Business Advice on Children's Programme - Murray Culshaw
In early 2003 ADATS initiated a Strategic Planning exercise to review the self-financed and own-efforts of the Coolie Sangha to school their children in nearly 500 non-SCNZ supported villages. Through this exercise we wanted to assess what more needed to be done to bring about a greater Child Focus. By mid year we realised the need for an outside opinion and invited Murray Culshaw Advisory Service (MCAS) to give us a “business advice” to further this strategic planning exercise.
Murray Culshaw and Priya Anand assessed the potential and capability of the Coolie Sangha’s own efforts and gave recommendations on how these self efforts can be optimised and sustained to enhance the existing children’s programme and provide new directions to increase it’s efficiency.
The study made a very positive finding on the CSU run Children’s Programme:
“Most people would give an arm and a leg to achieve what ADATS and the Sangha have achieved in the last two decades. Now its a question of deciding where to go from here.”
and concluded with a blunt presentation of the challenge posed and potential for improvement:
“The transition from a student to being a productive individual in the community is not easy and enabling this is a challenge to any organisation in the field of education. ADATS and the Sangha framework provides a fascinating opportunity to examine the ‘transition’ phase with fresh energy and insights. Even partial success in this venture would add real value and meaning to the future of the coolie community. Such an initiative is therefore well worth supporting as it would add substantial value to the lives of Coolie children and the Coolie Sangha. The experience could be of real value to the wider development community faced with this ‘transition’ in so many societies.”
MCAS made 13 concrete recommendations to the Coolie Sangha under 3 broad categories of enhancing the schooling and education programme, introducing a Post Schooling Programme, and enhancing the effectiveness and relevancy of the Sangha.