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winter 2008 issue
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Learning and local partnershipsBy Kathleen Collett, Researcher In many developing areas across Africa and throughout the world where resources for training are limited and formal employment is scarce, it is vital that vocational training is directly relevant to the local market. Community partnerships which integrate skills training into viable income-generating businesses can provide funding for education, enable communities to take ownership of their education and give learners valuable experience and business skills. Local training partnerships, however, face many challenges, including finding resources, developing effective management strategies, and accessing technical knowledge to support training. Given the widespread presence of international organisations in many of the world’s most deprived areas, can they support sustainable skills training by helping local community partnerships overcome these challenges? A Himalayan woman uses traditional farming methods In a recent paper, delivered at the Pan-African TVET Conference, CSD, along with the NGO Teach a Man to Fish, outlined three projects that demonstrate ways in which international organisations can help local partnerships to deliver relevant training. The paper examined sustainable agriculture projects in Kenya, Paraguay and the Indian Himalayas. CSD’s Himalayan project shows how an international organisation can use curriculum development knowledge to translate local economic needs into a set of teachable skills, which can then be used and adapted by the community. We worked with Pragya, a local organisation which aims to establish training centres in areas that are cut off from the surrounding areas by snow for large parts of the year. Labour mobility is very low, and the training centres need to provide skills directly required in the area. This project poses a question: how does one translate local economic needs into a set of teachable skills to ensure that the training provided by the schools can be used and adapted by the community? Our approach has been to work with local organisations to identify skills needs and tailor existing courses to meet these needs. We are also making sure that the processes of training needs analysis and employer engagement are documented throughout the development of learning materials for these remote areas, so that we can produce a model of how best to produce locally relevant courses. This model can be used to keep courses up to date, and to develop them in response to the changing needs of the community, changing technologies and the developing abilities of the teachers. The conference paper also outlined projects delivered by the NGO Teach a Man to Fish which demonstrate how international organisations can support local partnerships by establishing international networks for sharing challenges and solutions, providing management support to help the project manage risks and helping projects to access funding for training equipment. In one example, Teach a Man to Fish has been involved with the San Francisco Agricultural School, which teaches agricultural and business skills by integrating students’ education and training with profit-making school agricultural enterprises. The School’s involvement with Teach a Man to Fish’s international network has resulted in increased international recognition for its achievements and better connections to development agencies. Teach a Man to Fish has also assisted the School to acquire the management skills that a school running a business requires. Teach a Man to Fish has consistently worked with the School and its partner, Foundation Paraguay, on improving business planning, record keeping and accounting systems which are fundamental to school enterprises achieving and maintaining profitability. The School is now financially self-sufficient, and delivers high quality agricultural training to poor people in the area. In their work with several Kenyan schools, Teach a Man to Fish have also provided technical and management assistance. Their main contribution, however, has been to help the schools develop a network for sharing experiences and expertise. Each of the above projects shows how some of the difficult problems of partnerships between international organisations and local implementing organisations can be lessened by taking a facilitative role which seeks to leave the partnerships in the developing world in control of their self-generated funding, as well as embedded in a network of local support links, and with a greater capacity to react to and manage change as a result of management and financial training. |
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