Pay-for-success (P4S) Smart Contracts can Secure Education Opportunities for Children in Myanmar
After crackdown of military dictatorship, primary school enrollment rates in Myanmar are growing, more schools are being constructed. However, there are less than half of all children in Myanmar currently complete primary school. At Thai-Myanmar border, nearly 70 ethnic minorities schools have been closed down since 2011. Thousands of Burmese children and youngsters’ right to education are deprived thereafter. Why does this happen? There are two reasons: funding cut from donors and unrobust scholarship mechanism.
“Our schools don’t have sufficient funding…”
Driving 10 km away from the Thai-Myanmar border town Mae Sot, we arrived at Boarding High School for Orphans and Helpless Youths (the “BHSOH”) — a refugee and migrant learning center serving Grade 1–12 children and youngsters who struggle to fit into the formal education in Thailand. It is an unfortunate note that BSHOH is in fact one of the very few learning centers at the border that still operates with stable funding.
More than ten out of sixty community-based learning centers at Thai-Myanmar border have been closed down due to large-scale funding cut by donors and governments who have been migrating their resources from the border area to central Myanmar after Myanmar Peace Process began.
After the1988 massacres, many Myanmar moved to Mae Sot for a combination of political and economic reasons, and many of their children were born in Thailand. For the past two decades, the schools were dependent on foreign donors as the military government made no contribution to the schools’ upkeep or teachers’ pay.
Donors who have been giving to schools in Mae Sot for the past years now want to donate more in Myanmar because they think Burmese migrants will now go home as National League for Democracy Party won the election(view source).
However, the sad fact is the peace process in Myanmar is going very slowly, the army is still in the villages in southeastern Myanmar. People face a lack of basic health care, education, livelihood and infrastructure in the country (view source). A lot of migrant children and youths are not yet ready go back to Myanmar.
“My donors threatened to cut my scholarship…”
Not only the learning centers at Thai-Myanmar border are suffering from unstable funding flow, many education centers within Myanmar are facing problems alike. We visited Brighter Futures, one of the few learning centers in Karen State that offer GED courses preparing minority and deprived students to study abroad.
“The annual cost of maintaining Brighter Futures is at least USD$16,000, but students only pay a tuition fee of USD$8 annually, which covers education, lodging, utilities, food, and all emergency medical expenses. This (school operation) is only possible with the help of donations.”
The founder of Brighter Futures also stressed the difficulty of applying scholarship, “these scholarship programs very often favor students from their funded schools.”
“Even though the application criteria of the scholarship are publicly written, the screening process may not be as transparent.”
There may be additional and arbitrary conditions imposed on the scholarship winners in order to secure the payments. Two ex-scholarship recipients told iO2, “my donors threatened to cut my scholarship if I don’t attend 4–5 events and conferences every semester.”
There is no formal communication channels between scholarship grantors and grantees to negotiate terms and conditions, as well as a “dispute resolution” platform for all parties to collectively renew contracts when contingencies arise.
It is important to look into the dropped out students, and also students who voluntarily give up the scholarship mid-way. “My donor wants to check every single detail of my daily expenses, including buying a chili and potato at the street market. When I miss out a detail, I feel the pressure of losing my scholarship.”
Such unpleasant experiences of donor’s exploitation are not exceptions. Talking to three other ex-scholarship recipients, they responded feeling “being looked down”, “being treated like a domestic helper”, and “no dignity”.
In fact, these instances are quite common in the grant management space, where grantees often find the reporting standards mandated by donors burdensome and manifesting the lack of trust from donors.
Building Trust and Safeguarding Funding through Pay-for-success (P4S) Smart Contracts
Having identified such fragile social finance flow at Thai-Myanmar border and Myanmar border states, we wish to collaborate with an umbrella organization Connecting Myanmar to help community-based organizations(the “CBO”) such as BHSOH and Brighter Futures to safeguard and attract more funding sources by setting up pay-for-success mechanism:
- Individual-level P4S scholarship smart contract: a scholarship contract with university students, which payment is insured when certain milestones related to learning progress and career planning are accomplished; when new payment conditions are proposed by the donor(s), there will be a “dispute resolution” platform that allows both parties to negotiate and discuss for mandate amendments.
P4S smart contract can prevent international donors imposing burdensome payment conditions on students. On the other hand, this can help donors to build trust and relationships with their beneficiaries via incremental and high quality impact monitoring and evaluation.
Smart Scholarships as Education Incubator
In fact, hundreds of Myanmar students are sponsored to study abroad in Thailand, Bangladesh and Western countries like the United States or Australia every year. Many scholarship alumni started their own schools and learning centers upon graduation, including founders of two largest learning centers at Hpa An, Karen State: Youth Learning Center ( the “YLC”) and Gateway Learning Center (the “GLC”).
This is the process turning university scholarship programs into education incubators, guiding young talents in the refugee and minority communities to actively contribute their knowledge and skills to their local communities.
“Some others went back to their villages at the border to set up a new clinic or a new primary school where access to basic health and education is desperately needed.” When the topic of education incubator is brought up, founders of these learning centers told us more and more stories of their past students creating positive social impact at the border areas.
Many learning centers strive to support their minority students beyond university studies, the individual-level pay-for-success scholarship smart contract shall not terminate upon university graduation. As students begin to fulfill the milestones on scholarship mandates during their studies, both students and donors can start to co-create new mandates about their future career development and social mission.
Such payment mechanism may help donors to build personal and trusting relationships with the students, witnessing each of their payment triggering new milestones for youth empowerment and community development at scale.
Student Loans in Myanmar
Student loan is another popular funding source for Burmese youth who want to continue their tertiary studies. For example, Zomia is a social purpose corporation on a mission to increase access to higher education among students from Southeast Asia. Applicants can receive flexible income-based loan financing for their higher education.
With Zomia loans, students are not stressed to repay as the loan contracts last from 11years to 17 years. What is more, there is a repayment pool mechanism allows students who earn more to pay for those who struggle to repay. Such repayment mechanism can ensure the sustainability of this student loan platform.
We are exploring the possibility of assisting CBO such as Bright Future to set up their own scholarships or student loans. We also wish to cooperate with an outcome procurement party — a foundation that is interested in “repaying” all the students loans when the subsidized Burmese students achieve certain learning and career goals — in this case, returning to their communities and contributing their skills and knowledge in community building and development.
This is a process of turning scholarships into education incubators: encouraging students to build up their future plans during university, and supporting them to achieve their visions after their graduation.
We are working with our partners to help children and their families in Myanmar surmount the problems they face, and more fully realize their rights to education, equality and protection. Potential partners and interested parties are welcome to come along with us. Feel free to contact iO2:
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