ESPAÑOL

ESPAÑOL

Premise of the Training Courses

Our basic program of workshops that transmits our project "Our Daily Plant" is targeted at schools and poor communities in the hope that they will learn and develop skills and knowledge that will not only help them survive, but to progress and develop. This development is not only to be in an economical sense but also to grow into a social harmony with the environment and community.

Workshops are a good way of reaching many people at once, however as with any source of tuition, there is always a likelihood that what is learned will be forgotten. The range of success of our project can be enhanced if we can ensure that the ideas that we instill are carried on after our departure. To try to facilitate this we try to look for certain areas of communities to target - usually this can be seen as targeting certain people - teachers, figureheads and leaders in the community, people of influence, or just people who are more receptive and absorbant to ideas. We try to locate these people and look to give them a more detailed and thorough tuition that will equip them with the knowledge and means to teach to others what we show them. At present we are liasing with the Board of Education to qualify the completion of this teaching as a certifiable course that is recognised nationwide and that would improve the qualifications of people who complete them and, in turn, would provide them with more opportunities. The net result of these training courses is to create a snowball effect, whereby those specific members of society whom we target will then have the skills and in-depth knowledge to be able to take workshops themselves, and to start to teach "Our Daily Plant" to other communities and poor areas where we have not reached. They will also be qualified to instruct "target groups" of individuals in those communities in the same course as they have been taught and keep the snowball of knowledge rolling and growing.

Training Courses at Present

Over the last year, GAIA has been working in the shelters of the flood victims of La Guaira, and therein using an adapted format to our main project "Our Daily Plant". Although we did look at plants, their medical properties and the benfits of agrifam, the project in the shelters was more orientated towards practical workshops that focused on teaching them how to use the resources they still had and adapting, crafting and decorating them to be able to sell them at a profit. Many of the occupants already held jobs hence GAIA was reluctant to push for Training Courses for individuals. They lacked time to be able to remit the teaching, many would soon be relocated, and many lacked any motivation or inspiration.

At present GAIA is returning to it's work within the schools where it was prior to the floods and there is a great opportunity here to push forward with the Training Courses. We had started giving more personal and in-depth tuition in our earlier days and now tht we can return to it, we want to develop and promote it. We feel that if we can get our course certified by the Board of Education then it will have much more support and popularity. It is a very exciting time for GAIA at the moment.