A thematic working group for a provision of continuing professional training co-constructed by the different actors of the forestry-wood sector

What is the Thematic Working Group on Continuing Vocational Training?

The Thematic Working Group on Continuing Vocational Training (TWG CVT) brings together in each of the 4 countries of the ADEFAC project, the persons in charge of continuing training in the training institutions partners of the project, the professional groups of the forestry-wood sector and the administrations in order to mature the understanding of a common management of training and to advance towards joint regional and/or national proposals according to the national systems, always in a concern of coherence with the regional political orientations of the COMIFAC through its plan of convergence.

A group of 50 experts/professionals (approximately 12 per country) is planned.

The objective of the TWG-CVT is to allow for a better training-employment match in the forestry-wood sector through activities facilitating the rapprochement between these two sectors, and the joint management of continuing education through the thematic working groups.

credits : ADEFAC team

Establishment of TWG-CVT in each country from October 18 to November 4, 2022

Support for the establishment of TWGs was provided in the target countries as follows: DRC (October 5-7, 2022), Congo (October 18-20, 2022), Cameroon (October 24-26, 2022) and Gabon (November 2-4, 2022).

During this support, carried out by 2 Training Engineering Consultants, Chantal RIEUX and Désiré NKOY, the following points were addressed and discussed:

Mission, role and activities of the TWGs in the framework of the ADEFAC Project;
Fundamentals of continuing vocational training;
Overview of the continuing vocational training systems in the 4 target countries of the project;
Structuring of a quality labeling approach for continuing vocational training within the framework of the ADEFAC project;
Issues and challenges of financing continuing vocational training in the target countries;
Proposal of a TWG-CVT action plan for each target country.

The elements of the study on labeling and training financing approaches shared by the Consultants allowed the members of the TWG-CVT to:

Understand the fundamentals of continuing vocational training for the benefit of companies;
Familiarize themselves with the quality assurance tools for continuing vocational training through a labeling system at the sub-regional level with a specific institutional anchoring in each country of the Congo Basin;
Share financing models for continuing vocational training through international and regional experiences and exchange on the mechanisms in place in each country for the organization of qualifying and continuing training through the taxes collected;
Initiate an inter-stakeholder dialogue on continuing vocational training by identifying its issues and challenges in relation to the development needs of technical and professional skills, a guarantee of survival and growth of companies.

At the end of this first meeting of the TWG-CVT, here some conclusions and recommendations from the participants:

The stabilization of the semantics of continuing professional development for all the actors and stakeholders of the project through the dissemination of a lexicon: a continuing professional training is very short and intended for people in the job to acquire one or a few new skills or to strengthen one or a few skills;
The formalization and structuring of the WTG-CVT to maintain the exchange mechanism between stakeholders in continuing professional training beyond the duration of the ADEFAC project (institutionalization by decree or order, internal regulations, manual of procedures);
Interim support by the ADEFAC project for the holding of meetings of the TWG-CVT to decide on the choice of training module themes to be developed; on the training quality labeling system; on the financing of the CVT;
The capitalization of good practices resulting from the project's activities through the production of summary sheets of the activities carried out by the project coordination and their sharing with all the stakeholders and partners to constitute the project's memory with a view to their sustainability;
The sharing of experiences between the four countries of the Congo Basin, in particular on the national perspectives developed by each TWG-CVT.

credits : ADEFAC team