Advocate Summary

Issue:  Basic Education
Advocate:  Save the Children – Rebecca R. Cusic
Date of Interview: 7/31/02

[The tape recorder destroyed this tape, therefore this is paraphrased]

Basic Background
Well just in the way of background, Save the Children is an alliance of 30 Save the Childrens all around the world. The “rights of the child” is the basis of all of our work along with the founding principles which are, empowerment, gender equity – that girls are included, child centered, measurable impact, scaling up – whether is be nationally, regionally or globally, that the program can be scaled up, and sustainability and those principles are tied in with the approaches which are partnership, community based, low cost, holistic approaches, intergenerational – that is not only the child but also their parents and grandparents as well as their older siblings and culturally appropriate programs, that is very important that they are culturally appropriate to their location. So these are our founding principles and approaches and we are promoting these within basic education. We have education coordinating groups, or task forces, such as Emergency Education and Early Childhood – emergency education is when there is a crisis teams move in to provide food, water, shelter and medical supplies but they never provide education and it isn’t until 6 months of the crisis that it is even considered so we are working to include educators in the mix of emergency providers. The newest task force it isn’t even really named yet is the Macroeconomics of Education taskforce, this is more intangible – unlike emergency education which is here is the problem here is the solution, the Macroeconomics taskforce is dealing more with influencing policy. 

Prior Activity on the Issue 
“Education for All” was a world wide initiative that began in ’90 in Thailand. It focused on equity, teacher training and access to school. In 2000 they held a ten year follow up to the launch of the initiative and found that there hadn’t been much progress. They reset goals for the year 2015, that’s just an arbitrary date. 

Advocacy Activities Undertaken
Since then there have been a flurry of meetings, well not really meetings more like workshops, they have been quite productive.  The UN, UNESCO is facilitating the follow up meetings and working with local NGOs. The Basic Education Coalition was set up to follow through on the US side. It is a conglomerate of NGOs, we have put together talking points, we have brought together a lot of organizations and brought out what the key factors are that work overseas in education. So we have been having a lot of meetings and meeting with members and staffers. We arranged some trips, we coordinated visits to some project sites – Save the Children projects in Mali, one Republican and one Democrat, and they were really moved, it really effected them and they’ve become supporters. 

There is an initiative now in Congress, not by us but by Congress, to take funds from defense and move it into education, we weren’t asking for that but, wow, that is something.

We are trying to get money in the budget for basic education. Putting money in USAID, and they are pretty good, they listen, some people would say what are you crazy – I mean they are slow – but they do listen to input about what works and what doesn’t. 

We have provided members with just…bits of information, if you had this much money what you could do with it, I guess paragraphs of information so that it was easy to understand.  We have really been in frequent dialogue with the staff we really are just trying to keep the information flowing. We also had a meeting with the Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs. 

Future Advocacy Activities Planned
None mentioned.

Key Congressional Contact(s)/Champions
You mean you want me to remember the names? – I’m not very good at names I’d have to get out the books.

Targets of Direct Lobbying
None mentioned.

Targets of Grassroots Lobbying
None mentioned.

Coalition Partners: Names/Participants
The Basic Education Coalition
[The members are listed in the basic education booklet in the folder]

Other Participants in the Issue Debate
The World Bank is working separately to put together plans on how to get all children educated. It has its priorities as to which countries will get the funding, they have a list of about 18 countries, they are the countries that have done the best, that are the furthest along. The idea is if they give them an extra boost of funding they’ll really be able to go far. They are calling it the “Fast Track” – these are countries that have shown significant improvement. They will be loans, but in both monetary support and technical support. Some of these countries don’t necessarily need more money they actually need technical support. 

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence
It’s not really an argument. There is this assumption that all you need to do is build a school. And we have to show them that we need to promote education in a way that is effective, you can have a school but if you don’t have a teacher then what good is the school, you can have a teacher but if they aren’t educated how effective will that be. 

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence
None mentioned.

Targeted Arguments, Targets, and Evidence
None mentioned.

Nature of the Opposition
[Impediments]
No one is specifically opposed to it there is just this ignorance of how effective education is. Plus given the terrorist concerns there are just other priorities right now. 

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition 
Not applicable. 

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition
Not applicable. 

Targeted Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition (and Targets)
Not applicable. 

Described as a Partisan Issue
No.

Venue(s) of Activity
Congress

Action Pending or Taken by Relevant Decision Makers
The appropriations bill will be voted on following the recess.

Policy Objective(s) and Support for/Opposition to the Status Quo
Opposed to the status quo, working to increase the level of funding for international basic education. 

Advocate’s Experience: Tenure in Current Job/Previous Experience
I have an MA in teaching, I started out working for International Rescue in Malawi, and then worked for CARE for a number of years in Haiti, and then moved to USAID, and I’ve been working here for two years as an education specialist. 

Reliance on Research: In-House/External (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
We do both, we do some in-house we haven’t been writing as much as we’d like to, we have a number of publications. We work very closely with other organizations and share information with them and use their research. And we work with the think tanks like American Institute for Research and CIES.

Number of Individuals Involved in Advocacy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
One lobbyist and 40 percent of the interviewees’ time

Units in Organization Involved in Public Affairs/Policy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
We have three technical Units, Health, Education and Opportunities and under those we have a number of departments, I don’t even want to guess how many; marketing, disaster, administration, and others we have 70 people in all here in this office. 

Advocate’s Outstanding Skills/Assets (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
None mentioned.

Type of Membership: None, Institutions, Individuals, Both (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Institutions – other Save the Children Organizations

Membership Size (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
30

Organizational Age (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Miscellaneous