Achieving more with less

Jaume Clupès is president of the Spanish Federation of child care and education organisations, Fedaia. Spain’s economic crisis, in his opinion, obviously poses challenges to the sector but we must not forget that civil society in Spain today is much stronger than 15 years ago and offers a wealth of economic and social opportunities. At the same time it has a resilience and flexibility that other sectors do not have, like the capacity to cut costs, collaborate and innovate at short notice. Fedaia also have an ace up their sleeves: a law fresh from the printing press guaranteeing the government’s commitment to promote children’s rights.

What effect is the economic crisis having on the Spanish third sector?

The economic crisis we are living through is generating a social crisis and this means that the scenario within which we as a sector work changes radically. The number of people risking social exclusion increases as does the number of people seeking our services and the most vulnerable members of society are those who suffer the most. Having said this, the Spanish third sector has grown tremendously in the past 15 years, I think that at the moment we produce something like 2% or 3% of the GDP so the social economy that we represent can and does play an important role in the nation’s economy. Even in times of crisis it is a sector with much potential, to generate employment, for example. In view of the crisis, there are obviously fewer public and private funds available but our aim has to be either to achieve more with the same amount of funds or the same amount with fewer funds.

What measures can NGOs take to meet the challenges of working with fewer funds?

Our weakness as a sector is that we depend on others for our resources and the crisis creates short and long term planning problems. I think that the priority has to be becoming more specialized, strengthening networks and working together, creating formulas to increase the competitiveness of our organizations and structures, and perhaps most of all revising our organisation and management. Another fundamental activity and something that as a sector we have always valued and promoted but that perhaps we should work on even more is the continued evaluation of the quality of our services and the stimulation of innovation. We have to promote transparency in our management, perhaps communicate more, promote and further our knowledge and obviously also improve our power of persuasion over politicians.

The Spanish government has recently approved a law guaranteeing rights and opportunities to children and adolescents. How do the authorities plan to reconcile the recent public spending cuts with their commitment to bringing an end to child exclusion?

This is the conundrum! And something we are very uncertain about. The government has just approved this law that we have been pushing for more than 5 years; it is a very good law and one that should protect children’s rights, especially children who risk social exclusion. But no clear or well defined budget has been allocated that indicates that the law can be implemented over the course of the next two or three years. So it is indeed very difficult to find a compromise between on the one hand cutting budgets and on the other increasing them. This is one of our battles at the moment, however it is clear that the government has accepted the need to strengthen the third sector so we just have to wait and see how this translates in terms of funding and budgets.

Can anything positive be gleamed from this crisis at all?

Yes, I think all crises have some positive aspects. I’m not sure about elsewhere but in Spain we have been living far above our economic means and I think that less immediate wealth will result in less compulsive buying, people will be more cautious in their spending and perhaps material goods will have a longer shelf life than they have had recently. Young people especially will have to learn to look after things and that there are no easy outcomes. The lack of jobs reduces resources for children, but perhaps young people will stay in school longer, they will spend more years studying. I think these are some of the positive outcomes that we can gleam amongst the many negatives.