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Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) |
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The Aga Khan Foundation is a recent creation (1967) of the
present Imam. Many of the institutions with which it collaborates
including those in the Aga Khan Education and Health Services,
go back to the time of the 48th Imam, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah,
and were brought into their present organisation under the present
Aga Khan. It is convenient to treat these institutions in succession
because they have close links in common fields of interest. |
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In the jargon of the American foundation world, the Aga Khan
Foundation is partly a grantmaking and partly an operating foundation.
Its staff develops projects and programmes that depend not solely
on its own financial resources but on those of other foundations
and development agencies. As such, it has both set patterns
for and provided direct help in the building of AKU; in particular,
the funding of IED is largely from international sources, notably
the European Community, and was assembled largely through the
efforts and contacts of AKF. The mission of AKF as recently
set forth in its publication, International Strategy 1991-1999,
"is to promote sustainable and equitable social development
in Asia and Africa". It does this in three principal fields
: health, education, and rural development. Its staff is equally
divided between these fields, but rural development has recently
had the largest share of funding. AKF declares that its strategy
in each of these fields is to seek innovative approaches and
to "develop principles and management approaches ... that
can be applied more broadly by the Foundation's grantees and
by other agencies; i.e., AKF is searching for ideas and methods
that are replicable". Instances of success in this strategy
have been reported to the Commission, e.g., in the adoption
of AKF-supported rural development models by the World Bank
and the Government of Pakistan. |
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The Foundation has been praised for reaching the poor directly,
and His Highness in the introduction to the AKF strategy paper
puts emphasis on "breaking through the isolation which keeps
those in local communities from knowing what might be accomplished".
Grantees are typically "grass roots" private organisations and
local communities; this is not a foundation dealing primarily
with governments, policy studies or research. As such, it follows
strategies of development assistance that have been prominent
internationally since the 1970s. It emphasises that it is "non-denominational"
and serves all comers in the areas where it is active; but naturally
there is particular attention to areas such as Northern Pakistan,
or Gujarat in India, where needy Ismaili populations can benefit.
In a general way, AKF's approach to development appears as a
modern expression of the traditional Islamic injunction to care
for the poor and disadvantaged. |
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The existence of AKF means that AKU has among its sister institutions
one that has a deep and fairly wide-ranging engagement with
development problems. This is a source of opportunities and
knowledge; it also poses questions of effective collaboration
and division of labour. The brief description above of IED's
history shows that IED would not now exist as a part of AKU
without the work of the Foundation. Conceivably, IED might have
been developed as a project under the Foundation without AKU,
and the Commission has heard the view that this would have been
no bad thing. But there were clear contributions AKU could make
: it could offer degrees which would raise the attractions of
the programme to participating teachers and do something to
enhance the status of teachers; it could provide an academic
home for the leadership of the project and an encouraging setting
for the research which must be a part of it. The future of IED
will lead it into activities with schools that should build
on the Foundation's work, and that may also raise questions
as to which institution, University or Foundation, is better
suited to develop certain lines of effort. We carry this discussion
no further here since we shall have to return to it when we
consider the future of IED, education and human development
in the University. [Section VII .4 below] |
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Each of the fields in which AKF has expertise and experience
offers similar opportunities and also needs for working out
effective complementarities. The Harvard Report recommended
that AKU should give particular attention to Rural Policy and
Management. The Commission has reviewed this recommendation
and it has been led by other subjects into reflections on the
balance of attention AKU might give to rural and urban areas.
The rapid urbanisation of much of the developing world and the
existence of AKF's programmes and competencies has suggested
to some members that AKU should favour attention to the problems
of urban areas, leaving engagements with rural development to
the Foundation. There has been in AKU strong resistance to any
such clear preference. But it is clear that at present AKU lacks
the competencies in rural development that the Foundation has
and any programme planning should take account of that fact. |
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The strategy of the Aga Khan Foundation in seeking ideas and
methods that provide replicable responses to development problems
brings it close to the approaches university programmes in development
would naturally follow. In its own work in development, AKU
may thus anticipate collaboration with a like-minded member
of AKDN. The type of relationship that the development of IED
has shown may be only one among numerous future possibilities,
where shared efforts in devising projects and evaluating them
may be more conspicuous. Whatever the opportunities and relationships
to particular fields that AKF may present to the University
in the future, its present programme suggests it is likely to
exert a continuing influence toward concern with poor and disadvantaged
populations and areas. We have suggested that AKF, despite its
"non-denominational" character, represents a modern expression
of the Islamic sense of communal responsibility for the needy,
and it may exert an influence on AKU in the same sense. Such
influence from one part of AKDN may also be reinforced by others
to which we now turn. |
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