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Building on existing local skills and knowledge, development workers share their experience in a number of ways. You might be working closely with your colleagues as part of a team, or setting up systems and processes to help strengthen the organisation by which you're employed. You may even be teaching in a classroom, or training other trainers, or perhaps working together with a local counterpart who will ultimately take over your role.
A two-way process
However, a development worker's job is not all about giving. Sharing skills is very much a two-way process of mutual benefit. It's about people working together in partnership, learning from each other, sharing knowledge, and enhancing understanding and respect between cultures. By working in this way, you'll certainly gain as much as you give.
Living and working in Africa as a development worker can be personally and professionally very challenging. You'll have to adjust to a new way of life, adapt to a different culture and customs, and face up to problems you've probably never encountered before. However, in doing so, you'll derive a real sense of personal growth and achievement. At work, there's often the chance to take on a high level of responsibility and to stretch your capabilities in new areas such as training and team leadership. Ultimately, you'll return home with broader professional skills and new ways of working that could be of benefit your long-term career.
For most, the experience of working as a Skillshare development worker brings as positive a change to their own lives as it does to the lives of the people and communities they work with.
Meeting local needs
At Skillshare Africa, we have a 'needs driven' approach to our work. We operate in a way that supports locally identified needs rather than imposing our own agenda. Our aim is to find people for jobs, not jobs for people. In this way, the precise needs of the countries and communities we work with are always prioritised.
All Skillshare Africa development workers are recruited and placed in response to requests from partner organisations with whom we work in southern Africa. These commonly include workers' cooperatives, schools and colleges, community associations, local development agencies, government bodies and women's groups. It's likely to be an organisation such as one of these that ultimately employs you as a development worker.
To ensure that the contribution you're able to make is appropriate and of lasting value, every request we receive is assessed by our staff in southern Africa. Skillshare Africa's Country Offices are staffed entirely by local nationals as we feel strongly that the best people to identify the right opportunities for skills development are those 'on the spot'. Every placement must be shown to allow for the sharing of skills and to promote sustainable development.
What skills are needed?
Across southern Africa, Skillshare Africa development workers are meeting an increasingly diverse range of needs. So the range of professional skills we're looking for in applicants is also incredibly varied, covering a wide range of occupations. Most placements though are in the following fields: education and vocational training, health care, engineering and planning, income generation, agriculture and environmental conservation. Sometimes our work is set in a wider context such as empowering women or working with people with disabilities.
Whatever your field of work, you need to have a combination of a relevant professional qualification and work experience - normally at least two years. You must also be flexible enough to adapt your skills to suit local conditions and the resources available, and open to new ways of working. At the same time, you'll also need to be able to pass on your skills to others, not just put them to use yourself. Being effective in your role as a development worker is all about sharing your skills, not just lending them.
The most rewarding step you'll ever take
Although development workers receive a modest living allowance which affords a reasonable standard of living, salaries are not comparable with what you might earn at home. However, you can expect an experience that will be, both professionally and personally, uniquely rewarding.
You will have the chance to make a valuable, lasting impact on people's lives, including your own. Sharing skills works both ways. It will be a learning process for you as well as for the people and communities you work with, and most development workers gain as much as they contribute.
Hundreds of people - people like you perhaps - have now worked as Skillshare Africa development workers. Many simply describe it as the most rewarding step they have ever taken. |