This week’s UK-Nigeria meeting returned to a theme which is at the heart of of all that Fantsuam Foundation does: namely education and training.
This was reflected in most of the items which were on the agenda for discussion this week.
First the team discussed the plans for the Eco-village at Attachab. Fantsuam is looking at the feasibility of involving students from the College of Education and the College of Agriculture from Samaru, a village some 35km from Kafanchan. These college students are required to have hands-on-experience in established farms. The vision of Attachab is to form a sustainable farming community based upon permaculture principles which will be a centre of excellence and training. Funding for Beekeeping training and the setting up SME at Attachab is currently being explored on Fantsuam’s behalf by Jen Miller.
This discussion then led to another topic on the agenda: Fantsuam’s Knowledge Resource Centre (KRC). John Dada asked if the centre had any audio visuals which non-literate farmers can access as he wishes the KRC to “serve a range of clients especially the orally literate women farmers”
I took this to mean that these women would listen to the audio visual teaching materials and then would be empowered to share the information with their community by word of mouth.
It is thought that there are DVD's, for example, on agriculture and fisheries. An inventory of the resources of the KRC was requested by John. Kelechi Michael’s also reported that he,Ladi - the KRC Officer and John - the Academy’s Program officer been tasked with coming up with the strategy to ensure that users of the KRC can access it's full potential. John Dada’s vision is for the KRC to be a learning hub which caters for the vast range of it's current users. Ladi also updated us with the progress of uploading the Diploma Computer course content online using Dokeos. There are still challenges in getting the right resources for each of the modules.
John then brought the team up to date with the ESSPIN project and informed us that the next phase of the project is in October. We also learned that there is a health sector equivalent called PATH2 which is yet to be implemented.