Annual Report 1998

The Bernard van Leer Foundation supports projects that work to improve opportunities for young children living in disadvantaged circumstances. I therefore want to start my report by recording our recognition of the wonderful commitment to the well-being of young children that is shown by all the
projects that we support.
I also want to thank my colleagues in the Foundation for their continued commitment and enthusiasm.With our Strategic Plan to guide us, 1998 was another year in which we made good
progress in improving quality in all aspects of our work: from developing our programme of project support; through launching new dissemination devices; to enhancing internal efficiency.We also looked back to learn more from our accumulated experiences; and continued to look outwards to learn from others. A report like this can only give a flavour of what we have been doing, why and with what results. It is arranged under the following sections: Supporting projects (page 5); Gathering, analysing and sharing (page 8); Partnerships and external relationships (page 11); Preparing for tomorrow (page 12); Events and awards (page 13); The Board of Trustees (page 15); and Conclusions (page 15). the conceptualisation, development and operational stages of projects; and in evaluation and follow-up work. This means that we develop working relationships with our partners
in which we learn from one another. One strategically important benefit for the Foundation is that such relationships allow us to draw out the lessons that are being learned at all stages in the life of a project. It is this knowledge that forms the core of the dissemination work that I discuss later in this report (see pages 8-11). During 1998 the Foundation approved grants to 125 projects in 37 countries, for a total value of  20.8 million. A list of grants of  15,000 and above can be found on pages 25-33, while the Financial Report (pages 18-23) gives a breakdown of all figures associated with project support. Quality improvement Over the years, the Foundation has developed a very diverse programme of project support across the many regions and countries where it has a presence. Our highly contextual approach to programme development allows us to do justice to local circumstances and conditions in which disadvantaged children live. At the same time we have increasingly become aware of the need to identify the common ground and explore issues of quality which affect all projects.We feel that a better grasp of the issues, based on a discussion of relevant experiences, could give further impetus to improved strategies and methods for programme development.
As a result,  began a series of in-house discussions on elements of quality important to
intervention projects with children, families and communities. The idea is to determine the key
issues that contribute to the success or failure of a project and then try to distil criteria from
these that can be applied in future assessment and monitoring of new project submissions.
So far, a number of key issues have been clustered for discussions. These range from:
early childhood development projects in comprehensive community development programmes, through the work of projects being sustainable, to issues of documentation and innovation in themes, objectives and strategies.

Bernard van Le e r Foundation 7 Annua l Repor t
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