Bridging the gap of Soft Skills; Have we thought of Extra Curriculum Skills? UWEZO AWARD project Case.

By Noelle Mahuvi, 

Country Director at Great Hope Foundation.

It is estimated that by 2020, African Population shall be 1.3bln and 47% of this are the young people 24 of years age and below. This has made African continent to be defined as a continent of young people. This vibrant young group seems to be a great human resource for the social-economical development of the continent, however when unemployment is their biggest hurdle, their future seems to be filled with uncertainties and vulnerabilities. I will take a case of my home, Tanzania where as 64% of the population in 2020 is expected to be below 24 years, and like many other African states, unemployment of this group comes up on everyday discussions and debates. It has been observed that out of 800,000–1,000,000 people getting to the labor market yearly from learning institutions, only 50,000 has an assurance of being absorbed in the formal sector. The rest just work to find their place in the labor market.

A close observation on youth unemployment has seen that, the harshness of the situation is not very much on the less educated ( the Primary School graduates and dropouts). These people seem to find ways to adjust themselves in the market. They easily get absorbed with anything that the market is providing as a source of income. It falls on secondary schools and the University graduates. They seem to have a bigger challenge, meeting the expectations of the market despite of spending some 13–17 years at school. It is even worse for them to employ themselves because, they seem handicapped in visualizing opportunities and turning them into source of employment. The few who cross the bridge, they get badly knocked down, because of poor set/package of Soft Skills, that they never had a chance to learn at school. Things like team work, self-identity understanding, leadership skills, perseverance, goal setting, spotting opportunities on the labor market, problem solving, creativity and innovation are scarcely found on these graduates. Generally, the skills mismatch between the graduates and the expectations of the market seems to be quite high.

The underlying question has always been, how one could have mastered the hard skills, that needed much time and effort and fail to have a package of these soft skills?

What has gone wrong?

How could this be possible?

On this article I would like to share my experience of working with students, helping them to develop skills through extra curriculum activities.

I have had a privilege of working with Secondary Schools through Great Hope Foundation ( GHF) an NGO working on the area of youth development and empowerment in Tanzania. I have been coordinating UWEZO AWARD PROJECT, for the past three years. The project is a competition for Secondary School Students, to do Community Change Projects. A single Community Change Project was fully chosen by students and they were supposed to do activities that give them a chance to explore their talents, build skills and bring positive impact to the community. GHF aimed at motivating students to do Community Service as a methodology for them to learn the benefit of volunteering. “UWEZO” is a Swahili word, meaning capacity/potential/ability, and the project was named UWEZO AWARD because it gave student a chance to bring out their potential, specifically those ability that you hardly see them through books and classroom tasks. Outstanding Community Change Projects are awarded every year, to motivate students to keep the spirit up.

In 2016, GHF involved 20 Secondary Schools in the project. Students were given three months to do the project. Out of 20 Secondary Schools that participated, Zanaki Secondary School was the overall winner, and received an outstanding recognition. Students developed a talent show Bonanza asking all their fellow to participate at a fee of 200 TZS, and the fund collected was used to renovate their school dispensary by painting and they bought bedsheets, mattresses, and tablemats. All of them were ladies, and were in form six at that time, when they had graduated from high school, a lady known as Diana went on to open a fashion designing label and Theckla who was leading the team, was motivated to start a non profit known as Tanzania Eagles as she was going to Mzumbe University. I had some moments with Thekla asking her what was her biggest lesson she picked from their Community Change Project and she said

“ the whole process of our project made me understand that, we the young generation ( students) can have a remarkable contribution to our society through our talents. We just organized a project in a month and we were able to paint our school dispensary that has never been renovated for quite sometime. I have learnt on how to work as a team to reach our agreed common goal. I think we need to have this competition at a national level”

GHF had an amazing case in 2017 when the project was expanded to reach 50 Secondary Schools in Dar es Salaam. Wailes Secondary School from Temeke was among the schools that received outstanding Recognition, as their Community Change Project had a remarkable impact. They grew vegetables and sold, and the fund collected was used to partly contribute in building the school wall. The excitement of accomplishing such their project, charged their spirit and started their own business of soap making and selling the soap to the school Community, specifically teachers. When I spoke to Charles Michael, who was the leader of the project, he said,

“ I knew that I can accomplish much in my life, I had so many ideas and had a lot of energy. But my participation in Uwezo Award, ignited my potential in a way that, I couldn’t wait for me to finish school to start a business. I organized my fellow students we started our soap making business. This has been a great opportunity for me. I shall keep this business after school. Our Community Change Project won in UWEZO AWARD 2017 because we wanted to win in the very first place. For sure now I know I can do entrepreneurship.”

GHF expanded the scope of the project to reach 100 Secondary Schools in 2018 and students kept on doing better Community Change Projects. Kibasila Secondary School Community Change Project was among the project that was recognized with Outstanding Recognition, taking second position out off 100 Secondary Schools . Students went all the way doing five different activities to make a single Community Change Project. They organized themselves to design small wallets out of Kitenge ( African Print) and sold them. The fund was used to paint their school gate. They organized a fashion show to showcase their designs. They bought new Vitenge ( African Print) and made clothes for Children at the Orphanage Centre and they made dust-masks and distribute them for free to women who were cleaning the road at Temeke. Students gave the following feedback on the reports. When GHF interviewed Primus who was the head of the project from the school he said

“ We didn’t know that our participation in the project will give us a chance to learn so much about ourselves. It is amazing how we have been able to come together as a team. I have learnt about team work. I have known how to use my talents for the benefit of my community. I have learnt how to lead others, and achieve our set goal regardless of the challenges I face. As a leader I have learnt to respect each and every idea of the team members and use them for the benefit of the team. I am now bold and more daring. The list is endless. I am so proud of my participation in UWEZO AWARD 2018. It has been a life changing experience for me.”

Up to 2018 GHF had managed to reach 170 Secondary Schools in Dar es Salaam and Coastal Region. Students went quite some miles to do Community Change Projects that had a remarkable impact to their school. To name a few Kibada Secondary School from Kigamboni created and furnished a resting room for students who fall sick at school, because before that, they used to sleep under the tree. Kibamba Secondary School made a door for their class to stop people from stealing their chairs. The list could go on and on. The top skills that students confessed to attain by participating in UWEZO AWARD project was working in a team, leadership, goal setting, hardworking, creativity, time management, selling and self identity discovery. This observation has been the most interesting to GHF as little did the team knew that the Community Change Projects will equip young generation with such a set of soft skills.

This is the reality you understand better, by being on the field, as they say experience is always a better teacher. We learnt the benefits of extra Curriculum activities, beyond our usual or normal expectations. The passion and commitment we saw within students was amazing. They requested more and more of these activities for them. Unfortunately Extra Curriculum activities benefits are not clearly understood by parents and even school administrators. There is a lot of resistances towards allowing students do these extra curriculum activities. Majority of Parents feel, it is a wastage of time, if they are paying fees for their child, all they want to hear is an A or B on their achievement, anything out of that is irrelevant and unwanted. Teachers are also under the pressure of delivering, when a school has underperformed, the first activity is normally to burn all social clubs at their schools. “students waste time on these”. Majority of Private schools, seem less interested because, for them education is business. No single parent picks a school because of the great extra curriculum activities the school is offering. No way, they pick and pay the fees because they just want an assurance that, their child will pass with some reasonable grades. Hence extra Curriculum activities is something they may choose not to pay much attention ( if at all they will give it attention). 95% of schools participating in UWEZO AWARD are Government Schools. The permission we got from the government for working with Secondary Schools was clearly written that, none of the activities should be allowed to interfere with schools schedules and timetable because Extra Curriculum activities have not been integrated in the daily school calendars.

Soft skills development to students needs a transformation of the key elements of how we measure the KPI when it comes to education. Recently I have seen the Government, bringing some added programs to reduce the problem. The efforts being added are add-on to the normal curriculum. But most of them are under the same traditional way of learning; trainings and workshops. Having this as a starting point is fine, but I believe we need to go beyond that. Education should be organized to bring a graduate with a package of both soft + hard skills. Am saying this with due respect, getting a GPA of 4.5 tells us that you are extremely brilliant and we should rely on you probably on a number of things. But if with that level of intelligence you can’t work in a team, you can’t set goals and achieve them, poor communication skills, then the impact of your intelligence will be demeaned by the lack of these set of soft skills. Imagine how much you could have accomplished if you had both, soft & hard skills?

May be we can start with Extra Curriculum activities to bridge the gap. Repackaging them in a way they shall sound attractive to the young generation. UWEZO AWARD could be that small light at the end of the tunnel but I believe there are so many ways of organizing extra curriculum activities at Schools, from Primary to Universities and Colleges in a way that, they can bridge the missing gap. Mwl Nyerere started “Elimu ya Kujitegemea” and we lost it down the Road. This is what he said,

“ to transmit from one generation to the next the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the society, and to prepare the young people for their future membership of the society and their active participation in its maintenance or development is what Education for Self-Reliance meant. “

As old as it is, it still one of the best perspective to benchmark our education with this quote. In the face of a heavy debate of what to do with the skills mismatch between our youth and the labor market, Extra Curriculum activities could be a great starting point if it is re-packaged innovatively.