Friday 25 May 2012

Nurturing Mutomo ICT Gurus


...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.
 
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.

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.

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.

For more captivating testimonies, please follow these links:



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