Project meetings

Being a foreign advisor for a social inclusion project in a country like Colombia at an organization like SENA (which offers short term vocational & trades training to about 7 million people each year) requires all sort of "peoples skills". Yesterday we had a meeting with 16 professionals from SENA on our EFE (Education for Employment) project which started at 8 AM and lasted till 6 PM. Five people came from the provinces of Bolivar and Antioquia, where our EFE project activities are concentrated and joined ten colleagues from the HQ of SENA in Bogota. Teachers, managers and advisors from mining, agriculture, entrepreneurship and other social inclusion programs participated. It was the first meeting of such a scale to reflect on the work we have done as a team during the past four months and also to update a few new colleagues for our EFE program implementation. The dynamics were great and it is always a good sign when I don't have to do a lot of the talking or stimulating at such sessions as an outside advisor...

To the right on this photo are Aida and Blanca, two coordinators of SENA in the Antioquia province. To their left two curriculum developers for the mining training programs at SENA HQ and in the middle Rodolfo, one of the teachers of SENA in the south of the Bolivar province. Aida and Blanca presented the work they have done in April in two mining communities in Antioquia to get input from the local people on what they perceive as additional training needs to be delivered by SENA:

 

To the right of Aida and Blanca is Sandra, my great partner-in-crime at the Bogota office, and next to her sits Juan Guillermo, the manager in Antioquia, a real project champion.

 

Fredy is a mining expert and advisor to SENA about their training programs. He presented a recent analysis of the demand and offer of technicians and technologists needed in the mineral mining of Colombia. The harder part is to make estimates about the needs for short term training courses.

During the lunch break Sandra, Bibiana (on the right), Juan Guillermo and I had a Skype meeting with Anne-Marie Robert, the Project Support Officer in the ACCC office in Ottawa. I will finish this short post with a photo of Bibiana and Juan Guillermo immersed in that conversation. I look forward to accompany Bibiana and Juan Guillermo from May 29 to June 8 during a training trip to Canada during which we will attend the annual ACCC conference as well as visit a few Canadian community colleges in northern British Columbia.