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6.3 Participatory skill development: For-profit and NGO training activities

Guest post by: International Labour Organization

Article Overview: 'Participatory skill development' is perhaps the best term to describe the underlying rationale of an altogether new approach to skill development among the poor that has been adopted by many NGOs.

6.3 Participatory skill development: For-profit and NGO training activities

'Participatory skill development' is perhaps the best term to describe the underlying rationale of an altogether new approach to skill development among the poor that has been adopted by many NGOs. This approach draws heavily on the educational philosophy of the late Paulo Freire who criticised the 'banking education' of government schools and training institutions as being profoundly conservative, elitist, and dysfunctional for the large majority. This is because formal education and training acts as a selection mechanism for the usually small minority of children, most of whom are from mainly privileged socio-economic backgrounds, who manage to get 'good jobs' in the formal sector.

Faced with this situation, the response of an increasing number of NGOs has been to develop forms of non-formal education and training that encourage and empower the poor to challenge the unequal social relations that result in mass poverty. Freire highlighted the fundamental importance of literacy in this process of consciousness-raising and emancipation, but this has been extended to other forms of training.

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

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Article Tags: banking education, dysfunctional, economic backgrounds, educational philosophy, elitist, emancipation, employment and training, formal education, formal sector, fundamental importance, importance of literacy, international labour office, mass poverty, ngos, paul bennell, paulo freire, selection mechanism, skill development, small minority, training institutions



Related Forum Posts
Training and Self Development - It's interesting to me that the latest StatsCan study shows that the majority of ongoing professional development training is paid for by large corporations. Yet, at the same time it is small business and entrepreneurs who need to invest in this exact training in order to remain competitive. So why is it that we are not taking ongoing professional development training? Is it time? Money? No perceived need? I'd appreciate it if you could take a second to answer the attached poll.
Training Budgets - Louis, When I first started out there wasn't any money for training. Everything went into making the product and trying to close a sale. Now that I have staff I'm starting to look at professional development as an investment in them. It helps keep them motivated and hopefully they bring back some skills that can help my company. Do you have any suggestions on what a good target % would be to spend on training / professional development? Jennifer.
One Thing To Note - As a trainer myself, I'm always amazed at the lengths organizations go to to pay for training and then not follow through. Any training I design myself has to have at least an offer built in for future support as well, for the benefit of those receiving the training, the organizer and the people the trainee works with. Corporates don't seem to like this too much - they often seem to want to budget, sign it off, run it and close it off. I'd always ensure that there is the offer of ongoing support/challenge/development in some shape of form. Not sure what Louis or any other training providers find...
Re: Training and Self Development - I've found the biggest barrier is leaders who don't completely buy-in to the notion that training is needed. For example, if leadership doesn't value or believe in team building then they will not be very likely to support a long-term, comprehensive program to help create a new team building culture. I've noticed that training and self-development work best when people are committed to practicing new behaviors over time. [Link removed by forum admin]
Training - Louis: Some regulated industries mandate that you attend training. However, even then, finding time to meet those requirements becomes an issue. This may explain the growth of tele-seminars. To answer your questions though, ROI is very important and everyone needs to sell or market no matter what they do. The best tip I ever got on training is not to pitch training as training b/c even big companies have limited budgets for training but training rebranded as "sales support." It makes the ROI argument that much more appealing. Hope that helps. Good luck.


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