In most conservancies, the computer skills of staff members are below the level needed to function in today’s society and to remain globally relevant. This was determined during a needs assessment conducted by the Namibia Development Trust (NDT) in August 2016 in nine conservancies in the Zambezi region. NDT, with funding made available by the Morby Family Charitable Foundation in their Sustainable Communities Partnership programme, organised a computer training course for conservancy staff members.
The training was conducted by the University of Namibia at the Katima Mulilo campus from 2 to 13 October 2017. Twenty-nine participants went through the training and 10 of them were women, this was a good indicator of women empowerment and upliftment in the society. The training included knowledge of basic computing concepts, security measures and the ability to use popular software applications to produce documents, spread sheets and presentations, creating and managing files and folders and retrieving data, files and documents.
The first few days were challenging because most participants were using computers for the first time but, with more practice and their eagerness to learn they managed to grasp the basic concepts and demonstrated a good understanding of the subject matter. All participants passed the theory and practical test at the end of the course.
Practice makes perfect, but this will be a challenge for most participants due to the lack of computers in their conservancy offices. The NDT is therefore appealing to individuals, the business community, and anyone who can assist either financially or in kind to enable these conservancies to acquire computers. The donations will greatly contribute towards human development and for conservancies to be more efficient bodies.
If you would like to assist these conservancies, please contact the following persons: Ronny Dempers: ronny@ndt.org.na (061 238002 / 081 1270548) or Aisha Nakibuule: aishalee@ndt.org.na (081 2409602).