A weeks training complete

It has been a busy week training and all seems to be going well albeit with occasional hitches in scheduling (its important to make allowances for the distance some of the trainees travel in order to do the training - this means the classes sometime start late much to the annoyance of anyone with Germanic blood in them;)).

There are a number of different training strands going on. This year Camara is evaluating and testing the delivery of a FETAC level 3 basic ICT course. Ultimately, the hub needs to be in a position to hand out fully accredited certificates if the training services are to be more widely recognised. 20 men and 20 women with no ICT background are being trained each week (on the week long course).

In addition, there is a training of trainers course which includes 8 men and 9 women all hand picked and identified as having great trainer potential.













The exams for an intermediate ICT certificate for a selection of trainees that have undergone the Hub intermediate ICT course (run by the locals here) are also being run. On July 26th it is hoped that over 200 people will graduate with a Camara endorsed certificate at a special ceremony to be held in the massive Aga Khan Hall in the centre of town (massive because we expect about a 1000 people plus to attend the event!).

Finally, but most importantly, a number of high level intense ICT course are being run with the most advanced trainees in the hub. These include a networking course, a Web design Course, An understanding Linux course and an advanced computer maintenance course.

I have paid close attention to the last few courses and once again am amazed at how quickly people are absorbing extremely technical and complex ideas that they are being bombarded with. In the networking course for example the trainees are already building their own mini network (with online access) in a corner of the hub. In the web design course people are now programming web pages in HTML. In the Linux course people are doing command line scripting to fix problems with Xservers etc and in the maintenance course people are swapping drives, replacing BIOS batteries and experimenting with jumper lead settings for master slave CD, hard disk configurations.













Its genuinely fantastic to see the local people totally engaged and excited about what they are learning. There is no doubt that in a very short time, they will be teaching us a trick or two about how to operate computers out here.

I know I have said it before but it really does seem that you can make a genuine difference in a short space of time because you are leaving the technology in the hands of the locals when you leave. If the intense training is done right you can catalyse peoples expertise and interest in a way that allows them continue learning when you leave. And even if they only have limited online access they can even be helped from afar!

This final element is a great example of how technology can sustain and nurture the important human connections that are essential to keep everyone 'growing'.