The purpose of the meeting was to examine the necessary qualities of a tutor, how to keep the personnel well qualified and to identify the role filled by the State and business as allies in professional training.
On these topics, Fr José Angel Rajoy, from the Don Bosco Higher Institute in Mozambique presented the positive experience of the relationship between the Salesian Institute and the State. Referring to the training of staff members he emphasised : “the combination of educational skills and technical-practical knowledge is what makes a good tutor; a good tutor also needs to get his hands dirty.”
For Fr Luigi Bergamin, from the Zeitun centre in Cairo, the tutor in work skills needed to know something about pedagogy and economics. A positive example in Egypt is found in the technical school which for a number of years has been providing courses in marketing and subsidises 3,000 participants.
Prof. Werner Schäfer mentioned how the new media play an important role in the qualification of the tutors. Engaged since 1977 as a teacher in a vocational training school he set up an association with a technical Institute in Ghana. Thanks to the “CISCO” web platform he manages to give lessons and to keep in contact with tutors in Ghana on the net.
The formation of the tutors could provide an answer to the problem of good teachers giving up is what Sebastiano Longhi, principal of a school in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, maintained, as with a self-critical approach he pointed out that often too much was invested in the structures, in the work-shops, but too little in the personnel.
Thorsten Nilges thought that there was still a lack of innovative and effective ways of reaching the really poor, so that they can manage to escape from poverty: “What Don Bosco wanted was to be innovative; we need to have the courage and the creativity required to discover what is new.”
The Salesian Brother Jean Paul Muller, the delegate of the Bonn Mission Office, spoke about the need to keep contacts with experts and institutions such as the International Institute of Professional Formation, Inwent, Kolping International, the Evangelical Development Service, AGEH, the Ministry for Cooperation (BMZ) and other significant players in professional formation, so as to encourage learning procedures for the qualification of the tutors.
The meeting will be held on an annual basis so as to have an overview of the professional skills available in Salesian centres and to maintain contact with cooperatives for development so as to obtain other forms of funding for the Bonn international training projects.
Published 30/03/2010
