Two weeks ago we organized a community stakeholder input session in the municipality of Barranco de Loba in the south of the province of Bolivar. Any of these meetings starts with the national anthem followed by the provincial and sometimes also local municipality anthems. The miners were eager to participate and "have their say"...
After some formal opening words (yours truly also had to speak a few words in his "portinol" on behalf of the Canadian participation in the EFE program), we divided the audience up in a number of small groups who discussed - from their perspectives - the perceived training needs in both small scale mining and small scale agriculture. After two hours the groups reported back and we closed with a nice lunch together offered by the mayor of Barranco de Loba:
SENA staff facilitated the groups when needed and we als had the help of two female young professionals from the Canadian mining company Ashmont, a new business starting a clean mining operation in nearby Minas Santa Cruz (see one of the former posts):
At the end my colleague Bibiana, regional Director of SENA operations, explained how we will follow up with actions during the coming four years. We will not just be "another meeting", but will translate their requests in concrete training offerings. SENA already has a number of programs "on the shelves" which can be offered during the coming 12 months and in 2014 we will start offering new programs which will come out of the work between SENA and a few Canadian colleges.
This week we have done the same sessions in a few mining communities in the neighbouring province of Antioquia. One or two posts will follow this weekend or the following weekend. Next week we will do community sessions in Santa Rosa del Sur, another pilot community in Bolivar.
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