Kalingalinga Youth resource Centre

Visit on 6th February to Kalingalinga Youth Resource Centre. There I had a meeting with the director Mr Ben Sambambi, Mr Isaac Chanda (the trainer of Ndola Resource Centre, one of our training partners in this Youth Resource Centre programme) and a group of several teachers that have been trained by Isaac and his colleagues.

Situation on the ground

What was clear during my visit that the ICT skills were utilized in the several classes, although they would like to incorporate even more, by moving PC's to each class room. But what I did see were designs for carpernty and tailoring done in excel, an accountant that could do his accounts in Excel and Pastel, a foodproduction teacher who designed menu's for the catering services. They trained around 300 students in basic ICT. One of the brightest is now taken on as a staff to assist in webdesign.

Interview with Isaac Chanda, Ndola Resource Centre

The challenge is the number of PC's, so that not all skills could be practiced a lot. Connectivity is not there, so they have to go to an internet cafe and also the level of ICT literacy is not yet high enough. They require more training, because there is a high demand from students. The number of staff compared to students is still too low and in order to generate more funds they teach also students with more money. The idea is to subsidize training for the poor, but because of too little staff they train too many with some money and not enough without. More females are trained than males, because of the total number of studens (there are more females and the vocational centre)

Interview with Mr Ben Sambambi, Manager Kalingalinga Youth Resource Centre

Dream

Encourage students to use ICT in all classes with classrooms equiped with enough computers and teachers with enough ICT skills. And with an internet cafe that is used in the day time for classes and in the evening to generate some money. The internet cafe should also be a library.