6.2 Traditional interventions: For-profit and NGO training activities

The training programmes of traditional NGOs have been similar in many respects to those offered by public sector VET government institutions. In particular, long-term pre-employment training in traditional trades for school leavers and the disabled have predominated. Church-run trade schools, especially in rural areas, have played a major role in providing training to school drop-outs in many low income countries in SSA. Training provision by these NGOs is frequently of better quality and more efficient than by government training centres. This is mainly due to the strong commitment of centre managers and instructors coupled with a more practical orientation (often involving direct production activities for income-generation purposes), and a marked emphasis on fostering certain attitudes and life skills (see Box 11).

The high quality of NGO training programmes can, however, have unintended, adverse consequences. In particular, training has often become excessively formal sector oriented as, over time, major employers come to recognise the quality of the training provided (both skills and attitudes) and give preference to NGO graduates rather than students from government training institutions when recruiting new staff. However, this type of de facto competition merely displaces public sector trainees from their positions at or near the front of job queues and, in so doing, makes NGO training increasingly attractive to the non-poor.

Drop-out rates also tend to be very high, especially when the duration of courses is relatively long i.e. more than a year. Declining donor support for VET in many countries is another critical problem. This is particularly the case for rural training centres which, faced with small markets and strong competition from informal sector enterprises, are often unable to generate significantly higher levels of income from their own production activities (see Bennell et al, 1998a).

Given the growing role of NGOs in poverty reduction, it is surprising to find that no comprehensive and detailed surveys of the outputs and impacts of NGO skill development activities have been undertaken in recent years. Back in the mid-1980s, Goodale surveyed 132 income generating projects with 80 women's groups in SSA and found that not one of these projects was profitable (see Goodale, 1989). A review in the early 1990s by OXFAM concluded that "training has all too often been offered with no knowledge of the potential market for particular product or skills (OXFAM, 1992). This has particularly serious consequences when trainees are encouraged to borrow relatively large sums of money to start or expand an enterprise. In Asia, "many of the NGO-based programmes are out-moded and do not meet the prescribed standards" (ILO, 1994:8). In Central America, the ILO-supported Promicro project has attempted to build up the institutional capacities of local NGOs largely through networking. The evaluation of the project notes that while the number of NGOs has grown rapidly, most of their interventions remain quite limited and there are numerous "technical weaknesses". Most only offer credit "with mixed results" (see Maldonado, 1996)

More generally, lack of clarity in objectives, priorities and strategies by NGOs involved in skill development for the poor is a common criticism. Projects also tend to be staffed by those with community development backgrounds rather than business and enterprise development (McGrath et al, 1995). As with public sector training institutions, gender training has tended to focus on stereotyped tasks and occupations. Failure to utilise effectively the skills that have been acquired is a universal problem. In her discussion of training for the disabled in India, Harriss-White refers to this as the "paradox of disability" in that "the rehabilitated individual is too skilled for the available employment opportunities in the village" (see Harris-White, 1996).

EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING PAPERS 43 Learning to change: Skills development among the economically vulnerable and socially excluded in developing countries Paul Bennell Employment and Training Department International Labour Office Geneva First published 1999 To learn more about this author, visit International Labour Organization's Website.

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