How does PAVE work?
This approach is especially critical when children’s activities and progress needs to be tracked for counseling, reporting and evaluation purposes. Comprised of multiple levels of assistance, Ms. Mull’s technical assistance and support includes working with your staff t design appropriate tools and instruments needed to address service outcomes, explore strategies for outreach, learn steps in the process for intake and assessment, conduct educational development planning, learn the critical importance of follow-up, determine how to monitor for continuous improvement, and organizationally establish systems for case file management.
In addition to customizing the basic components of PAVE to fit a particular program’s needs, central and field office staff training is provided that includes basic orientation about child labor, influences on child laborers participation in school, questions to consider before undertaking a program working with child laborers, overview of program/project goals and objectives, detailed training and activities on how to use the approaches within PAVE, organizing and managing case files, and planning next steps following PAVE training, such as assigning staff roles and responsibilities, assessing and building capacity of community partners, and disseminating and using the results of baseline or other evaluation studies.
PAVE also includes training that assists staff with planning their implementation strategies. These include: informing key target groups about the program/project; developing community partners; establishing services and programs; improving quality in education and schools; increasing knowledge and awareness about worst forms of child labor, HIV-AIDS and the value of education; recruiting children for the targeted program; and letting people know about successes. An added benefit of the PAVE training is that it helps project staff to examine their staffing configurations and finalize their program monitoring plans, as they now have a better understanding of the issues to be addressed and strategies to achieve their output objectives.
How is the agency’s capacity improved for the future?
In addition to having an effective program strategy, as part of Ms. Mull’s approach, building capacity within an organization to handle their future needs in this area is encouraged. To that end, Ms. Mull encourages the agency to select their own staff person to be tutored and coached during the technical assistance process as the PAVE resource person. IIECL and Ms. Mull’s interests are to build capacity within an organization to more effectively meet the needs of childrenthis is aligned with IIECL and Ms. Mull’s goals. Follow-up to assist with monitoring of the implementation of the PAVE process mid-program are also encouraged. Then, as needed in the future, further technical assistance and support is available when unique challenges or problems occur.
How and where is PAVE being used
Aspects of this approach Ms. Mull used in training with over 50 organizations providing youth and adults with education and workforce development services. Ms. Mull has trained thousands of staff across the US and abroad on using different aspects of the PAVE approach based on the organization’s needs and the goals planned for the targeted beneficiaries. Ms. Mull, working under contract with the Academy for Educational Development, provided technical assistance using the PAVE methodology to World Vision and International Rescue Committee staff in four East African and two West African countries with the program objective of recruiting, educating and preventing child labor. Ms. Mull directly assists international and national NGO program staff by customizing the PAVE methodology to:
Facilitate and assist staff with understand required program requirements and planning their approach to identify, track and serve program beneficiaries and create mechanisms for reporting outcomes as required by the donor agency – This entails the identification and development of forms to be used during the project and incorporating those as part of the PAVE process. These are developed in coordination with the project staff incorporating key outcome objectives into the child-centered approach.
Training country-level and field staff, including national NGO staff, on PAVE This includes a five-to-seven day training for staff that provides an overview of child labor, clearly identifying program objectives and outcomes, interactive and participatory sessions on the various aspects of the PAVE approach, and field testing with staff the program forms gleaning input from staff before forms are finalized.
Through the PAVE training, field staff have the opportunity to provide input and recommend refinements to the forms they will be using throughout the project and gain a valuable sense of ownership. As a result, by the end of the PAVE training, project staff have the opportunity to provide input into the development of the final forms, receive training on the forms, understand their application within the project, and how to use the forms and PAVE process most effectively with children.
The customized forms developed and that are being used by staff during program implementation include: an Intake Form, Educational or Employability Development Plan (EDP), and a Follow-up and Reporting Form. Data for reporting characteristics on each child is drawn from the Intake Form and reporting on accomplishments are drawn from the Follow-up Form.
The E/EDP is a planning and educational or employability development tool to be used by local field staff for the purposes of identifying key socio-economic barriers, both short and long-term, and educational and/or employment barriers, both short and long-term, to be addressed relative to their ultimate educational and vocational goals. This enables staff to clearly identify those children who are more at risk of entering child labor and those at greatest risk of re-entering child labor. Since the EDP is an evolving document, it allows staff to track changes that may impact the child’s continued successful participation and completion in education or vocational skills training programs and to make modifications and adjustments to the educational plans as their situation changes. Additionally, the training includes guidance on the development of a record-keeping and on-going monitoring system for enrolled children.
An optional feature of PAVE is a customized development of a record-keeping system (software) that maintains records of each individual child for reporting purposes. Staff are trained on the use of the software program and assisted with making subsequent modifications or adjustments as the program shifts, adds or subtracts components.