Quality projects with local ownership are the most effective means of pursuing advocacy objectives in China argues Zhao Zhonghua (赵中华) of Save the Children, citing the experience of an education project that, he says, has had demonstrable impact on government policy and practice.

Since the 1990s, more and more domestic and international NGOs, UN bodies and other institutions have been doing “advocacy” in China. Hundreds of organisations are making PowerPoint presentations everywhere. Mountains of publications and video programmes have been produced and distributed to target groups, most of whom are always very busy attending all kinds of meetings and banquets. No one is really sure how many people are reading the publications or watching the video programmes, but two outcomes of this advocacy flood are very obvious and concrete: 1) more and more government officials are becoming power point, publication and video fatigued. 2) the publication and video flood has wasted resources and adds up to environmental pollution. As a government official said to me in Beijing in December, 2005:

“Loads of publications have been disseminated to us. Sometimes I have to ask my secretary to give them to the rubbish collectors. Otherwise my whole office would be full by now. You need to think of something new.”

It is commonly understood in education that you cannot expect people to really understand something through reading or listening. They have to learn from their own experience. They have to work it out by themselves. Chinese government officials and other policy makers are not super geniuses, so we cannot expect them to accurately incorporate new values and successful experiences into policy and practice simply by reading our publications, listening to our presentations or watching a video. Most NGO workers realise this, but many tend to forget it in practice, so apparently successful models and experiences often become distorted when adopted by government.

So, shall we give up advocacy? Of course not, we can do something creative and effective. But we need to come up with something better than just joining the brochure production competition.

Advocacy should be totally integrated into project activities. We need to do just three things: 1) Work with government partners to develop a high quality proposal that reflects our values; 2) Provide technical assistance to partners to conduct tangible, high quality project activities; 3) Ensure the project funds are not misused. That’s all.

Once project activities carried out by partners are proved to be effective and beneficial, the government officials who carry out the project activities will automatically apply the experience into their daily work. They know better than us how to incorporate successful experience into government policy and practice. So the key strategies should be 1) for government partners to themselves carry out project activities 2) for those activities to be of high quality.

Some additional suggestions:

Yunnan Minority Basic Education Project (YMBEP)

All of the points above are illustrated by the education work undertaken in Yunnan by the Yunnan Provincial Education Department and Save the Children. This project was designed to improve the delivery of state education—in terms of both quality and access—for ethnic minority children. Central components included training in learner-centred teaching methods (in ways that integrate with and develop government training capacity), and work to improve school management and relationships with parents and the community. The focus here, however, is not on the substance of the project, but on the nature of the project partnership.

Work with the government partners to develop a high quality proposal which reflects our values.

In 1998, Save the Children was invited by the Yunnan Provincial Education Department (YPED) to work on minority basic education in the province. To develop the project, Save the Children recruited a highly experienced international adviser in October 1998. On her suggestion, a national education project officer conversant with the government education system was recruited in January 1999. They, together with another full-time project officer/interpreter, made up the YMBEP team.

This team worked closely with the YPED and its subordinate education bureaus and spent a year developing a strong and comprehensive project proposal. Local government partners fully participated in every step of the proposal development. By the time the proposal was finalised, YPED had set up a project leading committee; three pilot prefecture education bureaus had set up project liaison offices and three pilot county education bureaus set up project site offices.

Assist government partners to conduct tangible, high quality project activities.

In April 2000, the UK Department for International Development provided GBP 1 million (then, USD 1.49 million) funding for the project over a five year period. In June 2000, the project formally started in one township in each of the three pilot counties.

With strong technical input and financial management support from Save the Children, the government education system implemented the project activities in the three pilot townships. After one and a half years, the county and prefecture education bureau officials were impressed by the success of the activities in the pilot townships, which they themselves had managed and coordinated.

In April 2003, the pilot county education bureaus started to expand the project to other townships. Save the Children’s continuing technical input and budget monitoring ensured the quality of the work during this first round of expansion. Local government partners became more confident after this first expansion.

Project expansion was led by local government partners.

In April 2004, with the coordination of YPED, the three prefecture education bureaus started to expand the project activities from pilot counties to other counties under their administration.

In July 2004, on YPED’s initiave, Save the Children and YPED worked together to develop a three-year funding proposal to the European Union. This aimed to expand the project to more counties in Yunnan. In October 2005, the EU agreed funding of EUR 750,000 (then USD 1.35 million), with Save the Children providing EUR 250,000 co-financing. The project is now expanding to 70 counties in Yunnan over the next three years.

The project’s success has drawn the attention of China’s central Ministry of Education (MoE), mainly through internal interactions within the government education system. The Director General of the Minority Nationalities Education Department of the MoE visited one of the project counties in April 2005. As a result of this visit and the regular reports from his subordinates in Yunnan, he suggested that Save the Children expand the project to other western provinces with large minority populations.

In February 2006, Save the Children and the China National Research Institute of Education Science (a think tank under the MoE) signed to work in partnership to expand the YMBEP (together with Save the Children’s other education project experiences in the Tibet Autonomous Region) to seven provinces. At the same time, it is expected that the MoE’s national policy and practice for minority chidren’s education will be influenced during the expansion process.

Quality and local ownership ensure effective advocacy

Thus, with a very modest, total budget, the project is achieving significant change in the way that minority children are taught in schools across minority areas of Yunnan, in the way that training is delivered to teachers, and in the way that schools relate to communities. What’s more, the schools are delivering better educational results —which has been a major factor in generating government enthusiasm for the project and the desire to extend its reach to other parts of China.

Additional evidence of the project’s impact on policy and practice includes:

A Yunnan Normal University graduate, Zhao Zhonghua (赵中华) worked for eight years as a teacher and later Teaching Director in a school attached to a state owned enterprise in Yunnan. He joined Save the Children in 1999 as an Education Project Officer, and has since served as Acting Deputy Director of Programmes. This month he travels to the UK where he will spend a year studying for an MA in Democracy, Politics and Governance at the Royal Holloway College, University of London, with a Chevening Scholarship awarded by the UK government.

A 2001 China Development Brief article, Bringing quality down to the basics [1] describes Save the Children’s education work in Tibet at that time, including many of the teaching methodology approaches adopted in the Yunnan Minorities Basic Education Project.