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

CASE STUDIES
school for the first time in their lives. The most
important aspect of this achievement lay in the
fact that the CBR Regional Committee was able
to do this completely on its own. Community
members know how to identify a need, make
plans to meet the need, and carry out the plans in
an effective way.
The program staff works in partnership with
the resource people trained through the Training
of Trainers model to continue holding workshops
in literacy, early stimulation, etc. It is expected
that these resource people will eventually be able
to sustain the specific program within the region
with their skills and experience in organizing and
leading subdistrict and regional workshops. They
will be assisted in this process by the CBR teams,
who have also been gaining both the specific
knowledge relevant to the various program initiatives
and the practical knowledge necessary to
transfer what they know to their people through
the carrying out of village workshops.
Several aspects of the CBR Program infrastructure
deserve special mention. First, this infrastructure
does not duplicate existing governmental or
non-governmental agencies. Second, it uses and
brings into partnership existing elements of the
government infrastructure which would be interested
in a project such as the CBR Program—
namely, the education and health sectors. Third,
this infrastructure exists in close partnership with
both governmental and non-governmental infrastructures.
All CBR workshops in the Rupununi
are carried out in partnership with the Ministries
of Health and Education. These agencies periodically
review the program’s plans, excuse teachers
and health workers from their posts to participate
in workshops, and sometimes co-sponsor workshops
with the two programs. Other NGOs also
collaborate with the program for transportation,
planning, and implementation of programs.
Because CBR participants are drawn from the
existing health and education infrastructure and
because regional and national authorities were
consulted during the planning process, CBR has
become integrated into existing village, regional,
and national systems of organization. The CBR
team in each village is part of the village system
of committees. At monthly meetings of head
teachers throughout the region, CBR work is discussed
as a standard part of the agenda. Reports
of ongoing CBR work are included in subdistrict
and regional reports in health and education. It is
even included in the national plans of the health
and education sectors. The new health plan for
Guyana names CBR as the centerpiece of rehabilitation
care in Guyana:
A program objective will be to increase access to rehabilitative
care by introducing Community Based
Rehabilitation as the main strategy for delivering rehabilitative
services at the primary care level (Ministry of
Health 1994,120).
This inclusion of CBR in the health and education
systems adds greatly to the acceptance and
sustainability of the CBR Program at the political
level.
Keys to Success
The following points have been identified as the
foundation of the project.
The Importance of a Profound Faith in
and Respect for the People of the Region
A significant element of the Rupununi programme
has been on developing human resources
from within the region. A major goal of the project
was to help the indigenous people of the
Rupununi to bring about change in their own
condition and, in the process to take more responsibility
for their own affairs. The goal has
been to reinforce and nurture, rather than supplant,
the authority of the teachers, health workers,
and community leaders of the region.
Education and training are at the core of the project
rather than the provision of services by some
external agent from the coast. This focus has
been reflected in the relative amounts of time invested
by the resource persons in training on
their visits to the region. As a result, the CBR
workers feel a sense of satisfaction in the knowledge
that they are integral in introducing an extensive
health and education program to their
own people.
The Promotion of Sustainability through
the Avoidance of Dependency
In each village a Local Health Board (LHB) has
now been elected and thereby provides a means
through which to involve the community in all
phases of the project. The goal of sustainability is
the touchstone of all development interventions.
Only time will tell whether indeed this project
can be sustained beyond the inputs of external interventions.
However the emergence of the CBR
teams and the LHBs, and the high emphasis given
to the training of these groups in the skills of consultation,
leadership, problem solving and decision
making has established a promising base for
long-term development.
Some features of the project which have promoted
sustainability include:
■ the clear match between regional needs and
programme objectives;
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