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...Employment status analysis showed
that the non-working group was the majority with 50 % followed by farmers with 20%.Working/self-employed
registered 16% while civil servants
had 14%.
Additionally, analyzed level of
education showed that 79% of the
trainees had reached O-Level education while 14 % had college education and 3%
had gone up Primary School.
The selection
criteria
To get started with the training,
interested community members were grouped into two for effective training given
available computers. All the trainees were called for a brief meeting where the
training objectives were explained and the trainer Mr. Phillip Kyule introduced
to the trainees. The Advisory Committee
Chairman, Mr.Benson Nyamai also addressed the participants and emphasized to
them how this was a rare opportunity which had to be exploited for the benefit
of the community. Trainees were also informed about the role of Maarifa centre,
the need for punctuality, and some basic norms and rules to be maintained
during the training sessions.
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The trainees were segregated into
four training sessions which was:
- 8.00 a.m-10.00 a.m-trainees who
live near Mutomo town and immediate surrounding (mostly youth)
- 11.00 a.m-1.00p.m- Trainees who
live a distance from Mutomo (mostly youth)
- 2.00p.m- 4.00p.m-Farmers and
adults who were 36 years and above
- 5.00 p.m -7.00p.m-The working
class
The first group consisting of 58 trainees (31F, 27M) commenced training on 17th January 2012. The
trainees were of diverse ages. The youngest trainee was 17 years old while the
oldest was 63 years old. This first class successfully completed the training
session on 28th February 2012 while the other group of 56 trainees (M
-18, F- 38) is currently being trained.
What trainees want to do!
The
trainees’ ideas in utilizing the skills are as diverse as their ages and
professions. While youth hope to secure employment with the skills gained,
business people want to gain record keeping skills while farmers hope to be
self-reliant in ICT.
The trainer’s Experience
According to the trainer, Mr.
Philip Kyule, training the diverse community members has been an eye opener for
him. He says the trainees’ capacity to grasp the content lied largely on their
ages and educational back ground adding that the adults tended more reserved
around the machines as compared to youth.
Mr. Kyule adds that the training
made him learn how to interact with people of
different age groups, how to handle their different needs and how to train them
despite the different rates of grasping content.
“ While the youth were
enthusiastic and wanted to practically learn everything, the adults wanted to learn record keeping skills and
business applications like MS Excel’’ he says.
Lessons learnt
“I would highly recommend
grouping the trainees according to ages and
education as this enables the trainer to tailor the training according to the
pace and understanding of the trainees” adds Philip.
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Since
all the students did not have the same learning capacity, Mr.Kyule says that he
had to cope with students who were slow in grasping the content.
He concludes that from the first experience he
found out that for effective training, one has to always put emphasis in
learning his/her trainees’ areas of
interest so as to ensure they get a high quality training and enjoy the
exercise at the same time.
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The most popular package!
Mr,
Kyule says that Ms PowerPoint was most liked by the students because of its
graphic features.
“Trainees
loved to put animations in their presentations and watch the slideshows,” he
says.
Listen to the trainees voices…
Anastasia Mueni Peter is a casual
employee at Mutomo Mission Hospital.
“Part of my job requires me to
order for supplies through a computer, but ever since I was employed, I used to
stare at the computer because I had no idea how to use it” she says.
She adds that now that she has gained
computer skills she can order supplies comfortably therefore saving a lot of
time.
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