The RTC Project "Go-Kit"
Published April 15, 2015
The West Africa Regional Training Center is committed to the sharing of knowledge.
RTC “Project Go-Kit”
In our efforts to make our courses accessible to people who cannot physically attend courses at the RTC, we launched “Project Go-Kit”. The idea behind the Go-Kit is to equip selected RTC alumni with the needed skills, resources and knowledge base to share with their colleagues, in their various organizations. It’s a “being trained to train” concept, with the goal of making as much impact as possible.
One of our alumni, Sean Henry Osei, an officer from the Financial Intelligence Center in Ghana, launched the Go-Kit initiative in his organization. I sat down with him, in an interview, to find out his experience with the Go-Kit.
How did the project go? Would you call it a success?
It went well and I would say it was very successful. I adopted a few strategies that helped make it a success.
Could you share a few of these strategies with me?
Well it’s important to note that everyone has a different skill set. It makes it very crucial to the success of the training, if you’re able to harness everyone’s potential, to bring out the best in each of them. This helps to generate interest in the course. Also you know, everyone is very busy, so you may not get them all at a particular time. You can use existing resources available in the office like intranet and other less formal means, to be able to transfer the knowledge. For some of my colleagues too it was like a refresher course, since they had already been to the RTC. Also I tried to provide examples that are more relevant to our organization and to our job.
What are some of the challenges you faced?
As I stated earlier, everyone has a busy schedule and therefore there are times you have to resort to informal means to be able to “teach”. Corner a few people after a meeting in the conference room… things like that… there really isn’t a clear cut way since you are doing this as part of an existing work schedule. Time is therefore a huge challenge. Also you’re dealing with a lot of different personalities and since some people see you as their colleague it’s sometimes difficult to convince them.
How did you find the resources that were provided by the RTC?
The material was really straightforward and easy to use. Since I had just taken the course, the knowledge was still fresh in my mind.
Any advice for future “go-kit trainers”?
Develop a good, workable strategy and just make the idea sound brilliant!
We at the RTC are available to help any alumni who would want share the knowledge gained at the RTC with their colleagues. If you would like to try the RTC Go-Kit, you can send us an email at info@westafricartc.org and we’ll certainly get back to you!
[Post by: Sarah Dadson. Sarah is the Participant & Alumni Coordinator for the West Africa Regional Training Center. Email her at info@westafricartc.org]