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Leadership Model PLUS enhanced community engagement and project direction.

• GATHER & IDENTIFY: CDE facilitators bring members of the community together to discuss their current situation, illustrate problems related to education, identify solutions, and elect local leadership to carry them out 
• CONNECT: These meetings provide a forum for community and school staff to engage with each other 
  • Teachers are almost always placed in communities where they have never lived before, so parents and teachers may not always understand each other’s goals
  • When parents and teachers open lines of communication, parents may be more likely to place more importance on their children’s education 
• IMPLEMENT: The local leadership team and GPFD staff implement the project(s) that the community members identify. The project can cost up to $20,000 USD with a community contribution of 20% (each project costs GPFD up to $16,000).
• NETWORK: CDE then supports schools into the future by connecting them to other schools and organizations that focus their efforts on improving teaching quality

• CDE solves the following problems that plague other development processes
  • Lack of community control over projects led by international organizations, even those under GPFD’s Leadership Model
  • Lack of community understanding of and commitment to local education institutions, which are often not meeting community needs
• GPFD should focus its core work on education
  • GPFD can continue to develop expertise in a specific sector of development while not limiting project possibilities 
  • GPFD can ultimately address many aspects of poverty over time as more children are educated 
  • Schools have been excellent project partners historically
• GPFD should invest in a streamlined process for community identification and maintenance of projects 
  • Community-driven projects address needs that cannot be effectively identified by outsiders
  • Community-driven projects are more likely to be sustained effectively into the future
• Communities are likely to identify projects that they can see and touch. While communities are not limited to infrastructure projects only, it is most likely that projects will be infrastructure-based, and this is the type of project that GPFD does best

• High absenteeism in East African schools. School enrollment rates at public primary schools are often double average attendance rates, meaning that students who should be in school are staying home for a range of reasons in varying contexts. Every CDE project should address this primary indicator of success
• Many education, health, and other problems such as inadequate test scores, high levels of water-borne disease, classroom overcrowding, etc. may be addressed, though the existence of these outcomes is dependent on the specific project chosen

• During the CDE pilot, communities were given the goal of “improving education”, but this goal was too broad, caused confusion, and did not inspire creative, context-specific thinking. A more precise goal that can still result in infinite types of projects will help communities engage in a meaningful way
• Attendance is an indicator of community confidence and interest in their local education institution. Therefore, both of GPFD’s inputs (improved infrastructure and community/school engagement) directly impact the goal of reducing absenteeism
• Examples of projects that directly affect absenteeism can still be anything they could have been under the Leadership Model. Examples include:
  • Classrooms to address overcrowding and poor learning conditions
  • Sanitation blocks, especially to support girls who may miss school during menstruation
  • Water systems because children are spending time getting water instead of going to school
  • Roads because children may not be able to get to school in the rainy season
  • Etc. etc. etc.
• Global Partners’ school infrastructure work may not quickly and directly impact other learning outcomes, so we should focus on an achievable goal while still assessing projects for other outcomes as well 
• A specific indicator makes it easier to identify sites at which to do our work (those with the highest ratio of enrolled to attending students). It also makes it possible to set a clear geographic goal (i.e. improving attendance rates by X% throughout the Singida Rural District by X date). This will make us more likely to achieve funding from foundations and other development actors.

• CDE should take approximately the same amount of time as Leadership Model 
• First, facilitators meet with government and school officials
• Second, they hold one month of weekly community meetings in which they guide community members through the following:
  • Introduction to GPFD, the CDE process, and the funding level available
  • Mapping of its existing resources (both at the school and in the community in general)
  • Identification of the main reason(s) why primary school students in the community do not attend school
  • Identification of the main solution(s) to these problems
  • Election of a Community Project Leadership Team (CPLT) to continue the process through budgeting, implementation, sustainability planning, etc. and reporting back to the community
• Third, facilitators and the local leadership team will implement the project and follow up over time

• Most communities will likely identify projects related to the school, but
• Projects can be located anywhere in the community that members identify

• Director of Programs & Evaluation

• CDE Manager

• Facilitators – 1 male and 1 female in each community

• Technical consultants and contractors

• Continued evaluation of the programs outcomes in every school
• Evaluation of the CDE model versus the leadership model by itself in schools in Kenya
• We will measure changes in absenteeism as our primary indicator of success, but we will always capture changes in other education and health outcomes as well