A new project funded by NUFFIC – “EUVETA 2” - to promote Entrepreneurship Development in Vocational Education and Training in Tanzania started formally in May 2010. This project takes off where the EUVETA project, which ran from 2005 to 2009, left off. Whereas in EUVETA 1 the goal was to develop and introduce a new entrepreneurship curriculum at the Morogoro Vocational Teachers Training College (MVTTC) and pilot this curriculum with 7 selected Vocational Training Centres; this project aims at rolling out this curriculum to over 100 VTCs throughout the country. This implies the training of new master trainers, who will train at least 3 teachers per VTC to be able to teach the curriculum to their students. EUVETA 2 will run from 2010 to 2014 and has a total budget of € 1.3 million.

The project will be implemented by a consortium under the leadership of Triodos Facet, together with CINOP and Maastricht School of Management (MSM). CINOP is mainly responsible for aspects of quality assurance and gender, as well as labour market orientation and tracer studies. MSM will organize a short training course in the Netherlands on educational management for selected staff members from VETA (Vocational Education & Training Authority) and MVTTC.  The project managers are Mr. Joep Vonk and Ms. Marjan Duursma (local project manager, based in Dar es Salaam) and the project director is Mr. Klaas Molenaar.

After the inception phase from May to August 2010, the project started with a first training of 26 master trainers in September. Some of these master trainers are tutors from MVTTC others are teachers from the VTCs that took part in the pilot from the first phase. In December 2010 and January 2011 another 74 teachers from 24 new VTCs took part in ToTs in Mtawara, Mwanza and Tabora. In the coming months these teachers will introduce the entrepreneurship curriculum in their schools. The next batch of ToTs will be held in June-July 2011. The goal is to train another 144 teachers from 48 new VTCs and thus to have increased the total number of VTCs reached by the project to 72 by end 2011.

Besides the training of trainers and adaptation of the curriculum, another objective of the project is to set up an Entrepreneurship Resource Centre. The first brainstorm sessions on the so-called VETA Entrepreneurship Development Centre (VEDEC) took place in September 2010 with a follow-up session in February 2011.  

In these meetings the scope and responsibilities of the VEDEC were further defined. The two key roles that were agreed are:
1. Coordination of the entrepreneurship curriculum roll out, both during and after the project and
2. Information and support to tutors, teachers and students on entrepreneurship, self-employment, career guidance and business development services.

The VEDEC office will be located at MVTTC but will be in close contact with all the participating VTCs. The main participants in the development of the VEDEC are the EET coordinator, Ms. Anna Nyoni, the previous EET coordinator, Mr. Anamringi Maro and several other tutors and master trainers. Triodos Facet provides technical assistance through Ms. Marjan Duursma and Mr. Chris Ndangala, both based in Tanzania, and Mr. Gerrit Ribbink from the Netherlands.

As of mid-March 2011, the project is on track and everything is going according to plan. The teachers that took part in the ToTs in December and January responded with a lot of enthusiasm to the new teaching approach that is part and parcel of the methodology. Despite not being used to experiential learning methods, our experience is that teachers in Tanzania, as in other countries, respond quite positively to the challenge and are quick to pick up on the interactive approach. Thus, we are confident that the seed of entrepreneurship that is being sown with this project will eventually grow into a big and sturdy tree.

Photo: Training of trainers in Mtwara, January 2011.

see project reference 565