Sustainability

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Deborah Lubbe on November 19, 2011 at 7:39am

We are confident that we will have the financial support to continue this project in the next few years and beyond, but feel it is important to be good stewards of the money and maximize the impact we can have, without losing the quality of the product that we supplied in year one with only 430 girls. 

We are very focused on sustainability and as we expand our mantra is replication with quality - streamlining all the activities that are involved in camp to a simplified place where we can instruct others on how to easily run the program through our Camp-in-a-Box product.  We have begun a partnership model, which involves licensing the "camp-in-a-box" out to organizations that are reaching at risk communities across India and beyond.  This allows us to keep costs lower because we don't need to go into new cities and build up our own extensive staff and spend time and resources on identifying and pitching to schools and community centers.  There's already organizations that are doing this!  But they are always looking for fun, quality products to provide for their students - and with the focus on English along with life skills, the VOICE activity based product is very unique!

Additionally, we charge students fees depending on the income levels, so for some it may be as low as 50 rupees, but others can pay up to 400 rupees.  We allow our licensing partners to collect this and cover a number of camp expenses, while we charge a lower licensing fee per girl to the partner to cover some of our variable expenses.  Using this and keeping an eye to streamlining and efficiency has allowed us to make a financial and operating plan that has our self sustainability steadily increasing each year, while our partners break-even.

Hope this help to answer your question Quinn! Thanks for submitting a great question. 

Permalink Reply by ilanashushansky on November 19, 2011 at 6:57pm

To follow-up on Deb's response: we are growing and expanding with our Camp-in-a-Box model and licensing approach to replicate camps across developing countries without increasing organizational costs or sacrificing sustainability.  We aim to reach girls by partnering with existing organizations who already work with groups of schools or community centers.  VOICE then provides our network of partners with teacher/counselor training, curriculum workbooks, a management tool kit for camp implementation, ongoing  management support, and quality assessment.  Essentially VOICE gives existing local capacity the tools to run impactful VOICE camps and they do they rest.  This will allow VOICE to expand to new markets and reach more girls without significantly increasing our expenses. 

Permalink Reply by kristie hubbard on November 22, 2011 at 12:01pm

Any further information on how you do quality assessment would be helpful.  Do you circle back on a regular basis to those partners that implement Camp-in-a-Box?  if so, how often and how do you conduct your assessments?  also, exactly to what aspect of your agency, would you apply the 5 For Fairness grant?  How do you confirm where the money goes?  if you already have answered these questions, please feel free to say that and i'll look to prior answers.  thanks.

Permalink Reply by ilanashushansky on November 22, 2011 at 5:48pm

This past year we tested all campers and a control coup in their written and oral English abilities on the first day of camp and one week after the completion of camp.  After the completion of camp we also did in person interviews with a random sample of campers, counselors, teachers, and school owners.  We has counselors and teachers fill out camper-tracking forms each week for each camper to track their classroom progress.  Counselors also filled out unit feedback forms on each activity and each unit of the curriculum. Attendance and academic records also began to be tracked for all campers and a control trip for the 2 years leading up and the year after camp. 

For our partners who have developed a due-diligence partner selection tool that we use to evaluate a partners' capacity to successfully implement VOICE camps.  Once selected there is also a VOICE coordinator assigned to each partner to oversee their implementation of our program and provide any support or assistance when needed.  Partners are evaluated by their VOICE coordinator on a bi-yearly basis, and undergo are reevaluated against our selection tool each year in order to continue as a VOICE partner.   

While there are costs of camp implementation which partners cover, there are also significant costs which are subsidized by VOICE.  It is these expenses which will apply the 5forFairness grant towards, which include curriculum development, counselor and teacher training, and printing student and counselor workbooks.  Because these expenses are paid directly by VOICE we have full control over how and where the money is spent.