EDUCATION-ARGENTINA: Training Bug Infects NGOs

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 20 1999 (IPS) - A new type of educational programme has gained popularity in Argentina in the last few years: those that impart skills needed in non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The market is there, all right. Argentina has more than 40,000 NGOs, staffed by some 300,000 salaried workers and a host of volunteers. Many of them follow courses – some at post-graduate level – geared towards the ‘third sector’ as the NGOs are called.

In the last five years institutions dedicted to training leaders of community groups have cropped up here, including a government centre created in 1995 and the first postgraduate university catering for NGO-type training, which opened in 1997.

The Fundacion Compromiso, for example, was set up to “train and motivate members of non-profit organizations through courses and seminars, so that they will be successful in their goals.”

Since it creation in 1994, it has already graduated more than 5,500 alumni in areas such as fund development, project design, communications and how to increase the number of volunteers in an NGO. Each course lasts two days and costs 100 dollars, although scholarships are available.

Luz Santamarina, a representative of the Fundacion Compromiso, told IPS that in recent years the demand for training has grown enormously, especially in the development and maintenance of the funds that sustain these NGOs.

The need to make NGO operations more professional is so great these days that many university students have started to turn to the third sector as a source of employment: some join the staff of NGOs, others are taken on for specific projects and still others work as consultants or advisers.

If the NGO is big, with solid financial backing and an efficient administration, a professional can earn up to 3,500 dollars a month, which is just about the salary the manager of a small industrial firm is paid.

La Lecheria, a community group that assists poor students, is headed by two volunteers. But the teachers it commissions to give extra classes in poor neighbourhoods draw higher salaries than in public or private schools.

Santamarina, a graduate in business administration, has worked for four years at Fundacion Compromiso. She says NGO influence in Argentina grew as the state shed functions it used to perform in the community. As it caters for the needs the state left behind, the non-profit sector has been trading its improvisational style for a more organised and efficient modus operandi.

Against that background, the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad, the Torcuato y Tella University and the San Andreas University jointly created a one-year post-graduate course in non- profit organizations from which hundreds of professionals have already graduated.

The course is part of a programme that focusses on social and civil-society development. It has two streams: ‘leadership’ for those gunning for executive positions in NGOs, and ‘civil society studies’ for prospective analysts of social and economic phenomena on which the third sector focuses.

Another initiative is the Centro de Organizaciones de la Comunidad (CENOC), a public group started in 1995 with the goal of coordinating the work of the state and of NGOs, and which offers training to thousands of civil-society activists.

CENOC’s coordinator, Guillermo Mayor, told IPS that its distance-training programme for community organizations consists of eight modules, which are sent by mail. The graduate is then monitored by another organization.

The state pays tutors 400 dollars per student for the 14-month post-course monitoring. Each of the 80 designated tutorial organizations in the country can take care of up to 40 students.

Santamarina said 65 percent of the people who complete the courses at the Fundacion Compromiso are women who “have found a place in which they can help others and at the same time achieve personal growth in a career”.

The Fundacion also aims to reach organizations without resources, through scholarships backed by businesses.

“Most of the people who take our courses belong to organizations in the capital, which are better prepared,” Santamarina said. “On the other hand, you have to go out and look for grassroots leaders and offer them scholarships.”