H4O for Skills Development
In many developing countries access to education, public awareness and specific training is a pressing constraint, especially for members of rural communities.
Madagascar is not an exception and although local inhabitants have an astonishing in-depth knowledge of their own lands, local resources and centuries old methods, they lack access to information and specific training. This makes entire communities very resilient to survive but, at the same time, extremely vulnerable and incapable to boost their own development.
The role of H4O within the framework of Skills development is to train community members on specific sectors through Training of Trainers (ToT) activities. With this objective, H4O sets Community Management Committees (CMC) in each community that benefit from the projects and train new Junior professionals in charge of O&M. Training programmes are people-centred and fully endorse the principles of “on-the-job training” and “learning by doing”.
Activities enable selected villagers to self-produce each component of the infrastructures (sanitations, water supplies…), to manufacture finished products starting from raw materials (toothpastes, soaps, chocolate…), to develop entrepreneurial skills to boost the employment prospects and to empower people to take decisions for the life of their families and communities.
We believe in lifelong learning as an opportunity to increase the resilience of each community, better preparing us to react to environmental, social and economic challenges and to scale H4O programmes.
Social enterprises
Enable community members to create their own job.
The Tsara Tsiky Enterprise embodies H4O soul and the way we transmit competences, skills and expertise, which is one of the most rewarding projects of the entire H4O work. The Tsara Tsiky Social Enterprise started from scratch to create the first Lab that produces medicated toothpaste with fluoride and disinfectant soap in the whole of Madagascar.
The Lab needed to be set and a new team of local women needed to be created. To do so, we created a partnership with the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Turin (Italy) and a Pharmacist spent a few months in Madagascar combining both theoretical and practical training. Therefore, H4O employees got the expertise on how to produce toothpaste and soaps starting from raw materials. Moreover, a specific training for the social enterprise management has been carried out. The H4O Tsara Tsiky Social Enterprise senior staff also trains selected interns selected among the excellence of the school for the production of the toothpaste. They quickly learn the notions given by Tsara Tsiky’s senior staff that opens more opportunities for their future careers.