PAPI Fereşti, the first authorized training centre for e-skills within an KEP community

17.12.2009

The digital teaching is a central objective of the European Union, under the circumstances which state that the majority of the working places, no matter which the field is, will ask for the computer operating knowledge until 2015.

PAPI Feresti

Thus the digital competences or e-skills will become more and more important in the present life. The ones who do not own them have already a great drawback on the job market and they will take the risk of becoming unemployed because of this fact. According to the European Commission

( CE) e-literacy can bring gorgeous benefits both to the people, in their personal and professional, and to the economy. The CE report regarding the digital competitiveness, that was published in 2009, shows that the European digital domain has registered great progresses starting with the year 2005, advantage which means an economical growth and creates job opportunities. Nowadays 56% from all Europenas use, regularly, the internet and the youth have more advanced digital competences than the rest of the population. In Romania the rate of internet penetration (the number of people who use it referred to the total number of users) is about 33,4%, less than the European one. The Europeam Commission has notified to the Romanian villagers’ difficult access to internet and emphasized that just 50 % from the people living in the country have this turn.

Constantin Vasilache 
 RECL manager

The mission of the ”Knowledge Economy Project” (KEP) has in view to facilitate the participation of all communities which are disadvantaged from the access point of view to a knowledge based society. Within the EBC project an important goal is the authorization and function of 25 e-skills training centres in the disadvantaged communities, on the basis of local resources.

According to the National Registry of Authorized Suppliers of CNFPA in the whole country there are only dozens of such providers of professional training , who could prove that they have both the necessary logistics resources and the formative guides, who are qualified in this field of work.

Feresti, the first authorized community

The need of getting the authorization of teaching provider for the centre of Feresti comes out after the inhabitants asked many unbelievable times for the opportunity of registering to some courses, in order to obtain the competences in informatics. In April 2009 in the village the courses of initiation in the computer’s secrets took place and 20 inhabitants attended them. The first people who attended the courses were teachers from the School of Arts and Jobs from Fetești, the workers of the townhall and representatives of some ONG that are functioning in that place, trained by a specialist who came from Informat Vaslui.

Tibireac Maricica 
 RECL Administrator

After getting the graduation certificate some of the former students obtained better placements in the professional hierarchy or promotion to superior levels of payments. Such good news about the usefulness of the centre of professional training have been spread very fast in the whole community and the number of registration requirements to the courses of getting the TIC competences increased a lot. In order to satisfy a great part of these requierements they started to use more and more local resources for the training courses,mostly those coming from the PAPI centre. Afterwards the centre from Ferești obtained its own accreditation as a provider of professional training.

The story of involving PAPI in the activities of professional training in Ferești is successful. “ The PAPI centre was involved in the organisation of these courses and we were deeply impressed by the great number of requierements for this kind of courses. Having the equipment and the necessary qualifications we thought to ask to be allowed to keep the following training courses, with the people whose requierements left without a solution”, Constantin Vasilache, the manager of the Electronic Network of the Local Community ( RECL) declared. The opportunity of managing the plan PAPI was better drawn in July, this year. Then, within the EBC project, the proposal of setting up some local centres of professional training was launched. In Ferești the first step was to establish the team which could evaluate the conditions that have to be carried out by the centre of training and to apply the project. In the project PAPI team the mayor of Ferești village, Vasile Ludovic Trifan, the RECL manager, Constantin Vasilache and the RECL administrator from Ferești, Maricica Tibireac were involved.The team from Ferești was among the first in the EBC programme that accessed the procedures.The criteria of selection came via e-mail, the PAPI centre made the file and sent it to the commission of selection and the answer reached the Direction of Labour and Social Protection Vaslui. “ The file entered the commission of accreditation. I had no emotion, as it was a well-made and motivated file. Our file was approved and the authorization was issued.” -the RECL manager, Constantin Vasilache, showed.

The Centre of profit for the community

For the Ferești community the centre of courses for teaching digital competences will mean, first of all, a source or profit, as the students will pay a tax of about 60 lei. At the beginning of the next year the first series of 20 people will be present and they will be taught to work in Word and with other applications of the Office Packet ( as Excel), will be trained to surf the internet and to use the electronic mail. The teachers from the Authorized Centre of Professional Training in Ferești, within the the programme of

“ Initiation in the Group of Competences in Informatics” are Constantin Vasilache, manager RECL and Maricica Tibireac, administrator RECL Ferești.

“ In January 2010 we’ll have courses of initiation in informatics competences with 20 students. We are going to fix a tax of about 60 lei for each student. If we manage to acces the project, we’ll also keep free courses. We already have a project we thought about, < Perfected Competences for the Administrative Staff in the Townhalls>. We are also opened to hold these courses out of our community, if we are asked to and if there is the necessary minimal equipment, that means a network of computers and internet conexion. If I have only the conexion, we will move our computers for 10 days, as long as the session lasts.”, RECL manager, Constantin Vasilache, declared. The promotion of the centre will be assured both by words and by our own blog of Ferești or by the

e-community portal, Constantin Vasilache showed, too. “ The news will spread faster by words, as the people do not have internet at home. After we have some series of students, the news will spread very quickly by the way of speaking and others will also come.”, the RECL manager said.

Apart from other mayors, the city father of Ferești, Vasile Ludovic Trifan, understood how useful the centre of training the digital comptetences is for his village and was involved from the very first moment in the process of its accreditation, together with the PAPI’s project team. Now the mayor hopes that this centre will be taken by storm by the people who desire to have these courses, both by the natives who want a better job or greater opportunities of employment and by the people living in other villages, animated by the wish of professional development: “ Having the signals from the neighbouring villages, we bank on having, in 2010 and in the future, a very great number of students.”

Trifan Vasile Ludovic
Mayor of Feresti commune

Vasile Ludovic Trifan considers that including his village in the row of communities for implementation of the EBC project, as well as for the accreditation of the new centre of professional training, will change the life of lots of natives. ”Since we have won the EBC project we started well, as the activities that took place had a very good impact on the population, first on the pupils and youth of the village. Before this project I could count on my fingers how many people in the village were having computers. The pupils from the second and third grade and even the older ones didn’t know anything about computers. This was the first good step, because more and more people were accustomed to the computer. Then we started the activities of informing through the PAPI centre, about the agriculture, the granting of stipends, but also regarding the opportunities of achieving projects and of accessing some resources by the small undertakers. Now I see that more and more people aged between 30 and 45 years old come to PAPI to get interested in the implementation of the projects.”, the mayor Vasile Ludovic Trifan told us.

In Ferești the EBC project seemed to have fulfilled its mission. The local community understood that has important human and material resources and that they can use these resources with a lucrative aim.

On the same theme:

The inhabitants from Diosig and Santimbru have been taught to work on the computer

In Tăuții-Măgherăuș the first promotion of graduated people is using the computer

The women in five villagaes from Suceava go to be taught at PAPI about the science of small business

The women in five villagaes from Suceava go to be taught at PAPI about the science of small business