Interview with Lut Laenen Fox, Representative Kenya VVOB – Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance

Primarily funded through the Belgian Federal Government, VVOB, the Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance, is now celebrating 25 years of activities on three continents (South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia). More than sixty percent of its activities, however, take place in Sub-Sahara Africa. VVOB has been active in Kenya since 1989. Lut Laenen Fox, Representative Kenya VVOB, depicts how her organisation works as a partner and enabler in the fields of education, training, and capacity building.

Lut has been VVOB country representative in Kenya since September 1994. She graduated as a teacher trainer from the University of Gent, in Belgium. During her career, spanning nearly thirty years, she has gained experience as a teacher in teacher training colleges and higher secondary schools, in adult education research, and in project management. Throughout this period, she has experienced the increasing importance and power of ICT for communication and learning.

eLA: Mrs. Fox, what is VVOB's idea of capacity development? How would you define your work within this context?

VVOB aims to strengthen the capacity of its local partners. In addition to focusing on specific technical capacities, such as "ICT literacy" or school management skills, we consider capacity building an important means for improved institutional strength and operations. Institutional capacity is necessary for sustainability of the achieved results. VVOB is also a learning organisation and, internally, we exchange experiences from around the globe. Thus the VVOB staff members continuously keep on upgrading their own skills.

eLA: What kind of activities are you focussing on in Africa? What kind of partners are you working with, and how do you cooperate with them?

Currently, VVOB implements national programmes in five African countries: Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Congo. But our activities are also spreading to countries such as Uganda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Burundi.

Since our focus is on education and training, our main strategic partners in support of improved quality of education are the Ministries of Education in the various countries. Areas of special interest include environmental education, HIV/AIDS and life-skills training, training of secretaries, and training of primary school teachers through distance learning. For implementation, we join hands with educational institutions such as teacher training colleges, curriculum development centres, technical schools, and learning-resource centres.

VVOB also collaborates with medical training schools in Kenya, Rwanda, and Zambia, some national agricultural research centres, for example through the World Agroforestry Centre, and even a museum, namely the National Museums of Kenya.

eLA: Are there strong interrelations between your ICT and educational activities?

Most of our projects have an ICT component. We can say that Kenya is leading in this respect if you compare our activities there to VVOB programmes in other African countries. The scope, however, varies. Let me give some examples: For the Interactive Public Programmes at the National Museum of Kenya, ICT is used for communication with members of the public who are visiting exhibitions through multimedia presentations, interactive games on a PC in the gallery, etc. Another interesting field for us is medical education: While their training takes place, nurses use interactive software to improve their knowledge of anatomy. At the Kenya Technical Teachers Training College, we have used internet research, web quest, etc. to train teachers to develop and offer a new Higher Diploma in Education Management. But at the top of the scale are the initiatives at the Kenya Polytechnic: "PolyGIS" developed skills and infrastructure for GIS training, and "PolyCAsE" focused on Computer-Assisted Engineering. "PolyICT" set up a new service department, helped with developing ICT policies, is introducing a Management Information System, and is installing new labs. Essential to all these "projects" is capacity building and skills development. At the Kenya Education Staff Institute, KESI0, we are developing a management information system to monitor and evaluate their training courses for managers. KESI staff has acquired various levels of ICT proficiency. As a consequence, lCT is increasingly being integrated in teaching and research activities by the KESI academic staff.

eLA: Do you have particular consultancy expertise within this field?

VVOB staff was involved in the development of the Guidelines on ICT Integration for the new pre-service Primary Teachers Training Curriculum in 2005 and was engaged for the writing of the National ICT Strategy, launched in July 2006. We are now supporting the Ministry of Education for its national "e-readiness survey", in preparation of our new programme from 2008 onwards on ICT Integration for Improved Quality of Education.

eLA: It seems that there has been substantial improvement in building up eLearning environments?

Yes, and in this context, we would also like to refer to some recent achievements in Zimbabwe, where the "College IT Enhancement Programme" (CITEP), increased the capacity of ten technical training colleges for maintenance and management of the IT infrastructure. Complementary to CITEP, the "e-Novation project" is looking for sustainable integration of ICT in the learning. The approach is to set up an eLearning platform for open source software processes at eight technical schools, as well as sensitizing and training of a critical mass of students and teaching staff.

eLA: Going towards a programme approach rather than a project approach: This, you say, would be one of the main challenges of the future. Could you tell us what you mean by this?

In a programme approach, we will be guided by the plans of the Ministry of Education (in Kenya, the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme, which includes an ICT Investment Programme). There will be closer collaboration with other development partners in the sector, to promote complimentarity and avoid duplication.

eLA: How does this development influence your work?

Plainly stated, instead of a variety of projects with many different partners and objectives, our input will be more focused on a one objective, but with a broader implementation.

eLA: Mrs. Fox, many thanks for your time.

Link

www.vvob.be

Newsportal: Interviews