not
for us. Historically, the private sector has
been assistencialist because some companies
finance projects and give support to different
social projects. Our participation is more
structures, and counts with a diversity of actors
that makes it very unique.