Future-readiness of NGOs in Bangladesh as an education service provider

How ready the NGOs are in Bangladesh as education service providers in the coming years?

In the last 30 years, besides Bangladesh Govt., NGOs like BRAC played a major role in achieving MDG targets in education. One of the key targets was to ensure 100% enrolment in primary schools. We achieved a 98% rate now. While MDG is out of the way and SDG is underway from 2015, the goals shift towards quality of education, future skills and life-long learning.

Future skills like creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking among children in primary level are considered as the most important skills that children need to learn to cope up with the future. A World Bank study revealed that 70% of today's primary level children will end up in a job that doesn't exist now. Bangladesh has about 30 million children reading at the primary level.

In the time of declining foreign donation and grant, how the NGOs are going to change their approach to keep them relevant in the new reality and economic development of Bangladesh? Foreign funding of NGOs through the NGO Affairs Bureau dropped 15 percent year-on-year in fiscal 2015-16. During that period, the NGO Affairs Bureau released $640.55 million in grants, down from $749.86 million a year earlier. (The Daily Star)

I've been a keen observer of this sector for the last 10 years. The first 5 years while working in BRAC and then the next 5 years for running Light of Hope Ltd. - an ecosystem education company to prepare children with necessary future skills like creativity, problem-solving, emotional intelligence and human values.

In the last 5 years for running Light of Hope, I had the opportunity to work and interact with most of the NGOs/INGOs in Bangladesh focusing on children's education. The following section that I wrote is based on numerous interactions and discussions I had with people working at every level - from entry level to the top level management.

While most of the examples given here are related to education and learning of children, but organizations from other sectors can also relate to this writeup.

I've investigated this BIG question in this article and also shared some of my findings after carefully studying a few BIG organizations in the education sector. I've outlined the challenges that NGOs are facing in detail so that professionals will know what to do to overcome these challenges.

Challenge at Hand for NGOs

1. Declining fund
2. Out of date approach and service in education
3. Dependence of the Head office for any local policy change
4. Lack of human resource
5. Inability to develop any sustainable solution

So, let's explore these challenges a bit further. I've been working in the development sector for 10+ years now. When I joined BRAC back in 2009, it was a different time. I've seen the peak and death of certain sectors like WASH and Disaster Management. Education was a declining sector from 2010 and in 2019 it is even worse. I left BRAC in 2015 to start my own education startup Light of Hope Ltd. because I saw an amazing opportunity in the education sector that big NGOs didn't see. But first, let's briefly elaborate on the challenges that NGOs are facing today.

Fund Crisis

BRAC Education Program used to run 40,000 schools at one point in Bangladesh. Due to fund crisis that number shrinks to a few thousand. All major INGOs are facing serious fund crisis in their education programs. Due to recent Rohingya crisis, there is a huge injection of fund coming; but that's not for mainstream education in Bangladesh. And it's going to get worse unless NGOs change their approach. Their inability to diversify the revenue source and create sustainable solutions in education are the main reasons for this. Only BRAC is the organization who saw this coming and took some initiatives - although not so successfully.

Foreign funding of NGOs through the NGO Affairs Bureau dropped 15 percent year-on-year in fiscal 2015-16. During that period, the NGO Affairs Bureau released $640.55 million in grants, down from $749.86 million a year earlier.

Donors have been giving money in the education sector for the last 40 years, they've got other priority zones now - like Africa - the next continent of growth.

While organizations working in Rohingya refugee crisis, got a sudden flow of fund for education projects, donation for the education programs in Bangladesh is declining.

Out of date approach and program design

BRAC initiated single classroom model for drop out children back in the 1980s. This non-formal education model was so successful that almost every organization working in education tried that model. Now after almost 40 years, we are still trying out that model with some changes here and there.

Technology, people's ability and willingness to pay and the need for future skills changed so drastically in Bangladesh. But most of the NGOs are still trying to sell 'poverty' and 'literacy-numeracy improvement' to the donors. Even the rickshaw puller in Dhaka or domestic workers are more interested and can afford to give their children to a school that charges 500 tk per month. The number of Kindergarten schools is going to cross the number of Govt. Primary Schools in the next few years in Bangladesh to meet this demand.

Introduction of skills like creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving in the primary level curriculum is already being approved. We can hope in the new Government Curriculum in Year 2022, these skills will be there. Parents are realizing the value and importance of these skills. We know this because we ran a survey among parents who have children between 4-10 years, and 60% of the parents in Dhaka said that they value 'Creativity' more than 'Academic Result' to ensure a bright future to their children.

When the entire education system is going through a revolution with the new reality of '4th Industrial Revolution', most of the NGOs in Bangladesh are still talking about just 'literacy, numeracy, sanitation' for school programs.

Dependence of Head Office for Policy Change

Even if the local offices of the INGOs and donors like Save the Children, Plan International, Sesame Workshop, UNICEF etc. were aware of the change that's happening in the education sector including declining fund, they can't do anything because of their dependence on the main office or Regional office for any policy change.

Everyone is talking about Social Enterprises and Public-private partnerships to provide social services in a more efficient and effective way. But when we work or try to work with various NGOs or INGOs we found so many policy barriers that don't allow NGOs to work with for-profit entities like Light of Hope.

There are work or project where can't even apply only because we are a for-profit social enterprise. Even if we get the work, we are taxed 20-25% that takes out a significant amount of money from the implementation activity.

Organizations like Room to Read Bangladesh or Sesame Workshop Bangladesh can't sell their storybooks despite producing the best storybooks. I once asked Save the Children to give me all the storybooks that they developed so far since they don't produce copies anymore. The project had ended. So I wanted to print them and distribute them in the school libraries that work with. They couldn't do that, because their policy doesn't allow that. They spent millions of dollars to develop those storybooks using hundreds of consultants. And they are OK with the fact that those hundreds of books will never see the light again.

There are tons of examples like this where millions of dollars of worth contents, research and knowledge are just sitting idle inside the hard disks. And when that hard disk is gone, the million-dollar worth of work will just simply vanish. This thought drives me crazy.

Lack of Human Resource

21-st century education needs people from all walks of life - educators, engineers, designers, developers, IT experts, curriculum experts and large-scale program managers working together to design and implement innovative tech-focused education projects that help children to prepare for future.

How many organizations in Bangladesh and around the world can claim that their education team consists of all these people working together to solve one of the biggest challenges of our generation?

Our previous generation has done their part. People in their late 50s and 60s working in various education programs in different INGOs and NGOs need a new crop of talents to take it forward. And organizations are struggling to find those talents. In some cases, these senior staffs are the bottlenecks for progress in different organizations.

The proper transition from previous leadership to new leadership will play a key role in defining the relevance of the NGOs in the education sector. And most of the organizations are struggling in this regard.

Inability to develop any sustainable solution

Apart from the policy problem, lack of human resource, declining fund - the biggest threat for NGOs is their inability to develop any sustainable solution in the education sector for the last 30-40 years. Only BRAC has been trying for some years to change their free-school model into a paid or subsidized model. We are not living in the 80s when a majority of the parents in Bangladesh didn't have the ability to spend any money on their children's education. With increasing GDP per capita, parents are asking for better service and willing to pay for that service. Even in rural areas, the rise of Kindergarten schools is astonishing.

Even in 2019, the definition of sustainability of NGOs is to handover the project activity to the Government at the end of the project duration. It's quite naive and wishful thinking from the NGOs that Government is going to incorporate all of their projects into mainstream education. And quite frankly, it's unjust towards the Government. This lack of social entrepreneurship spirit and sustainable business model for education projects is going to hurt the NGOs working in education.

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As of now, I'm not quite sure how the NGOs are going to cope up with the change in the education sector and the overall priority change among donors. Maybe some of them will simply jump to the next big issue (just like Rohingya crisis). Some of them will discontinue their education program within the next 5-6 years. So far I know almost none of the NGOs are working deeply on the issue of future skills like creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking and life-long learning for primary level children in Bangladesh.

For the NGOs working in the education sector, it's also an awesome opportunity to restart and rethink the whole sector and the types of services they would like to offer. The INGOs and NGOs are not future-ready in the education sector, but they can be if they can overcome the challenges described above. And if they can, we will see amazing work happening in preparing our children for the future world.

Because preparing 30 million children will take Government, NGOs, companies and startups to work together.

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Update (24 Sep, 2020):

This article deserves an update after COVID-19 crisis. As I predicted 1 year ago, the NGOs working in education are going through a crisis too. Some of the big NGOs like BRAC will cope up with the change. But others, will not. As long as schools are closed, the current and future projects are on hold.

Since it is a global crisis, the donation flow for countries like us will definitely shrink. And the recent report from TBS supports this.

https://tbsnews.net/bangladesh/ngos-crisis-pandemic-shrinks-funds-135976

I am happy to extend my personal and my organization's support to organizations willing to change their education model.