White welly day!

Making connections with a new Vocational Training Institute

I’m in Gulu this week, in the heart of Northern Uganda. And today I had the joy of making connections and building relations with Rev Samuel and the staff of a new vocational training institute being developed here.

There was already a VTI in existence, set up to provide rehabilitation and training for young people who had been abducted by the Lords Resistance Army back in the 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s. Now that the war is over, those young people find themselves cast out of society, ashamed of their past, and having missed out on education.

The VTI was set up to provide them with income generating skills, a chance to earn money, and hope for the future. And that’s what it has been doing, on a small scale. But now the plan is to upscale, reach out to more young people and offer state of the art training, in purpose built facilities, through a number of different courses. Each course will be linked to an income-generating component, enabling the college to be fully integrated into the community, and for the students to have workplace opportunities as part of their training.

My host for the day was Rev Samuel, who is project managing the building of the new development, and, along with site manager Kenneth, they showed me around the site.

It was great to see how much progress has been made, and all the plans for the future, and I look forward to coming back in months to come and seeing it grow and develop.

The afternoon was spent with the wider staff team at the existing college, sharing with them the training materials that I have been developing over the past 18 months. It was humbling to see just how excited they were about the materials, and how quickly the staff could see the relevance of the concepts within the ethos of the college, and again I look forward to coming back and sharing more with them in person, as well as via zoom.

So, my thanks to Rev Samuel and to Kenneth for the tour (and the chance to wear bright white safety wellies!), and to James the college principal, and all of the staff for welcoming me to the college and allowing me to share my training with them.

Here’s to the next visit!