Building Confidence. Reaching Communities. Henjo’s Journey with the TVET Toolkit.
“When I joined Ituani in 2019, I had zero training or management experience,” says Henjo, part of the management team at Ituani Vocational Training Centre in Vanuatu. “I didn’t even know where to start.”
Then came a game-changer: the Pacific TVET Online Toolkit (pacifictoolkit.col.org) supported by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) @COL4D and funded by New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade @MFATNZ.
He added, “The Toolkit gave me confidence. It helped me build training programmes, organise staff, and truly support our learners.”
But it did more than that. “It changed how I saw my role — I developed leadership, communication, and saw how Ituani could really make a difference.”
And it’s working. In 2024, Ituani was the only organisation in Vanuatu invited to present at the national TVET forum under the theme ‘Flexible Delivery Model’.
Next goal? Share their impact through video storytelling so more communities can benefit.
To learn more about Ituani Centre’s work and ongoing outreach, visit www.ituani.org or follow their journey on Facebook at facebook.com/ituani.
#COL4D #MFATNZ #TVETToolkit #EducationForEmpowerment #CommunityTraining #OpenEducationResources #PacificEducation #ProfessionalGrowth #BuildingConfidence #InclusiveEducation #SustainableDevelopment #FlexibleLearning #EmpoweringCommunities
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NAMCOL partnered with the Commonwealth of Learning to enhance teaching and learning for students with disabilities
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South Africa strengthens collaboration to advance teacher education and open learning.
South Africa is reaffirming its commitment to digitalisation of education through the integration of open educational resources (OER), inclusive pedagogies, and digital innovation into national teacher development strategies. And recent engagements facilitated by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) @COL4D underscore the country’s leadership in aligning policy, practice, and partnerships to drive sustainable education reform across the SADC region.
In a series of high-level engagements, COL’s Education Specialist for Teacher Education, Dr Betty Ogange, met with institutional and government partners to strengthen collaboration in support of teacher development.
At the University of the Witwatersrand @WitsUniversity, Dr Ogange held strategic consultations with the School of Education, where discussions centred on the findings of a COL-supported study on OER policies and practices in African teacher education institutions and implications for future collaboration. The School is host to an OER initiative involving five schools of education in four different countries – Botswana, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa.
Plans are underway to scale this work towards a pan-African network of practice to co-create OER under COL’s Network for Open Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa initiative, also known as the NOTES project. The discussions also explored pathways for closer alignment with national frameworks and the requirements of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET).
Dr Ogange later met with senior officials from DHET, including the Teacher Education, Teaching Qualifications and Policy, and Open Learning directorates. The team shared progress on systemic initiatives such as the professionalisation of college lecturers, inclusive teaching strategies, and integrated provincial planning through the Provincial Teacher Education Development Committees.
Ms Trudi van Wyk, the Chief Director for Social Inclusion and Quality at the Department of Higher Education and Training and COL’s Focal Point in South Africa, provided an update on the forthcoming national Open Learning Policy. The policy, grounded in the 2014 White Paper on Post-School Education and Training, is expected to guide the use of technology-enhanced learning and distance education and develop a national open learning platform. All materials developed with donor funding, including those supported by COL, would be designated as OER and made publicly accessible.
At the South African Council for Educators (SACE), the discussions focused on OER and the digitalisation of teacher professional development for scale and quality outcomes. SACE is a partner in Beyond Numbers, a Pan-African project currently being implemented by COL and the Africa Federation of Teaching Regulatory Authorities (AFTRA) in Botswana, Nigeria, Seychelles and South Africa.
Reflecting on the discussions, Dr Ogange noted, “It is inspiring to see such clear alignment between national policy, institutional practice, and the values we promote at COL. We will aim to work with respective partners to create opportunities for meaningful and lasting changes in teacher education.”
#COL4D #SouthAfricaEducation #TeacherEducation #OpenLearning #COLCollaboration #EducationAdvancement #CommonwealthOfLearning #TeacherTraining #OpenEducation #EducationInnovation #SouthAfricaLearning
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