Sec_C_ATTACHMENT_05_-_Links_with_other_programs.pdf

ATTACHMENT 4

Links with Other USG, USAID and Donor Programs

USAID Programs

New program and project activities will build upon past and current USAID/Nicaragua education projects and will link, when possible, to on-going economic growth and democracy and governance projects.

Previous USAID/Nicaragua Basic Education Activities

EXCELENCIA: USAID/Nicaragua’s EXCELENCIA project, which was implemented from November 2005 to April 2010, focused on improving equitable access to quality education and helping the country advance towards the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education for all. To achieve this, USAID piloted and later expanded an educational model based on the modernization of teaching practices that included teacher training to transition from rote memorization to interactive teaching and learning. By the end of the project, enrollment and graduation rates in USG-supported schools had increased by 10%.

Relevant experiences developed through Excelencia that will be considered in the development of the new program include: the development of educational materials for teachers and students, using student assessments to monitor progress, providing support for intercultural bilingual education, and involving parents in the education of their children.

Early Grade Reading Assessment: In 2008, USAID/Nicaragua worked with the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education (Ministerio de Educacion, or MINED) to develop and pilot a tool called the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) for the Spanish language that was applied in 126 schools to test reading fluency and comprehension. To promote MINED adoption of the tool, policy dialogue events were held with MINED senior staff, the private sector and civil society groups to generate awareness about the importance of early grade reading competences for a child’s successful educational development.

Subsequently, MINED adapted EGRA so it could be used to monitor reading skills through pre-test assessments that are conducted at the beginning and end of the school year – meaning that MINED now has a tool to allow it to regularly monitor reading performance.

The new program will apply the EGRA tool to collect baseline, mid-line and end-line data for program evaluation purposes.

CETT: The Centers for Excellence in Teacher Training (CETT) Project, a Summit of the Americas Initiative, was implemented in five countries in Central America, including Nicaragua, with the goal of addressing high rates of illiteracy and school under-achievement through improved reading instruction in the early grades (1-3). The objective of the program was to better teachers’ skills to improve the quality of reading instruction in grades 1-3 by upgrading the knowledge and pedagogical skills of poorly qualified teachers. In Nicaragua, CETT partnered with a teacher training center to train pre-service and in-service teachers, and to implement a “training of trainers” cascade training approach.

CETT’s experiences in developing methodologies to improve teaching instruction will be studied and lessons concerning which interventions seemed most and least effective in improving teachers’ performance will be taken into account in the new program.

Current USAID/Nicaragua Education and Youth Activities

USAID is addressing both early grade reading and issues related to children and youth-at-risk issues through a number of projects that are currently underway.

Alliances 2: USAID/Nicaragua’s current cooperation in the education sector is focusing on building alliances with the private sector to foster sustainability and leverage funding that will allow USAID’s limited resources to reach more children with activities that will result in improved early grade reading outcomes. Alliances 2 is helping to change the private sector’s traditional ideas about how they can best support the education sector so that they support activities geared to improving the quality of education rather than merely providing donations. The Project is reaching over 82,350 students, including 678 students who participate in after-school programs with access to quality education service; has certified 808 teachers in education quality improvement, gender approaches, and reading and writing in the early grades; is training 137 principals in 300 schools in management, curricula improvement and pedagogic innovation; and has equipped 71 schools with improved technology rooms, laboratories and equipment.

Alliances 2 is scheduled to end in October 2013.

The new program will benefit from Alliances 2 experiences in re-shaping how the private sector approaches corporate social responsibility programs, namely by increasing attention to quality and monitoring and evaluation.

Youth Expanding their Future (YEF): The YEF Project, which will end in 2013, provides quality alternatives to formal elementary and secondary education and helps ARCY in targeted communities of the north central departments of Nicaragua remain in school. YEF supports after-school programs to improve the reading outcomes of students at the primary level. To date, the project has benefited 4,924 primary school students and 610 secondary school students, and has also trained 60 teachers to apply the EGRA tool for reading assessment.

YEF’s methodologies, which are reaping impressive results in terms of improved reading outcomes, will be studied to determine to what extent they should be integrated into new program activities.

Education for Success: The Education for Success Project initiated activities in 2010 and is implemented by FADCANIC. The project was designed to assist ARCY in three municipalities of the RAAS -- Bluefields, Kukra Hill and Pearl Lagoon -- to develop and use the educational and life skills needed for a productive life of work, service, and professional development. This is being accomplished through a combination of activities, including providing scholarships to students who would otherwise not be able to continue their formal or vocational studies, organizing community committees to identify and monitor the scholastic performance of ARCY in the program, providing sports, recreation and life-skills training through after school programs, and identifying private sector partners to provide internships and jobs to participants.

The current Program Description for the ESF project, which will continue under DO2, is described in greater detail in Annex 7.

Other Related Mission Activities

USAID/Nicaragua’s democracy and governance (DG) program supports two on-going activities that complement the new DO2 program.

Democratic Leadership Development Program (DLDP): The DLDP, which runs through 2015, aims to support inclusive and democratic political and electoral processes. The Program brings together respected Nicaraguan and international institutions and experts to support democratic political processes by strengthening democratic leadership of youth, strengthen the capacity of parties to connect with citizens locally, encouraging meaningful political party presence at the national and local levels, and by supporting civil society oversight of the electoral processes. Potentially, project participants from the Caribbean Coast could become involved in DO2 activities as community leaders.

Municipal Governance Program (MGP): The MGP will be implemented in 20 to 30 locations across the country. The overall goal of the program is to strengthen citizen participation and the capacity of civil society organizations to engage and influence key decision makers in order to improve local governance and development. The MGP is divided into two components: Local Governance and Fiscal Transparency. It is expected that the MGP will overlap with DO2 in at least two cities in the RAAS. In those cities, the DO1 (DG) and DO2 programs will coordinate and MGP will include at-risk youth in citizenship trainings so that they are empowered to participate in local level decision-making processes.

(Note: MGP is still defining their area of work).

Other DG activities: Under the CDCS, the new DG program (DO1) will include a number of new projects that will also present opportunities for synergies with DO2, such as the Capacity Building for Civil Society Advocacy (CBCSA) Project, a civil society grants activity, a media support program, as well as an existing youth leadership activity.

The DO2 program will have to ensure coordination with the CBCSA project, as both will build administrative, financial and implementation capacity of local organizations. There is potential for participants in the youth leadership project who live in DO2’s target areas to provide support to community mobilization activities and other local initiatives. And the media support project, which will focus on preserving independent media outlets so that they can better broadcast unbiased information and contribute to the public policy dialogue, could be used as a vehicle through which key messages are disseminated to the target communities.

PrevenSida: The objective of the Office of Health and Education’s PrevenSida project is to increase access to quality HIV services for populations most-at-risk of contracting HIV. However, the project’s main means of reaching these populations is to build the capacity of local NGOs to plan, manage and deliver such services themselves. The project has developed a standardized, cost-effective package of tools that it uses to build administrative, financial and operational capacity of local organizations and then provides subgrants to a sub-set of the beneficiary organizations to directly implement project activities.

The tools and materials developed by PrevenSida for institutional capacity building of local organizations will be tested by the Mission and then adapted for use under the DO2 program with the goal of increasing the capacity of local organizations to manage and implement program activities to enable them to become direct recipients of USAID funds.

Sustainable Conservation and Tourism Project (SCTP): SCTP is focused on improving natural resources management in Bluefields and Pearl Lagoon, which are both target municipalities of the DO2 program.

SCTP provides environmental education, solid waste management/recycling training to provide alternatives to solid waste management, bio-sand water filters to improve access to potable water, hygiene and sanitation; and strengthening municipalities and institutions to develop self-management capacities. The project is ending in September, 2013 and no FY2012 funding will be used for work with municipalities. Given the short time left for the project, the possibility of linking the DO2 program to SCTP in terms of potential opportunities for youth will be studied.

USAID/Washington Programs

USAID’s Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Bureau Office of Regional Sustainable Development (RSD) supports activities related to both reading and ARCY. The A Ganar Project, implemented by Partners of the Americas, is a youth workforce development program that utilizes soccer and other team sports to help youth in Latin America, ages 16-24, find jobs, learn entrepreneurial skills, or re-enter the formal education system. A Ganar is currently working in various South American and Caribbean countries. USAID/Nicaragua has negotiated with LAC to secure technical assistance from A Ganar to work with USAID’s implementers to determine if the project’s strategy of imparting workforce and life skills through sports can be adapted and adopted for USAID activities in the RAAS.

LAC Bureau also has a new regional project called LAC READS that will support USAID LAC Missions’ and host country efforts to improve reading outcomes in the early primary grades and more broadly.

LAC READS has three components: (1) models and interventions, (2) evaluation for evidence, and (3) dissemination and scale up. A number of implementing mechanisms are being put in place to facilitate achievement of the program objectives, including a bilingual education activity and evaluation activity, and it is anticipated that both evaluation and technical assistance services will be utilized in support of the mission education activities in the RAAN and/or RAAS.

In addition, USAID/Washington’s Economic Growth, Education and Environment (E3) Bureau is in the process of finalizing activities for the second round of the All Children Reading Grand Challenge, which will support a variety of reading interventions, some of which could potentially be implemented in Nicaragua.

Other USG Agency Programs

There are currently four other USG agencies also supporting CARSI or education objectives in Nicaragua: the Department of State (DOS), Peace Corps, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The DOS’ Office of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) is currently supporting a CARSI activity called Organization for Safe and Healthy Communities that is implemented by FADCANIC in the RAAN. Phase one of the Safe and Healthy Communities project was implemented from November 1, 2010 thru May 31st, 2012 in the RAAS and shared the same goal of strengthening linkages between police and the neighborhoods they serve in order to foster safer communities. The new DO2 program will build on the lessons learned from phase one of the Safe and Healthy Communities project and will integrate aspects of that project into new program activities in the RAAS, while INL implements phase two of its program in the RAAN. INL also has carry-over funding for new CARSI activities that have yet to be defined; possible concepts for new projects will be reviewed by INL with input from USAID and other agencies at post. The two agencies will endeavor to share strategies, tools and materials to promote a cohesive approach to citizen security in the RAAN (INL) and the RAAS (USAID).

In the past, INL also supported the Drug Abuse Reinforcement Education (DARE) project, an international school-based education program that sought to prevent use of controlled drugs, membership in gangs, and violent behavior. INL also provided support in the form of equipment and supplies to Nicaragua’s National Police Force to improve its capacity to address narco-trafficking along the Caribbean Coast. Both of these activities have been discontinued, but UNICEF is interested in potentially supporting DARE on the Caribbean Coast. If this is funded, USAID will attempt to convince UNICEF to implement activities in USAID-supported schools.

In addition to INL, the DOS’ Public Affairs Office (PAS) has a small budget to support CARSI objectives by funding a series of workshops related to crime prevention in the RAAS and sports diplomacy activities on the Caribbean Coast. FADCANIC is PAS’s main partner and is therefore well-positioned to ensure complementarity between on-going USAID-funded activities and the PAS-funded workshops.

Prior to FY2012, DOD complemented INL’s activities by supporting improved infrastructure for law enforcement agencies and the military to help the Government of Nicaragua achieve its anti-narco-trafficking goals. Despite the fact that activities with law enforcement and the military have ended, DOD can still potentially support the USG’s CARSI objectives by working with USAID to identify infrastructure needs related to this new DO.

Peace Corps currently has twelve volunteers on the Caribbean Coast, of which five or six are working on health, small business, and teaching English in municipalities that will be targeted through DO2.

Opportunities to collaborate with the volunteers on activities including early grade reading and youth entrepreneurship are being explored. E3 has a formal Memorandum of Understanding with the Peace Corps and is paying the salary of a reading specialist; USAID/Nicaragua will investigate whether or not this could be an option for the Peace Corps Nicaragua program also.

And finally, the USDA is reviewing proposals that would be funded under a new Food for Education (FFE) program in Nicaragua that would potentially provide food and technical assistance to schools on the Caribbean Coast in order to increase access to education and improve reading outcomes. As of yet, no projects have been approved, but USAID and USDA will coordinate to identify where each agency’s activities will be implemented and will share strategies, tools and materials in order to reduce redundancies and costs if FFE activities are initiated in the RAAN and/or RAAS.

Opportunities for cross-Agency collaboration have emerged from the CARSI working group at post.

Member agencies originally included USAID, DOS and DOD, but recently USDA and Peace Corps were also incorporated into the group. USAID currently leads the working group and will continue to promote quarterly meetings across agencies to promote increased coordination.

Other Donors

In terms of non-USG stakeholders, the Department of State encourages Missions to promote donor harmonization and collaboration efforts to increase the scope, reach and impact of security and crime reduction programs through a donor coordination mechanism called “Mini-Dublin” groups. A Mini- Dublin meeting held in Nicaragua in September 2011 revealed that – at the time -- a number of donors, including Italy, Germany and Canada had regional (rather than bilateral) security-related programs, and that Italy, Colombia, the European Union (EU) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) supported bilateral programs related to education, youth, and/or workforce development, but not on the Caribbean Coast, specifically. INL has attempted to systematically collect information from donors on their security-related activities, but it proved very difficult. Another Mini-Dublin meeting will be organized in the upcoming months.

Other than the Mini-Dublin, the only donor coordination mechanism that currently exists on security-related issues is the Espacio de Dialogo with the National Police, and INL represents the USG at those meetings.

In terms of education sector coordination, USAID participates regularly in the Education Donor Group, which seeks to coordinate programmatic and geographic activities among a wide variety of donors. A map of donors’ education sector activities was developed in October 2012. (See Annex 9)

In addition to the information reflected in the mapping document, as of early 2013, a number of new donor cooperation programs are being put in place to support activities nationwide and/or on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua related to both education and security.

The European Union (EU) is conducting an assessment of its past cooperation in justice sector reform and security activities to inform its next six year (2014-2020) strategy at the bilateral, regional and sub-regional levels. In the meantime, the EU will invest €10 million to support citizen security activities in collaboration with the National Police. USAID is engaging in direct dialogue with the EU to identify opportunities for ensuring complementarity in our activities on the ground.

For the past three years, the Austrian Cooperation has supported the Secundaria Acelerada at URACCAN whereby poor, promising youth ages 16-18 from rural areas of RAAN live on URACCAN campus in Bilwi to study for three years for their high school diplomas. The Austrians also support URACCAN and, to a lesser degree, BICU, to train teachers selected from and who return to work in their local communities. It also collaborates with FADCANIC to implement a semi-private inter-cultural bi-lingual education program in Pearl Lagoon.

The Government of Finland is considering providing support on security issues in the Caribbean Coast regions and Japan has funding to build school infrastructure in the RAAN and the RAAS, working through MINED. The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo or AECID) supports the training of instructors at the GON’s National Technological Institute (Instituto Nacional Tecnologico or INATEC), which has also received support for refurbishment and equipment from South Korea. Luxembourg has also been involved in providing resources for the construction of infrastructure for teacher training in the RAAN and RAAS, as well as for scholarships to rural students to attend INATEC, though these efforts have been of very limited scope and scale.

The United Nations (UN) agencies and multilateral banks are also developing or initiating new programs that present opportunities for collaboration. For example, the World Bank recently signed the Second Educational Support Sector Project (Proyecto de Apoyo al Sector Educación II or PASEN II) – a $25 million loan that will be executed by MINED from 2012-2016. The project seeks to improve access to preschool and secondary basic education (grades 7-9) in 40 municipalities, focusing on infrastructure, teacher training, materials distribution and curricula development. The Caribbean Coast has been identified as one of their target geographic regions.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) recently announced a new project titled “Sustainable System for the Training and Placement of Youth” with $810,000 from IDB’s Small Enterprise Development Facility, complemented by $341,800 in Nicaraguan counterpart financing. The overall objective is to improve Nicaragua’s competitiveness in the “Business Process Outsourcing” industry to assist vulnerable Nicaraguan young people, mainly on the Caribbean coast, to prepare for and retain well-paying jobs in this field. The specific objective is to design and implement a model of continuous training and qualification of labor supply for the sustained growth of this industry in Nicaragua. The IDB is also planning to conduct an assessment in 2013 on youth and gender-based violence issues in the Caribbean Coast to inform its future bilateral program.

UNFPA focuses its efforts on adolescents ages 10-14 both in-school and out of school across the country, including in the RAAN and the RAAS. Its main strategy consists of working through “Municipal Houses of Adolescents and Youth” to support sports and cultural activities, radio and video production, as well as written communication. UNFPA also has an array of games and publications for youth at-risk that could be applied in this program.

UNICEF is also in the process of finalizing a new five-year strategy that will include activities in the RAAS and RAAN related to (1) early infancy and childhood; (2) quality and inclusive education, from pre-school to 9th grade, including technical education; and (3) protective methods and measures for at-risk youth and adolescents, including shared responsibility on the part of the youth for their own development and behavior. Citizen security, treatment, recognition and reaction(s) to risk and gender are among the topics to be covered. UNICEF’s estimates that its new program on the Caribbean Coast will cost $5 million yearly, but funding has yet to be secured. Presently, UNICEF is providing funding to eight Caribbean coast municipalities, in addition to seven central Nicaraguan towns.

While there are currently no specific donor coordination mechanisms related to youth programs or activities on the Caribbean Coast, USAID is committed to promoting joint work planning and activity monitoring with other donors working in the RAAS.