John Fernando says he doesn’t regret establishing a private vocational training centre (VTC) as it gives him pleasure in moulding youth to become handy in their lives and put food on the table for their families, this in a ‘rough’ time of high unemployment when many young people are seeking opportunities to gain skills to make a living.
“You know if one has technical skills they won’t need to work for someone or for a company to make a living – they can start their own business or do some jobs like welding or electrical work here and there to get money,” said Fernando who is popularly known as Ngato in the streets of Rundu. He made a living from his technical skills before starting the centre.
Fernando started Ngato Vocational Training Centre (NVTC) in 2012 when he discovered the need for a private technical skills training centre through his interns who had inspired him as he provided them with internship at his local construction company. According to him he saw an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of many.
“The reason why I came up with the school is because I had a small construction business here in Rundu from 2004 and through that I did welding, plumbing, renovations, refrigeration and all sorts of technical stuff and I used to work with interns from various vocational training institutions,” Fernando said. >>
“And through that I got inspired and realised my vision of starting a vocational training centre. So in 2012 I started with research regarding what I needed to start up a private VTC. I started engaging with stakeholders and brought in some staff to start with administrative duties to get everything in order and in 2013 we had our first intake of 137 trainees,” he noted. According to Fernando, in the beginning he didn’t know that training was expensive and started offering many trades to trainees, from office administration to electrical general and welding as well as agriculture. “But we struggled to get training equipment and ended up with only three trades,” he said.
In 2013 NVTC received an offer from FAWENA to train about 30 people with disability in various trades like hospitality, plumbing, welding to name but a few and that brought in some funds to buy some training materials. “In 2014/15 we got another offer from the Ministry of Health and Social Services nursing college here in Rundu to train their student nurses in ICT and English which was also a push for our institution,” he said.
Fernando, who aims to improve the lives of young Namibians, said he has been engaging the Namibia Training Authority (NTA) to guide him and the centre in meeting the standards in order to register their different trades/ technical courses.
“And through that we realised that we had a lot of courses and that required a lot of funds in order to have training equipment but we had to trim it down to three; although other trades were also in demand we could not afford to offer them,” he revealed.
“The start was tough as at that time we didn’t have a permanent venue of our own so we had to shift from one place to the other and that slowed us down in terms of developing the centre, but as we speak we have our own place here in Rundu in Kehemu location and we are slowly getting there,” he said.
To date NVTC have managed to register electrical general level 1 to 3, office admin level 1 to 3 and last year NTA gave funds through grants to some of their trainees for electrical and office administration and with those funds they successfully implemented training.
“And this year NTA gave more grants to some of our electrical general trainees. Since the beginning we have had challenges but that has not stopped us from achieving our set goals.
This year we want to register welding level 2 to 3 with NTA and at the moment we are in the process of pushing for accreditation with the Namibia Qualifications Authority,” Fernando said.
According to Fernando what has kept him going apart from his involvement with trainees was the colleagues who he hired to provide training to the youths. “I couldn’t have done it alone, and as a team we managed to move forward despite challenges,” he said.
“We had it tough in the beginning due to lack of training materials and since the founder was an individual, finance wasn’t really always there to cater to the centre’s needs which included salaries for instructors and money for the day-to-day running of the centre but we pulled through and here we are,” said Shitembi Christoph who has been running the administration of the centre since its inception.
“At the moment we have 85 trainees from level 1 to 3 in all our three trades,” he added. “Personally getting a job here has improved my life, I am able to provide bread for my family and I am grateful,” he said. ◆