1. Case-study No. & Title:
233. Catholic Relief Services (CRS) – Croatia, Parent School Partnership (PSP) program

For a definition of the abbreviations used in this report, click here

Keywords

2. Author information:
2.1 Author’s Name
Sean Moffatt

2.2 Institutional Affiliation and Contact Details:
20 Oak St
Garnerville, NY
10923, USA
E-mail: Sean_Moffatt99@hotmail.com

2.3 Date recorded
23/02/01

3. Good Practice Information Sheet
3.1 Local Level Good Practice:
The Parent School Partnership (PSP) program is a 5-year regional initiative set in the Balkans and aimed at establishing a better quality of education at the local level by promoting increased parental involvement. The program is implemented through local primary schools in which a core parent-teacher working group is established. This consists of 5-10 parents and teachers who together look at potential improvements that can be made in the school. These may be the organization of youth activities, the upgrading of school equipment, environmental improvements or rectifying gaps in the curriculum. The purpose of the program is advancing educational services in a way that is conducive to the development of civil society institutions and democracy. Due to the post-war reality and resulting ethnic tensions affecting Croatia, the program also takes on a very important grassroots tolerance-building and integration role by ensuring that Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) who are active in multi-ethnic communities themselves reflect that plurality. The multi-ethnic make-up of PTAs provides a non-political community forum where inter-ethnic reconciliation and trust-building can occur among parents and teachers in a situation that is clearly visible to students, all the while working together for a mutually beneficial purpose that is reinforced by the CRS’ counseling and tolerance-building services.

The following is the menu of services the PSP program promotes to PTAs:

3.2 Location:
Regionally the PSP is implemented in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Armenia. In Croatia, PSP is active in three regions based on UN designations for the four former sectors of conflict in Croatia:

3.3 Minority/Target Groups:

3.4 Major Actors Involved

3.5 Budget allocated by local government authorities and/or by other actors
The program was initially funded in Croatia by the UNHCR to cover three schools, the program began to expand to new schools. Additional funding was provided by US BPRM specifically to implement the program in communities where it would complement other CRS-implemented BPRM-funded activities. In 2001 primarily CRS resources will fund the program.

The budget provided to an individual school depends on which grant that school is targeted under. Under the UNHCR sub-project agreement CRS provided a $15,000 allocation for various activities and grants opportunities to each school for one year. The BPRM and CRS funding only provide $7000 to a PTA’s 1-year operation.

It is also important to note that CRS’ influence was key for two PTA’s in fundraising with the Japanese government for themselves. It is the goal of the PSP that PTAs become self-sufficient and not rely on CRS to allocate funding for activities and projects.

3.6 Timeframe
Initially the PSP began assessments for Croatia in 1998, however implementation did not begin until 1999 when the Croatian Ministry for Education gave final approval for CRS to work within Croatian schools. The pilot program consisted of three schools funded by UNHCR in 1999 where by mid-99 the program was established in FSS & FSN with BPRM and today the PSP is servicing 22 schools in 18 municipalities. The CRS programmatic strategy is in its third year of a 5-year intervention during which local PTAs are expected to become self-sustaining and capable of fundraising on their own.

3.7 Local level good practice relation to national level ethnic policy
While the educational onus of the program lends itself more to policies and laws related to education and the federal Ministry of Education, the PTP does advance interests declared in the Erdut and Dayton peace agreements guaranteeing the rights of refugee return throughout the region. By working at a grassroots-level to build inter-ethnic dialogue and cooperation an active PTA in a multi-ethnic community can ease the anxieties of potential minority returnees concerned about their children’s access to education. This makes PSP an excellent indicator for a potential returnee, weighing a community’s potential acceptance of returnees by exposing the school’s acceptance of minority students and the ability of parents to set aside their ethnic differences in a cooperative effort for the best interests of their children. For a potential returnee with school-age children, schools and their children’s ability to access them safely are as important a factor in the final return decision as shelter and security.

4. Good Practice Description
The CRS PSP program actively seeks to empower communities in the decision-making process regarding education in Croatia and thereby transfers ownership from a centralized and politicized system to the citizen body. While doing so it helps communities to cope with the effects of war-trauma and improve inter-ethnic reconciliation. The hope is that while improving the classroom conditions and overall student life, the PSP can lay the foundations for much-needed educational reform and the development of civil society and political stability in Croatia.

Program Overview

Developing a local PTA and promoting local participation
The PSP begins by working with county-level education ministries to target schools, that may be interested in allowing CRS to establish a PTA. After the Country Ministry for Education has given its input, the Ministry is then kept informed by CRS of each PTA’s progress in order to promote trust and cooperation with the mainstream education system. After agreements are made with country ministries, local school principals are contacted and a town-hall meeting is organized where all parents of the school are invited along with the teachers to hear CRS’ presentation of the PSP program. CRS focuses on being highly transparent with the community at all times but during the first meeting it is especially important to have the program and its intentions presented clearly. Initial reaction from the overall community is almost always positive, although consistent participation in PTA activities averages around 5-10 parents, 70% of whom are women, these parents are the PTA’s core and work to encourage overall community participation in activities.

When the school is multi-ethnic, as is often the case, it requires a more tactful approach to ensure that the PTA is ethnically representative. Achieving a multi-ethnic PTA requires that CRS PSP fieldworkers liaise closely with teachers and community leaders to convince parents that a multi-ethnic working group can function in their community. While it often takes some time, patience and lots of legwork, CRS has found that once a core group of committed parents has been established, concerns over potential multi-ethnicity tensions in the PTA quickly dissipate. An important method for overcoming multi-ethnic fears is the ability of the PSP program to provide incentive through funding and individual grants, as multi-ethnic communities are willing to overcome differences to work together in an effort to ensure extra financial support for their school. The communities in which CRS has focused the PSP program are suffering economically from wartime destruction and the overall postwar devastation of the Croatian economy. Schools in these communities are not immune to the depressed economic situation in Croatia, often allowing structural damage to go untreated or be given only minimal repair, and generally to have few resources to prevent the overall degradation of classroom efficacy. The fiscal value of a functional PTA can only grow in the near future as the Croatian government can no longer provide federal funding to local schools and individual municipalities will be responsible for raising funds on their own. The impoverished areas that the PSP program targets will be the most affected by the lost federal funding and the PTA’s ability to fundraise both locally and with potential donors will be crucial.

With regard to facilitating improved ethnic integration and reconciliation, multi-ethnic PTAs do not take an overt or leading role in their communities, but they do have an inherently positive affect on inter-ethnic relations in the school and within their own organization. Even though their tangible effect on improving inter-ethnic relations in their community is subtle, the very existence of multi-ethnic PTAs in communities where inter-ethnic hostilities are real and compounded by the return of minority groups after years in exile is more than noteworthy. As PTAs are not political and therefore are not scrutinized by local leadership in the same way that prominent multi-ethnic initiatives would be, the establishment or existence of a multi-ethnic PTA represents an excellent forum where inter-ethnic dialogue can reemerge at a community level in a purposeful constructive way without fear of reprisal. In many communities a PTA may represent the only formal multi-ethnic forum and as PTAs continue to grow, develop and eventually institutionalize the benevolent effect they have on their overall community will grow accordingly.

The CRS is committed to developing PTAs into independent and sustainable institutions before the end of the PSP program. To ensure this, the PSP makes use of several capacity-building mechanisms to train and develop PTAs on a number of subjects, including the ability of a PTA to promote the overall community participation through donations of time, money or materials. CRS also stays in close contact with the PTAs through monitoring and monthly reports so that the development of individual PTAs can be tailored to their specific needs.

As part of the PSP program, CRS looks to establish inter-school linkages nationwide through PTA conventions that serve to bring PTA members and students from across the country by providing:

A the time of this report, CRS is planning a nationwide crafts gallery in the municipality of Karlovac to display the products of the numerous creative art workshops founded by PTAs. Through its regional PSP network, CRS is also looking to establish the basis for what will become a regional cross-border PSP program by building linkages between country programs and individual linkages between schools. If CRS is successful in establishing these regional linkages between PTAs, CRS will have dramatically altered the inter-ethnic reconciliation aspect of the PSP program to include an dynamic cross-border nature which is seriously lacking in the region and will help address some of the root-causes preventing serious redress among peoples of the former Yugoslavia

Example Case, Profile of Knezevi Vinogradi Primary School PSP
Knezevi Vinogradi is located 25 km north of Osijek in FSE. There are seven villages with 3 primary schools and 3 sub-schools, all of which are working today. Prewar the population comprised 2,127 inhabitants and included Croats, Serbs and Hungarians while today there are 2,500 inhabitants the majority of whom are Croats. In the primary school there are 240 students and 16 teachers with a school principal, secretary and pedagogic adviser. Ethnic tensions in the community had been of such concern that the school principal was an initial obstacle as he felt that a multi-ethnic PTA was not prudent at that time. Through CRS’ persistence he soon became convinced otherwise as the PTA demonstrated its ability to function effectively with a multi-ethnic composition. After that the only problem with the principal was keeping him away from PTA activities so that it could function independently, this was done by turning his attention to working within the community to raise support for PTA activities without directly participating.

The PSP began activities with the primary school in April 1999. Since then the PTA has effected the following ongoing programs and projects with eight active parents:

Many of the activities, including the orchestra, are run by parental volunteers who are not part of the PTA. Moreover, the Knezevi Vinogradi PTA has demonstrated an excellent ability to organize and improve their capacity, including that of fundraising. The PTA identified the need for a higher quality printer for both the compute lab and the school newspaper and was inspired to organize a handicraft fair to raise money. The pottery workshop was used to produce a number of different high-quality items that were sold at the fair and through a small catalog.

Abbreviations used in this report: