What price values if cash is king?

How much does it cost to teach a child about honesty, respect or courage - and how much money is that worth?

The question is, of course, impossible to answer. If there is one value the people involved with values education struggle with, it is monetary value.

There are about eight main organisations trying to foster values education of different kinds, and they have at least two things in common.

They all want to build a stronger, more caring society by helping schools to develop the character of children and teenagers. And they all struggle to get the money to do it.

The problem, they say, is that they cannot offer a sponsor anything to emblazon a logo on. The benefits of values education are long term and intangible, and you cannot sell naming rights to a child's mind or soul.

"It's not marketable in the current sense," says Margaret Ross Mohamed, who started the NZ Virtues Project seven years ago with $200. The project has taught hundreds of teachers how to cultivate character and self-esteem in children by fostering virtues such as honesty, compassion and justice.

It once received a grant of $1500 from Trust Bank, has had partnerships with community organisations, and charges schools for teacher-training courses, but has never received any other money.

At one stage the Government paid beneficiaries to attend courses to learn to become better parents, but it stopped because fostering virtues did not count as job training.

"We just run on the smell of an oily rag. I think this year we made about $500 in the end," says Mrs Mohamed.

"We've heard it's really hard to get funding, so we haven't put a lot of energy into it ... We put our energies into just organising our own training, and assisting people as much as we can."

The most concerted effort yet to introduce values education into schools, the Living Values Project, runs out of money on December 7.

A pilot scheme has been running in 20 private and public schools for two years. It helps schools and their communities to identify their inherent values and develop strategies to promote them in the school.

Director Judy Lawley says money is a big anxiety. People all over the world are warming to the idea of teaching values, but few are reaching into their pockets. The Living Values project is one of the few with funding from the Ministry of Education, and is also supported by the Independent Schools Council and Fletcher Challenge.

The Government is not promising any more money, and the future, says Judy Lawley, lies in partnerships with the community and industry.

"We've got to get people together so they can see what's in it for them. I've got six months to go, and I'm not as far down that track as I would like to be."

Adrian Feasey, marketing and fundraising manager for the Peace Foundation, can relate to her difficulties. For nearly a decade the foundation has run the Cool Schools programme, which fosters children's sense of responsibility and fairness through peer mediation in more than 1200 schools. It has not received any national funding.

The Health Funding Authority pays for the foundation's programme in Northland, Auckland and the South Island, some schools or communities elsewhere shoulder the cost, and it gets money from the Tindall Foundation to go into low socio-economic areas.

"Funding has always been difficult," Mr Feasey says. "A lot of the funding bodies these days only want to fund the pretty stuff, the project delivery. They will fund resources being distributed, but they won't fund salaries, they won't fund travel or any of the administration."

Like Judy Lawley and other programme leaders, Mr Feasey advocates whole-organisation backing from a partnership of sponsors, working together long term.

"The thing with preventive measures - and values education is obviously preventive - you put the research and the money into grassroots, into the kids, and the long-term benefits come out when they're adults.

"But to do that you've got to have a long-term vision. When everyone wants to see results from day to day, or within this financial year, it makes it difficult."

He says organisations such as the Peace Foundation have to package their programmes in the jargon of the times.

"Peace" is hard to sell, he says, because it has connotations with the hippy culture of the 1960s and 70s. The terms "conflict resolution" or "anti-bullying" are more likely to elicit funds.

Another of the few projects with Government funding is Health Promoting Schools, which has been tried out in schools for 31/2 years and concentrates on providing a safe and healthy environment, physically and emotionally.

It fits into the new health and physical education curriculum, which urges schools to look after the emotional and spiritual side of students as well as to help them develop mentally and emotionally.

The curriculum has been criticised for not giving schools enough guidance on how to fulfil the new prescription.

Several of the organisations without Government money survive by relying on volunteers.

Mrs Mohamed works part-time for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so she can afford to work for the trust for nothing.

"There's a lot more we could do if we had funding to pay people. We could run a lot more training programmes, but that requires a level of administration support that is limited by the voluntary nature of the work we're doing."

A programme called Philosophy for Children, which helps children and teenagers to learn how to think by tapping into their natural curiosity, also relies on volunteers and has never had a grant.

There are only five people qualified to do teacher training in philosophy in New Zealand and their efforts are limited because they all have other jobs.

Dr Vanya Kovich, who works at the University of Auckland, says the philosophers and teachers involved do it for nothing because they believe in it, like many other people working in values education.

"We would love to have sponsorship ... It's not actually a very expensive programme, [but] lower-decile schools have got enormous pressure on their professional development budgets."

Retired principal John Heenan has led the Foundation for Values Education on a voluntary basis from his Southland home since 1993, producing hundreds of Cornerstone Values kits for schools. The kits advocate a set of core values, including honesty, kindness, consideration, compassion, obedience, responsibility and respect. They teach children what these mean and how to apply them.

The foundation received an initial grant of $23,300 from the Lottery Grants Board and funding from a philanthropic foundation, and charges schools for the material, which was adapted from the United States.

"It doesn't require a great deal of money, and money doesn't necessarily mean quality, but it does need some funding," says Mr Heenan.

"I would like to find a wealthy benefactor. The American work is all funded by wealthy benefactors, and the federal Government provides extra funding for states that will move on character education."

He says money could also come from the community and businesses.

But values education is difficult to get cash for because it is nebulous, he says. "An intervention project for drug or alcohol dependency or violence or bullying is more tangible."

Gaye Moriarty, national director of the Child Development Foundation, which has taken its Reaching Out and Reaching Forward programmes into more than 1200 schools since 1989, says funding options are running out.

It is a social skills programme run by teachers which helps children to build their confidence and self-esteem, set goals and deal with pressures.

Rotary helped set it up, and it received an initial grant from the Lottery Grants Board of $400,000, but that was cut to $30,000 this year and will disappear next year.

"It's becoming harder and harder [to get sponsorship], certainly with the America's Cup and the Olympics. That's where all the money is going because it has such a high profile. And businesses are looking at the commercial reality - the 'feelgood' dollar out of corporates is not there."

Lions-Quest has been introducing its Life Skills programme to schools since 1987, to help children reject harmful influences and adopt healthy living.

The Lions clubs have supplied the bulk of the money, but this year's Lottery Grants Board contribution is down to $15,000 and it will be the last, says administration manager Jenni Brook.

Despite the signs, Mr Heenan is optimistic that the money for values education will come, as people start to understand its potential for improving society.

"I'm sure it's going to happen because the interest around the country is significant. Good things happen from the grassroots, not from the top down."