TVETs opening doors for people living with disabilities
By Francis Njuguna, April 25, 2023“As a young child aged about one and a half years,” she said “I received a polio jab. This jab left me crippled in my left leg making it shorter than the right one. Whenever it’s cloudy, rainy or cold, my hip joints pain a lot. In case I am carrying a heavy load, my hip normally develops an excruciating pain that makes me fall down sometimes.”
This is the story of Hannah. She sat for her Kenya Certificate of Primary School Examinations (KCPE) in 1991. At first, Hannah thought she would not achieve anything in life. Her will to be independent pushed her to explore the available option, and enrolled at a Youth Polytechnic in 1992. “I trained in shoe making. I was the only lady who took that course. Ladies didn’t like training on such courses preferring dressmaking and secretarial.” She continued. “Shoemaking is the best for me due to my leg, since I cannot do hard work commonly found in quarries or in farms. In a nutshell, this job feeds me, pays for my daughter’s school fees and also pays for my house rent”.
Hannah’s story explains a perfect example of identity formation. This is being aware of her strengths, weaknesses and making decisions about the pathways she wants to follow. This strengthened her ability to transition to self-employment because she was able to navigate the environment, as well as combat feelings of isolation many in her state could be experiencing. From Hannah we learn self-awareness, resilience, problem solving, communication and other many competences.
Sustainable Development Goal 8 aims to “Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all”. Target 8.5 is about “achieving full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value”.
This cannot be achieved if we ignore social and emotional learning (SEL). A study by World Economic Forum found that 21st Century jobs are increasingly social-skills-intensive. According to the study, 36 per cent of all jobs will require complex problem-solving as a core skill compared to 4 per cent that will require physical abilities or physical strength. More still, social skills such as persuasion, emotional intelligence and teaching others will be in higher demand across industries compared to narrow technical skills, such as programming and equipment operation.
The Kenyan government having identified the need to teach greater breadth of skills rolled out the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) in 2017. The CBC is designed to emphasize significance of developing skills and knowledge and applying these competencies to real life situations. The CBC has seven core competencies every learner should achieve by the time they finish school: communication and collaboration; critical thinking and problem solving; imagination and creativity; citizenship; learning to learn; self-efficacy, and digital literacy. CBC should also mould learners to have the values of love, responsibility, respect, unity, peace, patriotism and integrity.
The Safaricom Foundation Scholarship (SFS) Programme implemented by Zizi Afrique Foundation made a significant contribution towards development through equipping youth with sustainable skills for construction and hospitality industries. An assessment of counties where the program drew youth from established that female youth in TVET account for less than 30 per cent with no single student with disability.
The programme targeted that of those who get the scholarship, 60 per cent would be female and at least 5 per cent of them with disabilities. By 2022, the scholarship had enrolled 1,027 students, half of whom were female, and 78 of them youth with disabilities. This shows that when we are deliberate about it, TVET can reach more female youth, and even open doors to people with disabilities, like Hannah.
Hannah’s story shows the need to re-examine adolescents’ resilience, responsiveness, self-motivation, self-confidence and attitude. This is what is needed in the world of work. It is not too late because as Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, every artist was first an amateur.
— The writer works at Zizi Afrique Foundation