The Seychelles Community Training Institute will next month start its various community empowerment programmes for this year and is calling on parents and other people to come to the office to register at the cost of R100 per person.
In view of the financial situation the Seychelles Community Training Institute (Secti) faces, participants will have to pay R300 monthly for the classes for which they register.
Registration has already started and Secti is requesting parents to make payment of R100 upon registering their children and youths and to make sure they do it on time.
Secti is a well-established non-governmental organisation set up in May 1995 with the vision to become a community-based institution that will provide training facilities and devise capacity building programmes for citizens.
Its mission is to work towards contributing to the personal and social development of members of the communities, in particular the youths, children and single parents who are mostly women, through a range of empowerment programmes and activities.
Normally, Secti works with residents of the Roche Caïman, Plaisance, Les Mamelles and Mont Fleuri districts because it is a well-known fact that many citizens residing in these districts and at the periphery are prone to many issues including high rates of school dropouts, unemployment among youths and young adults, delinquencies and other risky behaviour that impact negatively on their quality of life.
Since its inception, Secti has been playing a very important role in delivering soft programmes in specific areas of interventions with the aim to empower citizens of the four districts who are unemployed due to lack of required academic, social and life skills. It implemented community projects engaging numerous people, young and old, to know of their needs. However, for the past two years, it has been difficult for most of those families who still today encounter social problems on a daily basis.
As a way to reduce the socio-economic impacts in the country, Secti has in the past years been organising a series of training to provide IT, sewing and music skills to many residents who registered for those training. In 2020/21, it also conducted academic classes in English, French and Maths for those people especially schoolchildren who wanted to improve their academic performances.
Those capacity building trainings were financed through projects that Secti normally submit to local funders, namely the National Grants; Children’s Special Fund and Absa Bank, as well as international organisations such as the US Ambassadors Self Help; Unesco and this year to the GGP (Japanese grants that is still being considered).
With a third surge of Covid-19 infection in 2021, the number of job seekers increased given that the economies were still recovering from the pandemic. The employment department of the Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs made a national call for individuals or institutions to assist in training of job seekers. Secti did not hesitate to participate in this programme and gave training to a category of jobseekers who did not meet the criteria for the vacancies that are normally advertised in the local newspapers due to lack of qualifications and adequate academic knowledge.
While this area is well served by a range of businesses and services such as a market, Secti also plays the role of a friendship centre that provides residents with access to telephones; toilet facilities for those people who are far from their homes and doing their shopping or other transactions around the area.
Secti has a vast array of experience in working with communities and has worked with various local partners. It worked in close collaboration with various governmental and non-governmental organisations in the country such as the Ministry of Local Government through the district administration offices, the Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs, schools, private businesses, Barclays Bank now Absa bank, La Retraite home for the elderly, embassies through the Office of the Mayor of Victoria, the Red Cross Society and other NGOs as well as the civil society platform, namely the Citizens Engagement Platform (Ceps) formerly known as Lungos (Liaison Unit of Non-Governmental Organisations). It also worked with parents and participants themselves.
The accompanying photographs show participants engaged in activities organised by Secti.
Source: Seychelles Nation
