Inclusive ECCD: - Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and ...

CASE STUDIES
level. These efforts improved program sustainability
by both increasing identification with the
program and increasing the community base of
skills necessary to run the program.
The CBR teams have also had an opportunity
to apply what they have learned about sustainability
at a practical level through the process of
identifying community needs (independent of
those suggested by the CBR Program), designing
projects, and then carrying them out. The projects
which were identified and the ways which
people carried them out were myriad and speak
to the extent to which people were empowered
by this process. They included the formation of
nursery schools for children and their mothers,
the upgrading or construction of health posts, the
improvement of water and sanitation, the formation
of a sewing cooperative to sew mosquito
nets, and many other projects that required CBR
team members to consult and gain the participation
of both fellow villagers and funding agencies
in the region. In several cases, the CBR Program
directly supported this process by helping CBR
teams to locate materials or funding; in the vast
majority of cases, the team members learned how
to seek this funding and support themselves. This
base of human resources involved in the process
of development matured even further as subdistrict
and regional committees formed to carry out
larger projects.
Leadership level
Human resource development at the leadership
level also took place through a Training of
Trainers course developed by the CBR Program
to create a cadre of workers who could introduce
the program to neighboring regions of Guyana
and serve as resource persons within their own region.
This training took the form of a one-week
workshop in Georgetown, Guyana. The workshop
taught the diverse skills necessary to teach
and to continue the education outcomes of the
program, including literacy education, health education,
and of course, disability identification,
awareness, and management. Once they
completed the workshop, these new trainers were
immediately brought into the process of co-organizing
and co-leading workshops in their subdistrict
along with the regional and national
coordinators. This provided trainers with ongoing
‘on-the-job’ training to practice their newlylearned
skills and to develop new ones necessary
to take over coordination of the program.
In summary, the CBR Program has been able to
develop human resources to support both program
and process sustainability. By combining
educational workshops with practical projects it
has helped activists to apply, develop, and gain
confidence in their new skills. A group of resource
people capable of supporting and training
others has been identified, trained, and put into
action. As the CBR program evolved and people
became more and more confident, the program
was able to support participants in developing
and carrying out their own projects. This empowered
people to learn the skills necessary to address
needs actively within their local contexts.
Development of an Appropriate
Infrastructure
The development of a human infrastructure
constituted a critical component of the CBR Program.
In the beginning there was simply a national
director and the village-level CBR teams,
which were composed of a community health
worker, teacher and villager.
Initially village visits were made in collaboration
with the Bahai Community Health Partnership,
which already provided a mobile health
service throughout the region. With the purchase
of a Land Rover, the formation of what essentially
became a mobile resource unit added another element
to the CBR infrastructure by making the
program and its resources far more accessible to
the people.
As the program grew in its scope and participants
gained more and more power to define
their own development agenda, a parallel system
of planning, organization, and administration developed
that focused on initiatives arising from
the grassroots level. This system, which had its
early roots in the village CBR teams, achieved its
fruition in October of 1995, a date which symbolically
marked the simultaneous graduation of
CBR team members from the training program
and the concomitant election of subdistrict and
regional-level CBR committees, each fully functioning
to carry out its own projects independent
of the support of program staff.
In essence, the development of this parallel infrastructure
reflects a critical transfer of responsibility
for the development process in the
Rupununi, from outsiders into the hands of the
community.
This transfer of responsibility is more than
a theoretical structural form; it is a functional reality.
Between October 1995 and March 1996,
for instance, the regional CBR committee oversaw
the construction, staffing, and supplying of a
school in an extremely isolated village that did
not have any way of providing education for its
children. Now, sixty-six children are attending
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