Term “Community Participation”

The term “Community Participation” (CP) may have different meaning especially when it is applied in the field of education when the implementing partner has to apply all its resources according to the concept developed by the donor. It is also some times difficult to expect optimum results in areas where the target group is not only un-aware of the development concept or the results of the achievements are beyond the expected capacities of the community.

Community participation is a social and behavioral change under normal situations however it becomes more arduous in refugees camps with discernible “Dependency Syndrome” and where education is the least priority of the target population. Therefore, it is only possible through professional approaches, techniques and most importantly with continuous and close contact of the organization, which is active and being accepted by the community.

The success of community participation is gauged if and when it heals through participatory development process. Participatory development processes are predicated on the assumptions that when communities, as the primary stakeholders, have influence on and an active role in development initiatives, the resultant qualitative impact of services improve dramatically, and sustainability is enhanced. Social development objectives and outputs can neither be pursued nor ensured either by the government, organizations or the society alone, or the exclusion of each other. Social service delivery, particularly those related to education and learning thus needs to be framed on sound, functional and effective partnership between the governments, organizations and the civil society. This can be achieved through active involvement of community in managing education, social development affairs and through monitoring of outcomes on a sustained manner.

In the Afghan refugees context community mobilization and involvement in education sector is pursued as a core strategy to improve delivery of services in the education sector and for empowering the communities. Establishment of School Management Committees (SMCs) in refugee camp schools is aimed to provide parents and communities with real voice and choice in the management of their children's schools. It aims not only to improve the teaching learning process but also to bring social behavioral change in the community by ensuring the acceptability, sense of responsibility and self sustainability through active involvement of the community's representative.

Goal

• To improve and contribute towards better living standards of the identified displaced and underprivileged communities with special reference to access, equity, quality and sustainability at school level

Objectives of the community participation

• To enable the community to gradually take over their share of responsibility of their children's education through self help participation
• Bringing social behavioral change at the community level
• Building capacity of the community, particularly of the SMCs
• Developing sense of community ownership and belonging
• Encourage sense of self-reliance and its sustainability among the refugees community

Planning and implementation strategies

• Create educational awareness among the community
• Organize and mobilize the community resources for community development
• Capacity building of the SMCs / community through various patterns of Community Participation
• Enhance the over all community participation concept through active SMC structure
• Encourage, motivate and organize the community for their active participation in education affairs including their involvement in quality of education

Overall social development impact on target group

 Hence, as an outcome of implemented strategies and active involvement of the community reflected in the shape of enhanced social behavioral change at the community level. Though it is always difficult to measure the social behavioral change in the community; however the below mentioned social impact indicators reflect the overall success of the community participation & development as implemented by BEFARe:-

• Social, educational, conceptual knowledge, skills, awareness and sense of participation is increased
• Community is relying more on self sustainability than dependency on external support
• Interest of community in developmental affairs
• Confidence built up in decision making
• A unified community participation approach is accepted and adopted by the community at school level
• Providing all possible support to meet the shortfall due to budgetary cuts from the donor agency
• Engaged reasonable number of additional teaching staff through their financial support to maintain teacher students ratio in the class rooms
• Maintained all operational school buildings
• Co-education system (35 schools) have been introduced and accepted by the community
• Re-opening of 11 closed schools on community self help (these have now been merged with normal BEFARe schools)
• Over all enrollment increased especially girls enrollment from 6,000 to over 32,000 from 1996 to 2006)
• Absenteeism's and drop out is reduced as compared to early implementation stages of the program
• Parents show their concerns related to their children's education by visiting the schools more regularly and interacting with the teaching staff
• Increase in demand for the opening of more schools especially for girls
• Increase in sense of responsibility and ownership among the community
• Improvement in discipline and unity among the students
• Reducing environmental pollution through tree plantation and its protection
• Increase educational awareness though different CP approaches
• Liaison between community and sub-project is much more improved
• Students uniform has been improved to about 90% percent from 0% in 1996 in all schools
• Mobilization of different resources of the community
• Well developed systems in place leading to substantial financial contributions of the communities for the promotion of basic education
• Physical and learning environment promoted through community support and; more importantly, the communities are involved physically and financially in community development programs.

Major Achievement from 1996-2006

• Established and training of 320 School Management Committees (including 75 female committees) in six different Sub-Offices of BEFARe
• Community engaged 244 teachers and provided monthly incentives from the community raised funds in schools
• Community engaged 208 watchmen for schools security and provided monthly incentives from the community raised funds in schools
• SMCs taking care of the over all repair & maintenance of all school buildings and infrastructure since 1999
• Community through SMCs providing additional facilities e.g. utility payments, rent / lease payments, electricity, fans, and security etc.
• SMCs/ community took the additional construction responsibility in schools (more than 459 rooms,102 verandas, 205 toilets, 267 shallow wells 156 boundary walls since 1996) etc. through their physical and financial support
• Generated over (Rs. 25 million) funds through the SMCs / community for schools development since 1996-2006. (The collected school funds were utilized on different welfare activities of the schools by / through SMCs
• Community providing free of cost facilities for non-formal education activities
• Over all 55 new schools (boys+ girls) established on demand of the community since 1996
• 35 co-education schools were opened/ introduced and accepted by the community
• Over all enrollment increased from 56,000 to more than 118,000 since 1996-2006 (girls enrollment increased from 6,000 to over 32,000)
• Students uniform; over all improved to 90%from 0% in all schools (by motivating the parents through different campaigns
• Schools physical and learning environment improved (around 38,000 different trees and seasonal flowers were planted in all schools of BEFARe during 1999-2006
• SMCs and parents are actively participating in extra curricular activities e.g. annual days, parents' days, debate, sports competitions
• Absenteeism /drop out is reduced as compared to 1996
• Community and project contacts have improve, parents are now frequently visiting the schools and showing interest in education

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