The Provincial Education Programme is designed to deepen the education capacity and extend the educators’ reach by supporting worker educators to be able to serve others.

In pursuing the DITSELA provincial strategy, DITSELA schedules needs analysis meetings in various provinces as well as provincial schools.

Phase 1: Needs Analysis

These aim to:

1. Share DITSELA Provincial Education Strategy
2. Identify provincial education challenges faced by the Federations/workers.
3. Establish collaborative working relations in the province.
4. Agree on courses to be delivered at Provincial Schools
5. Identify future educational engagements.
6. Share the DITSELA Programme

• These meetings are called in line with the requirements of the Provincial Strategy Phase 1 which is to consult the Leadership and delegates from affiliates of the federations.
• The main purpose of the meeting is to discuss and surface the union’s challenges which could be addressed educationally by DITSELA delivering relevant courses to that effect.

Phase 2: Provincial Schools

Once the needs analysis has been done on all the set provinces, DITSELA will start the process of material development based on the outcomes of the needs-analysis conducted. Each of the provinces shall have four courses targeting 120 participants in each province.

Phase 3: Train the Trainer

Phase 4: Peer Education Programme (PEP)

Objectives:

• To build new pools of educators in all provinces and drawing on previous experiences
• To replenish the already established pool of educators

 

Support Programme:

The Support Programme combines a response and a proactive approach to the needs of the labour movement. It is about working very closely with individual unions to help build and strengthen organisation.

Requests of a national or provincial nature should be made in writing for the attention of the Executive Director of DITSELA. A consultative process to jointly assess the needs and to develop an appropriate plan of action with time frames and outcomes follows.

All support requests are discussed to ensure that their educational value is emphasised. Support interventions are always evaluated after every engagement. This is done to develop useful reports that capture education lesson and the relevant data.

DITSELA’s support strategy is divided into :

• Pro – active and
• Responsive support

Responsive Support This strategy is drawn from past experience of responding to union specific needs that may not be addressed by the rest of the scheduled education and training programme. This helps in planning effectively for union requests for different types of support. DITSELA schedules time in programme calendar for this support work as Support Weeks, a practice that allows DITSELA to be flexible in its response.

Pro-Active Support To ensure that a wider group of our constituency is able to access DITSELA resources and support, DITSELA will continue supporting unions organising in vulnerable sectors of the economy. In 2023, the strategy of having the DITSELA Programme Officers, adopting unions from the different federations, to proactively support those adopted unions, will be resuscitated.

Research:

The Research & Development Programme, engages with education and practice and providing internal and external support to unions from a worker’s perspective through research, quality assurance, monitoring and assessment to measure progress, improvements and impact of union education delivery as well as discover approaches to workers’ education.

DITSELA has taken a decision to formalise some courses, in line with the developing NQF system. We have set up a special project to research and take us forward.