Moving Beyond Traditional Vocational Education and Training

As Ruben Centre continues to fulfill its mandate towards a Just and empowered Mukuru Community, there has been a remarkable growth in both infrastructure and service responses to meet the needs and demand of the beneficiary community.

 The Human Development and skills training Centre has had an immense impact in transformation of the lives of the young population in Mukuru over the years through offering hands on trainings in areas of tailoring, dressmaking, knitting, weaving, mat making, detergent making, beadwork among other tradesman courses.

The unit empowers over 100 youth and women in a year through the vocational skills trainings. However, some of the courses and skills offered are being associated with the older generation as most young people have invested passion in more vibrant courses in areas of hospitality, hair dressing and beauty, electrical engineering and others.

Ruben Centre through the new leadership is working towards expanding the Human Development and skills training Centre to accommodate more courses (baking, hairdressing beauty and electrical engineering) that are particularly attractive to the youth including teenage and young mothers in Mukuru Slums.  

The program will also be re-designed to not just empower learners with knowledge and skills in the respective courses, but will go beyond to incorporate life skills and business skills to ensure that the students are well prepared for the job market and entrepreneurship spaces within and outside Mukuru.

There is also great need to strengthen the HDSTP transition program to ensure learner’s transition smoothly into the job market through reorganization of our Loans and savings scheme to support the learner’s access financial aid to begin their own businesses.

Currently, we have enrolled 30 young people to undertake the baking course twice a week. The first lesson kicked off with hands on practicals. The students made some first attempts cakes by guidance from their teaching instructors. The program will adopt a social enterprise model to empower the learners to be self reliant in future.