Regional Initiatives

The Education Support Program has been developing strategies to further equity in education with a range of partners in Central Asia, Pakistan, South Eastern Europe, Southern & West Africa, Caucasus, and other regions.

Central Asia

Access to quality education for children with special education needs is a severely neglected issue in Central Asia and is in need of urgent attention. ESP, in partnership with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has undertaken a review of education policies for children at risk and those with disabilities. These include children with physical disability, learning difficulty, and social disadvantage.

This initiative was implemented in cooperation with Soros foundations, Ministries of Education, spin-off NGOs, and other local partners from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan. A full report is expected to be ready for release in autumn, 2009; however, preliminary findings support the need for modernizing assessment criteria for children with special education needs to match current WHO norms to support a transition to inclusive education.

For more information, please contact Valentin Deichman at valya@soros.kg.

Caucasus

Events since 1991 have led to social dislocation with decidedly negative consequences for the region’s children in social, economic and educational terms. As a result of instability across the region, children often have serious gaps in their learning and skills that follow them into adulthood. Such children often have difficulty integrating, leading to further exclusion both in the classroom and in wider society.

Civil society organizations in the region warn that the growing numbers of under- or uneducated and vulnerable children contributes in turn to increasing levels of poverty, decreasing social cohesion and further declines in socio-economic development. Such a situation clearly poses a threat to the immediate and long-term prospects of building free, open societies in the region.

The Open Society Institute's Education Support Program and the Interkulturelles Zentrum Austria, in partnership with the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Culture and the Arts, and Soros foundations in the South Caucasus, are jointly carrying out the Education Cooperation across the Caucasus initiative, which will fund local and cross-regional projects in the North and South Caucasus.

The purpose of the initiative is twofold: to promote identified national priorities for education change, and to explore the potential for cooperation and mutual learning between countries and communities in the Caucasus. In line with ESP mission, the initiative aims to serve education justice, which places priority on access to quality education for excluded and vulnerable children, making this the key indicator for effectiveness and success within the education system. Education Cooperation across the Caucasus will accomplish these goals by creating opportunities for education professionals to better address their common challenges. In 2008-09 ESP has funded 12 projects that focus on the specific priorities identified by governments in each country and which, with support from the international community, could be replicated or scaled up by local and national governments.

More detailed information, including a list of funded grants is available below.

For more information, please contact Olena Sydorenko at sydorenko@osi.hu or the following foundation representatives responsible for the Caucasus Education Initiative:

Azerbaijan: Natella Mammadova - nmammadova@osi-az.org
Georgia: Vakhtang Kobaladze - vakhtang@osgf.ge
Armenia: Evelina Vardanyan - evelina@osi.am
Russia: Irina Molodikova - molodiko@ceu.hu

Pakistan

ESP has worked with a coalition of NGO partners in Pakistan to establish a Campaign for Quality Education. The goal is to build a sustainable campaign over the long term that furthers education values and goals in line with mission of OSI and ESP. These include creative and critical thinking, tolerance and anti-dogma, and social and civic responsibility. The Campaign for Quality Education has attracted partners in Pakistan, through which programs for quality education can be demonstrated and disseminated. The campaign draws direction from the findings of the recently completed What Works and Why in Education in Pakistan study. A coalition of education reform groups published the What Works and Why study of Pakistan schools, which laid the groundwork for public debate on education reform.

For more information, please contact abbasrh@gmail.com.

South Eastern Europe

In South Eastern Europe, ESP is working with regional partners to develop a region-wide advocacy initiative on equity issues in education. These include Soros foundations still active in education (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia), Soros foundations in Bulgaria and Albania, and OSI education spin-offs in the region, including members of the Network of Education Policy Centers.

An initial collaborative study targeting school pupils across 10 South Eastern European countries will identify advocacy priorities. A follow-on advocacy strategy will target teachers' unions, parents' and students' associations, and civil society organizations to enlist support against inequity in education and to enable more effective dissemination of good practice and policy.

For more information, please contact ceps.ljubljana@uni-lj.si.

Southern Africa

In Southern Africa, ESP is working closely with the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) to develop a pilot program in the Lubombo region of Swaziland, using schools to mitigate the effects of HIV/AIDS. The strategy utilizes social mobilization around HIV/AIDS to promote inclusion of orphans and vulnerable children in local schools through extending counselling and care networks. These efforts will combine with local experience in school improvement. The project aims to harness best practice in both sectors to effect greater synergy and coordination at local levels. OSISA will extend the initiative to its 10 country partners in Southern Africa.

ESP and OSISA plan to strengthen education initiatives in Angola through the Angola Opportunity Fund. The Education Watch Project will monitor the allocation and management of finances and other inputs in the education sector; develop models for promoting “critical thinking” among teachers, and strive to demonstrate effective provision of quality education in impoverished areas through scholarships for vulnerable children and school feeding schemes. These activities will provide a support platform for an advocacy campaign that will engage and pressure the government to provide education opportunities for all citizens as a right, possibly through a constitutional amendment, which is contemplated in the international norms and standards on human rights to which Angola is a signatory.

West Africa

In West Africa, ESP is working closely with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, the World Bank, and UNICEF to contribute to the renewal of the education system in Liberia. ESP has helped complete the recent Education for All, Fast Track Initiative proposal. ESP has begun preparations to embed the Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking program within the teacher-training system.

Europe

In June 2009 ESP launched an initiative to highlight and promote Integration and Diversity in Education in Europe (IDEE). Through IDEE, ESP aims to influence national and EU policies to address the inequality and exclusion that migrant and other marginalized children face in education. Three main lines of action under this initiative will focus on involving affected communities:

Collaborative projects and public awareness campaigns in selected communities: connecting initiatives to share successful strategies and amplify their calls for action;
Building towards national campaigns for equal and integrated education: seeking the common ground and collaborative approaches between migrant communities and marginalized sections of majority communities;
Advocacy action at the European Union level to refresh the debates on integration and inclusion in education in Europe and to influence European Union funding and policy to support collaborative civil society initiatives.

IDEE deploys a partnership modality and has already established working relationships with researchers, think tanks and civil society organisations in the UK, Germany, France, Austria and the Netherlands.

For more information, please contact Benjamin.bach@osf-eu.org.