EPEA (NGO TRAINING) FAQ 

What is EPEA?

A very good question. First, let us describe CHOICE Humanitarian. After some nearly 40 years of learning what does not work, CHOICE, over the past five years has field-tested an exciting new approach that has eliminated extreme poverty in Nepal.  This program covered an area of 180 villages, roughly 65,000 people (13,000 families). 

CHOICE Humanitarian is now seeking to share this approach with as many NGOs as possible. This model is the most efficient and cost-effective system available at this time. If you are a small NGO, with a low budget, but presently engaged in a program to eliminate extreme poverty or desires to start such a program, then the EPEA program is for you. This new alliance began on January 1, 2020, and will help as many NGOs as possible to eliminate extreme poverty by the year 2030.

We are looking for new partners seeking to improve their programs and want to

• expand their efforts,
• find new ways to increase their budgets though more effective fund-raising approaches
• and wish to help others do the same.

We are especially looking for NGOs who work in the 100 poorest countries of the world, who have a passion to help the extreme poor but are not certain they know how! If this is you, then this organization is for you!!

2. Why focus on the Extreme Poor?

In 2015 the UN General Assembly challenged world leaders to eliminate extreme poverty. This is a magnificent goal, but most people are skeptical that it is possible. It is true that nearly a billion people are still living in extreme poverty, but if enough people in each country were to start their own NGO and if hundreds , if not thousands of NGOs, would raise the money to implement such a program, extreme poverty could be eliminated. As John F. Kennedy once said: “If not you, then who, if not now, then when?” This is why we are organizing EPEA. 

3. Has any NGO been able to eliminate extreme poverty?:

Yes, of course, Many other organizations have developed successful programs. One such organization, as was mentioned above, is CHOICE Humanitarian, which between 2013 and 2017 was able to help some 10,000 people bring themselves out of extreme poverty at a cost of less than $250 per family, per year over a three-year period. This approach is described in great detail in a book by Professor James B. Mayfield, Extreme Poverty Eliminated! A Successful Program in Nepal (2018). CHOICE Humanitarian over nearly four years has learned a lot about what does not work and the few things that do work.

CHOICE Humanitarian is committed to giving poor people though out the world a “choice”. They have found a way to be successful and to document the strategies and action steps for others to follow.  We invite you to follow this proven, successful model that has been perfected over nearly forty years.

4. Who would be an ideal member of EPEA?

We are not looking, necessarily, for large successful NGOs, although we would welcome them as partners. Our ideal members are the hundreds, maybe thousands, of small NGOs working in the hundred poorest countries who want to make a difference in their countries, but often lack the resources, the staff, and the approach that would truly eliminate extreme poverty in a given village or cluster of villages. We want NGOs who want to give back to their people and get excited about a man or woman in extreme poverty, whose eyes light up, as they

• come to believe they do have a choice in their lives,
• complete an adult literacy course,
• see their children immunized ,
• complete primary school,
• get training in entrepreneurship,
• write up a business plan,
• qualify for a loan, and
• start their own enterprise.

The members of EPEA should have a passion to serve the poor, want to make a difference in this world, and while they may not have some advanced degree, they do have the desire and willingness to work with the less fortunate, and simply need some help to get started.

5. What are the fees and costs of this program and what do we get for this investment? 

We are a nonprofit organization and wish to work with other nonprofit organizations. So our costs are structured to help not hinder you in participating. A one-year membership is $100 a month, ($3 a day), or a one-time fee of $1,000. For this investment you receive the following

• on-line curriculum scheduled on a weekly or monthly basis as you like. This curriculum which is sent to you via your computer provides a comprehensive training program with the following goals:
• a) to develop a business plan that will outline your NGO’s growth and strategy for the next five years.
• b) introduces your staff to new capabilities, skills, and knowledge needed to eliminate extreme poverty in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible,
• c) provides a series of “state of the art” training manuals to ensure your NGO’s staff has the operational tools, strategic action steps, approaches and programs for identifying, orienting, supporting, and monitoring the progress of the extreme poor as they move into a better quality of life.
• d) provides the key steps of a training program for use in conjunction with the training manuals, including computer-based tools and hourly, daily or weekly programming schedules. Especially useful are training videos available through Skype and Zoom.

These tools, plans, programs and approaches include the following 8 components:

1. Detailed Implementation Plans which outline programs and projects in the key dimensions of rural development: education, health, income generation, environment and infrastructure, cultural enhancement, transformational leadership and gender equity.
2. Expanding Funding of Programs: specific strategies, approaches, and methods, to increase your funding-base through leveraging, networking and partnership building. Fund raising is a skill that can be developed with proper training,
3. Training in assessment and evaluation of your programs. What types of data need to be collected, how to train and manage interviewers and researchers, secrets to effective report writing and how best to use reports to increase your fund-raising.
4. This curriculum is structured to keep your organization aware of best practices, new approaches, new sources of revenue, to facilitate your efforts to eliminate extreme poverty.
5. This on-line curriculum program ensures you have access to our staff of experts ready to answer your questions, provide advice on specific issues you face through a weekly or monthly webcam.
6. Each year, EPEA publishes an annual report outlining progress being made by all the members joining the EPEA, things that work and things that don’t work, new ideas and program approaches that are effective and cost-effective.
   

6. Can this Program really help our organization in identifying the extreme poor, develop action steps that help the extreme poor move into a better quality of life, provide suggestions and training material that ensures you staff are properly trained to measure progress and achieve your NGO’s goals.

The short answer – we cannot answer that for you! It is really all up to you. From our experience, successful NGOs have what we call transformational leaders with the following basic qualities: 

• Vision Building Leadership: behaviors that help others to see the big picture by making complex ideas understandable and doable and to get people excited for the goals and future plans of their organization. 
• Credible Leadership: behaviors that build trust, confidence and shows integrity. By being consistent in word and deed, people develop trust in this leader. Credibility means keeping promises and fulfilling commitments, and always telling the truth. 
• Caring Leadership: behaviors that show they care about people, valuing people for their skills, contribution, help people to feel included, show respect for individuals’ differences, remember names and facts about people, perform acts of kindness. 
• Courageous Leadership: (Bennis and Nanus call this Risk Leadership) taking a chance, trying new things, willing to experiment with new strategies, procedures and programs and field testing new ways of doing things. This kind of leader makes certain that followers have the knowledge, skills, and resources to do the job and do it right. He is there to help the subordinate, but does not micro-manage. Such leaders make certain their followers are ready and prepared to succeed.

Some people believe these qualities are only found in a few people who seemed to be born with these attributes. We believe all these qualities can be taught, learned, practiced, and perfected over time. If you have the will, you will find the way. This on-line curriculum is structured to help you and your staff to find that “way.” This curriculum outlines a set of steps by which staff become familiar with the skills being taught, giving them exercises to practice these skills, how to receive feedback and then given more exercises to improve these skills over time. 

You might ask: "Why don’t I just continue doing what I am doing?"

Our value is that we have a system, a set of action steps, a program in place that’s proven and that works. Our processes and systems have evolved significantly over the past nearly forty years, using a learning by doing methodology, learning what does work and what does not! But most of all, your can all evolve together and help each other learn as a team.

7. What makes EPEA different than most other groups of NGOs working in poverty alleviation?

Most of what we do, other NGOs have also tried. But the difference is the integration and synergism that characterizes the things we do. Here are a few examples:

1. We start with a carefully selected and trained group of rural development facilitators (RDFs), half being women, focusing on the best approaches and strategies of rural development theory and practice, and ensure they have the five Cs: competency, creativity, commitment, character, and compassion.
2. We take one year to build trust and respect between the RDFs and the villagers, with the RDFs learning more from the villagers than villagers learn from them. During this year the RDFs brainstorm with villagers to determine a series of projects needed and would benefit the whole community. No project is funded until the villagers themselves provide some portion of the cost through their own funds, labor, or materials. 
3. In the second year each family identifies three men and three women, who they trust and respect. From this list, a community planning committee, half being women, is selected, then trained in processes of good governance, results-based management, and adherence to Villager-determined core values.
4. This community planning committee is trained to leverage their limited funds through networking and partnerships with key stakeholders in the public, private and social sector. Successful leveraging is a very complicated and difficult skill to master. The CHOICE program is structured specifically to help smaller NGOs succeed in the very valuable skill. 
5. Each community in trained and supported in the establishment of villager-controlled development cooperatives, structured to encourage all families to participate in a savings program, complete a course in entrepreneurship (again a very difficult process if introduced by non specialists), develop their own business plans, qualify for a loan, and start their own enterprises.
6. This model works best in an area of at least 50,000 people, with no more than 20-25% of the families are in extreme poverty. This size population ensures there is a market area large enough to support a series of sustainable market chains within and outside of the program area usually consisting of at least 20 rural communities. However, we also have programs for very small NGOs who may work in only one or two communities, whose budget is more like $5000 to $10,000 or less. We are very happy to develop a less comprehensive program for much less money. 
7. One unique characteristic of this model is the formation of communities of compassion, started early in the first and second year, but strongly emphasized in the third year. Groups of men and women, supported and encouraged by the rural development facilitators (RDFs) are oriented, encouraged, and supported in the ideas of a community of compassion, meaning a large percentage of the community begins to see the extreme poor, not as a liability (beggars, illiterate, wanting a hand out), but as a potential asset becoming customers, producers, contributors to the welfare of the community. While most poverty alleviation programs are funded and managed by outsiders, the CHOICE model insists it is the community who must take the lead in identifying, supporting, and empowering the extreme poor to bring themselves out of extreme poverty. Below is a brief summary of the ways this CHOICE model was implemented in Nepal between 2013 and 2017.   

In 2015, the UN General Assembly challenged the world to eliminate extreme poverty by the year 2030. CHOICE Humanitarian documented an approach that brought nearly 10,000 people (2,000 families) in Nepal out of extreme poverty over a three-year period. Unfortunately, the impacts of most programs focusing on poverty are not sustainable, often ending when outside funds are no longer available. This CHOICE Humanitarian approach has a built-in “exit strategy” allowing CHOICE to move on to other areas every 3 years. 

While CHOICE spent roughly $1,000,000 in Nepal over a three-year period, (less than $30,000 a month) nearly half of that money remains in that area as a sustainable loan-giving fund (built into the many village cooperatives established). These CHOICE funds will continue to grow from the affordable interest rate paid by borrowers, plus the villagers' own savings also added. These villager-owned and managed cooperatives will continue to make loans to the people of the program area, funding new enterprises, employment enhancing businesses, and other projects needed by the communities, even after CHOICE leaves.

CHOICE  trains village councils, made up of an equal number of men and women, in ways to leverage their own limited resources up to five to ten times what CHOICE might give them. Teaching principles of networking and partnerships, good governance and adherence to village-determine core values, villagers develop a sense of compassion and commitment to help the extreme poor bring themselves up into a better quality of life. This process allowed CHOICE’s $1.0 million grant to be leveraged up to nearly $5.0 million.  This is the main factor why the CHOICE model is so successful. We wish to help other NGOs learn how they can leverage their limited funds up to five to ten times their original investment. 

8. Our dream is to implement this successful program in other countries of the world. If a group of less than 50 generous people were to donate $1,000 per month for 36 months, this would be enough to eliminate extreme poverty among 10,000 people (2,000 families) bringing all these men, women, and children up into a better quality of life for only $250 per family per year over a three-year period. Imagine what could happen if one thousand NGOs were working as a focused alliance in the hundred poorest countries, all using a similar program, all NGOs committed to raising the money and implementing a program that did in fact help extreme poor bring themselves into a better quality of life. Please email us, join with us, let us help you and your staff become the NGO you want to be and the world needs you to become! We believe if we had 100 NGOs committed to this approach, that government agencies, international donors and large foundations would provide the resources to fund all 100 NGOs. 

8. Where can I learn more about CHOICE Humanitarian and the Extreme Poverty Eliminated Alliance (EPEA)

Check out our web site at CHOICEHumanitarian.org,  and this interview by Devin D. Thorpe of Forbes Magazine, with our Co Founder, Dr. James B. Mayfield on You Tube.  The CHOICE Humanitarian YouTube site has other videos on our programs and projects.