On 2nd and 3rd of November 2012, VVOB Vietnam organized a ToT workshop for 24 members of provincial and district Women’s Unions of five provinces. The objective was to discuss how Women Unions can support career guidance for secondary education
Career guidance (CG) plays an important part in each student’s life as well as in the prosperity of the country. Although career education was introduced by the Ministry of Education and Training and is provided by each secondary school, there are many aspects that need to be improved. This workshop aimed to help the WU identify their responsibilities and capacities in supporting career education for secondary education. While the EDU-programme is running in 5 provinces, the CG programme of VVOB Vietnam only runs in Nghe An and Quang Nam. However this “CG” activity covers the 5 provinces since support to CG can be considered as a part of parenting skills which are introduced in “Education and Life” club activities under the EDU programme in all 5 programme provinces.
The workshop provided overview of career guidance in education in general and the currently running CG programme of VVOB in two provinces (including vision/mission, CG portal and training materials) and also introduced strategies for awareness raising. The need for raising awareness comes from the CG baseline survey on the attitudes and practices of parents (club members of Education and Life clubs). Participants were also touched on career guidance related theories and consultation skills such as career planning model, career tree model, career guidance services, questioning skills, feedback skills, etc.
Possibly the most interesting part were the practical sessions of each consultation skill where participants role-played in pairs and in groups. Although, mainly due to personnel changes at district level, several of the participants were new, these newcomers blended in very well thanks to (according to their own testimony) the friendly and dynamic atmosphere, the active participation in every session and the useful content of the workshop.
The WUs proposed to include in their plan for 2013 multiplication workshops for districts and communes, communication events and exchange meetings in collaboration with Youth Union and schools on CG as a parenting skill. Notably, this topic was also integrated into the plan for five million mother programme, a national programme of the VWU.
