Learn a trade at XICS Senegal

12.08.2010 10:09

Learn a trade at XICS Senegal

www.fcbarcelona.cat

The first twenty youngsters have graduated from the XICS Senegal trade school.

The centre trains youngsters with a poor educational background in tailoring, hairdressing, home electrics and computer skills, thereby giving them a chance to enter the job market.

The XICS Senegal centre of the FC Barcelona Foundation was inaugurated in October 2007 and right from the start has made a firm commitment to teaching their charges a trade. This year, some five different workshops were organized which will help provide a future in the local community for the participants.

Literacy and learning a trade

Training in trade skills is offered to young people who left school early (or never attended one) in the town of Richard Toll, where the centre is located.

These young people are unemployed and current Senegalese educational policy does not allow them into publicly funded trade schools unless they are literate. That’s where XICS Senegal comes into action, offering eight hours a week of literacy skills plus between ten and twelve hours of training in a trade.

Five different workshops

The centre, which had to be extended to accommodate these classes, offers courses in tailoring, hairdressing, home electrics and computer skills. The courses last two years and this year the first group of 20 students graduated in tailoring. They received a diploma which will enable them to enrol in a public centre in order to complete their studies and obtain an official qualification.

Improving trade skills

The tailoring students will now widen their knowledge with a workshop in dyes which is scheduled for the next course. They have also formed a cooperative to make uniforms for a local sugar company and for the Town Hall.

The home electrics and carpentry workshops will begin their second course next September. These trades face an added challenge in that the majority of the students are ‘talibés’, marginalized youngsters who come from the Senegalese Koranic schools. The carpentry workshop will soon be starting up a programme of on-the-job training with local companies.

The creation of a cyber café

The computer skills workshop trains the youngsters to works as secretaries or in administration. When there are no classes, the premises are used as a community cyber café. Until now, there was only one in the entire town and it was always full. The cyber café has been open to the local community at a suitably low cost since last course. It’s open from 6-9 pm and at weekends.