Van Doorn Foundation Policy Plan 2022 to 2026

 Van Doorn Foundation  will concentrate its activities in four countries in East Africa, namely Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia, where it distinguishes the following target groups: 1. Vulnerable and/or underprivileged young people (aged 14 to 28) 2. Educational institutions that want to make vocational education and training accessible to vulnerable and/or disadvantaged young people, and 3. Local organisations wishing to increase the self-reliance of vulnerable and/or underprivileged young people (empowerment).

(EDUCATION IS NOT  A PROBLEM EDUCATION IS  AN OPPORTUNITY 

Van Doorn Foundation  implements its mission by funding the training / education of and for individuals belonging to the Foundation’s target group and by entering into partnerships with organisations pursuing similar goals. The Foundation makes scholarships available to the target group of vulnerable and/or underprivileged young people for secondary and higher professional education. The Foundation makes subsidies available to educational institutions for the purchase of training equipment and materials for practical training (learning skills) and for means of transport (increasing accessibility). The Foundation makes grants available to local organisations for the purchase of toolboxes that are made available to vulnerable and/or disadvantaged young people so that they can more easily find work or start their own business.

Van Doorn Foundation  has twenty years of experience with study funding and made scholarships available to 350 young people since its inception:  In Asia (Indonesia - Sri Lanka - Nepal) 100 young people received scholarships that gave them the opportunity to attend secondary school, vocational training, secondary and higher professional education, or university education. Among them about 60 orphans in Papua (Indonesia) to pursue training at various schools and some 10 young people with disabilities from Colombo (Sri Lanka) who obtained access to special education.  In Africa (Kenya - Uganda - Tanzania - Rwanda – Gambia - Senegal – Ghana) 250 young people received a scholarship. The majority were orphans and/or young people from poor families from the slums in Kenya and Uganda. In the past ten years, the Foundation has also made grants available to 35 organisations with educational objectives to improve existing vocational training or start up new vocational training, from which 3,500 young people benefit every year.  In West Africa (Ghana, Mali, Cameroon) grants were made available to four local organisations for the purchase of training equipment and materials for vocational education and increasing the self-reliance of 900 young people;  In East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania) grants were made available to 28 local organisations for the purchase of training equipment and materials for vocational education and increasing the self-reliance of 2,450 young people; including 200 street children, 150 orphans, 250 girls who had fled gender-based violence, 200 teenage mothers and 50 young people with physical disabilities;  In Asia (Indonesia and Sri Lanka), three local organisations received subsidies to purchase training equipment and materials for vocational training and to increase the self-reliance of 150 young people, including 50 with a mental disability. Over the past five years, scholarships applications have almost all come from Kenya and Uganda and occasionally from Tanzania and Indonesia. The scholarships varied from € 150 to € 500 and were on average € 300 per year per student and were made available over a period of 1 to 4 years (average 2 years). The total scholarship was therefore on average € 600 per study. Ten years ago, most scholarships were for general secondary and university education and only 10% for vocational education. In 2011, the Foundation chose to put more emphasis on funding vocational training, because the chances of employment with such training are greater. Since 2017, scholarships are only awarded for vocational training. The biggest challenge remained to reach vulnerable and/or underprivileged young people who are less familiar with the internet and are therefore less able to apply themselves for a scholarship. To be able to filter the target group from all submitted applications, new application forms have been introduced in 2016, which makes it easier to assess the family and income situation and the living conditions of the applicants. This made it possible to better filter out the most vulnerable and/or underprivileged young people from the applicants.

Project funding was almost only made available for projects in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania (once there was a project in Ghana, Cameroon, Mali, and Zambia). The grants made available to local organisations with an educational objective varied from € 2,000 to € 5,000 and averaged € 4,000. About a third of those local organisations were CBOs or NGOs that wanted to increase the selfreliance of young people; a third were organisations with a training centre for informal vocational training, and a third were recognized vocational training institutions. All local organisations received assistance to prepare a school business plan, to improve the quality of education and to make the organisations more sustainable (and less dependent on sponsors). Some organisations took 3 months, others almost 6 months to prepare such a plan. Twenty percent of the local organisations received multi-year funding to an average of € 12,000 per organisation. The other local organisations received a one-off grant of an average of € 4,000 per project. Except for the funding for the construction of classrooms in Mali and Indonesia, the Foundation did no longer make funds available for the construction of schools. The Foundation has assisted some local organisations in preparing applications for funding from other donors for the construction of their classrooms. 13 of the 35 local organisations received training equipment through Dutch organisations: Tools To Work or Gered Gereedschap and through British organisations: Tools for Solidarity or Tools with a Mission. The rest received funds to purchase training equipment themselves locally. In addition, the local organisations received funds to start up new training courses, i.e., to pay the salaries of teachers and purchase training material for the first months.

In the future, the Van Doorn Foundation  will continue to focus on the self-reliance of young people from slums, street children, children with a physical or mental disability, and underprivileged rural youth. The goal is to break the vicious circle of poverty because these young people are not able to get an education, learn a trade, find work, and are forced to continue in this vicious circle of poverty. The Foundation therefore remains committed to vocational education and self-reliance of the target group. The aim is not so much for youth to obtain diplomas, but rather to acquire market-required, immediately deployable skills, with which the target group can easily find work or practice a profession. The recently discovered oil and gas reserves and other natural resources (such as gold, silver, copper, iron, bauxite) in West and East African countries have significantly expanded their economies. Although the economy is clearly improving on this continent, not everyone is benefiting from these developments. For those at the bottom of the social ladder, everything remains the same and the gap between rich and poor has only widened. There is still a great need for the Foundation to continue to work for the underprivileged in that region and to increase their access to vocational education and to increase their self-reliance. Youth unemployment is highest on the African continent and low employability is the biggest obstacle. Empowering young people with deployable skills is therefore essential. Employability means having the skills to get started. Work enables an individual to escape poverty and build a decent life. The Foundation is small, working in a limited number of countries with a limited budget and limited organisational capacity. The Foundation opts for an approach that must be sustainable and not create new dependence. The approach must be small-scale, whereby with small investments a large impact is achieved. The Foundation's method will change in the future, because of the demand and the need, but also because of the Foundation's capacity.

Van Doorn Foundation  may collaborate more with partners with the aim of transferring the implementation of its policy to organisations that have more capacity and can do it better. For example, in the future:  the board may no longer receive and review individual scholarship applications but allocate the scholarship budget among the chosen countries and invite selected educational institutions in those countries to apply for scholarships for the most disadvantaged students. These applications then go through the country advisers, who assess whether the students meet the target group criteria and whether the training programs meet the objective. The board will then pay the scholarships for these underprivileged students directly to the relevant educational institutions.  the board may no longer receive applications for subsidies for training equipment and materials, means of transport, or toolboxes, but these applications are submitted to our partners (ToolsToWork, Tools4Change, etc.) and the board select some of these applications for funding and makes funds directly available to the partners.  the country adviser will play a more important role in the implementation of the Foundation's policy. It is also possible to appoint more than one country adviser per country if deemed necessary/useful to support the Foundation's geographically dispersed activities in a particular country. The policy period 2022-2026 will be a transition period in which the Foundation is preparing for the future, adjusts the working method and gradually introduces new procedures to be able to realize this vision for the future in the subsequent period.

Ambitions for 2022-2026 Study funding is only made available for secondary and higher professional education. Instead of making scholarships available for vocational training, the Foundation wants to make more subsidies available to technical and vocational education and training institutes with the aim to make their training programs more accessible to underprivileged or vulnerable young people, such as orphans, street children, young people from slums. Support for local organisations should not only make vocational education and training more accessible but should also increase the chance of work after the training and thus the self-reliance of these young people. The Foundation therefore wants to support local organisations with vocational education and training objectives with:  financial resources for the purchase of teaching aides or training equipment (3 ); and  setting up internship programs and learning-on-the-job trajectories (so that the labour market for young people becomes better and more easily accessible). The Foundation therefore wants to work more intensively with organisations that can play a role in this. Examples are the Tools To Work Foundation in Teteringen, the Vraag & Aanbod International Foundation in Alphen, the Tools 4 Change Foundation in Culemborg and the Gered Gereedschap Foundation in Amsterdam, that could provide the educational institutions with (second-hand) tools and machines.

 Van Doorn Foundation will increase its own contribution from 50% to 75% and the external financing can thereby be reduced from 50% to 25%. The Foundation annually budgets € 10,000 in external funding which is expected from:  Private donors and sponsors (€2,000 per year) and  Businesses and charity funds (€8,000 per year) Each donor or sponsor requires its own approach:  Private donors and sponsors are mainly approached in the manner that is customary in the relevant relationship (direct, verbal, social media, etc.) and preferably by the person with whom the personal relationship exists.  Businesses and charity funds that are actively approached by the Foundation with requests for funding. For each sponsor a person within the Foundation will be designated as relationship-manager and through him / her communication will take place regarding project funding (e.g., progress reports, financial accounting, etc.). The Foundation wants to connect individuals to the Foundation via the website, newsletters, and Facebook, and to encourage them to make donations, and only to a limited extent submit funding applications to funding institutions.