Evaluation of the opportunities for vulnerable children program Indonesia

The Opportunities for Vulnerable Children (OVC) program represents a unique and highly commendable effort made by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to bring children with disabilities into Indonesia's mainstream education settings in a substantive manner.  The program -- which only cost USD 9.3 million in 10 years or USD 930,000 a year on average -- contributed significantly to strengthening the Indonesian enabling educational environment for children with disabilities, in the following ways: (1) building substantial government bureaucratic and political support for inclusion of children with disabilities; (2) spearheading the development of national policies, such as recognition of "resource teachers" as a legitimate category of service, and 22 subnational policies that operationalized the national inclusive education policies; (3) helping stakeholders to lobby for and legitimize the development of budgets to support inclusive education, which will allow inclusive education initiatives to be funded post-OVC; and (4) changing parents' and community attitudes about the rights of children with disabilities to an education.  The above was achieved by well-targeted use of short-term technical experts and ongoing engagement of very knowledgeable program personnel who understand how to work with and within the existing systems.  However, without strategic and selective external technical support for deepening and broadening OVC accomplishments, full realization of OVC program benefits is at risk.  There is also a risk that inclusive education will remain synonymous with special education, rather than special education falling under the umbrella of a functional inclusive education system.  USAID's Education Strategy Goal 1 will ensure that 150 million children worldwide become readers in the early grades; however, most early grade reading assessments have not taken children with disabilities into account in testing protocols, data disaggregation, or ensuing programming.  If USAID is able to act on the opportunity for disability-sensitive programming that the OVC program introduced, Indonesia can provide a valuable model on which to build in order to bring children with disabilities into this broader group of 150 million children.  Failure of the government and donor community to further to deepen and extend OVC program achievements would be a significant and regrettable "missed opportunity."  (Excerpt, modified)