Among the educational thematic areas of Early Childhood Care, Development and Education (ECCDE), Universal Primary Education (with special emphasis for the children with special education needs (CSEN) and the orphans and vulnerable children), Life Skills and Tertiary Education, Adult Education and Literacy (AEL) and finally Gender and Equity, a number of activities have been run and funded to help deliver the tangible and intangible products (goods and services) aimed at achieving the main objectives or goals driving these educational themes.
To effectively deliver these products, governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), Faith Based Organisations and the international development agencies used and are still using a plethora of projects to help achieve their strategic aims in contributing to the attainment of the general and overall aims of these educational objectives as spelt out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Education For All (EFA) goals. As we draw towards the 2015 MDGs deadline, it would be important to know how far these educational objectives have been achieved. It is important to know the successes and failures as well as lessons learned from the execution and implementation or delivery of the projects that were tasked to help achieve these important goals.
It is important here to stress that whoever is entrusted to run these education focused projects or programmes must do so with the critical project success factors in mind if effective and successful delivery of these important goals is to be achieved. We know that all projects are constrained by budget, time and scope. It is this triple constraint or the ‘iron triangle’ that makes many project managers so fixated as they try to make ‘trade-offs’ to avoid schedule overruns, overspending the budget and the trap of scope creep that they more often than not, fail to pay attention to other project risks and uncertainties, effective stakeholder engagement, human resources management and most importantly, quality delivery of the project product.
And we know that once the quality has been compromised, the project is a failure because it would have delivered a service or product that falls below client expectation or standard. And this critical client or stakeholder is the boy or girl who wakes up every morning either without access to education, or attending an education system that does not deliver.
David K. Sitondo
Executive Director
Baruthi ECS Network
www.baruthinetwork.org
To effectively deliver these products, governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), Faith Based Organisations and the international development agencies used and are still using a plethora of projects to help achieve their strategic aims in contributing to the attainment of the general and overall aims of these educational objectives as spelt out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Education For All (EFA) goals. As we draw towards the 2015 MDGs deadline, it would be important to know how far these educational objectives have been achieved. It is important to know the successes and failures as well as lessons learned from the execution and implementation or delivery of the projects that were tasked to help achieve these important goals.
It is important here to stress that whoever is entrusted to run these education focused projects or programmes must do so with the critical project success factors in mind if effective and successful delivery of these important goals is to be achieved. We know that all projects are constrained by budget, time and scope. It is this triple constraint or the ‘iron triangle’ that makes many project managers so fixated as they try to make ‘trade-offs’ to avoid schedule overruns, overspending the budget and the trap of scope creep that they more often than not, fail to pay attention to other project risks and uncertainties, effective stakeholder engagement, human resources management and most importantly, quality delivery of the project product.
And we know that once the quality has been compromised, the project is a failure because it would have delivered a service or product that falls below client expectation or standard. And this critical client or stakeholder is the boy or girl who wakes up every morning either without access to education, or attending an education system that does not deliver.
David K. Sitondo
Executive Director
Baruthi ECS Network
www.baruthinetwork.org