C4L Adult Learning Programmes
C4L offers adult learners the opportunity to acquire useful skills and knowledge in a number of areas over a relatively short period of time in an informal setting with similarly motivated people. At C4L, the operative term is interactive, because in adult learning, it is the learners themselves who take responsibility for the process – not the teachers.
Additionally, C4L recognizes that learning is not just about facts. As a residential facility, C4L is able to provide participants with opportunities for resting, relaxing, reading, researching, reflecting, refreshing, revitalizing, recuperating, renovating, rejuvenating… and realizing the innumerable benefits of networking together.
Events at C4L can vary from 3 days to 4 weeks. However, C4L averages 2 events per month on its main campus. Short courses can also be delivered anytime by special order – on or off campus.
Additionally, work is underway to take C4L's core training modules into the On-line Environment. When the transfer has been completed, this new venture will be announced on the What's New page, and the process for accessing courses On-line will be explained.
Human Service Courses
Disaster Management
Based on the disaster cycle, the emphasis in this course is put on teaching mitigation and preparedness, although not to the exclusion of relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction. This course uses examples from both natural and social disasters.
Counseling
Grief counseling addresses the deeper personal issues that arise during emergency and crisis situations. Peer-counselors learn to be empathetic and effective in providing support. They learn how to counsel others and go through the process themselves in order to have their own issues dealt with before trying to deal with the issues of others.
Training Trainers
C4L offers adult courses in building capacity at three levels:
- Train-the-Trainer module to teach those with technical competence how to pass on their skills effectively
- Consultancy module to teach professionals to develop skills for providing expert advice to clients, and how to manage and maintain client relationships
- Culture & Management module to explore the effect that changing settings has on managerial training.
Development Practice
Development is about revealing potential. This course teaches adult
participants how to recognize whatever is positive in a negative
situation, and gives them skills to act on, and develop the potential
in those positives.
Credit as a Development Tool
Anti-poverty credit or "micro-lending" can offer people a hand up instead of a hand out. Yet this mode of financing can be fraught with pitfalls, so those who wish to apply for a micro-loan will be taught to evaluate the pros and cons so they can make prudent decisions for their own situations.
Advocacy
Advocacy is the activity of pleading or arguing in favor of something, such as a cause, idea, or policy. In this course, participants learn that justice and peace are fundamental to development and fulfillment of potential. Furthermore, they will learn that peace-making may take many forms and be effective in situations from the domestic level to the political.
OVC Care and Support
In a society where HIV/AIDS has created a vast population of sick and dying adults with no one to minister to them, and has left a multitude of orphaned and vulnerable children stranded and alone, it takes a great deal of strength and courage to become an effective caregiver. This course teaches participants how to cope, how to find those resources that are available assist them, and also how to take care of themselves so they can maintain the internal balance necessary to remain strong and motivated in the care of others. There are practical sessions on how to provide nutrition and health care to children, how to overcome traditional beliefs about death and dying, how to identify children orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS, and how to support them in their homes and schools.
NGO Management Courses
Corporate Governance
Both the corporate nature and the roles of individual Board members of a non-governmental organization (NGO) are discussed. Participants are introduced to the skills of strategic planning & policy formulation, for which Board members are responsible in an organization.
Leadership
Different styles of Executive leadership are examined in terms of their pertinence and effectiveness in different settings and situations. The concepts of leading by example and effective delegation will be explored.
Project Management
"Plan your work, then work your plan." Participants will learn the steps in the Project Cycle including:
- identifying needs
- considering alternatives and formulating a plan
- developing a time line
- obtaining resources – financial, material and human
- implementing the work
- monitoring progress, and finally
- evaluating results against the planned objectives.
Managing Human Resources
This course is designed both to teach and reinforce the fundamental skills of personnel management, including: How to motivate people, how to recognize and reduce stress through counseling, how to increase employee satisfaction and defuse conflict through team building.
Mobilizing Resources
Resourcing a non-governmental organization (NGO) is always a huge challenge. In this course, diverse strategies for fund raising are explored, including:
- Fund raising through "friend-raising" or networking
- Preparing effective grant applications to achieve success when competition is fierce.
NGO Finance
Managing the financial accounts of a non-governmental organization is complex, because unlike in the market place situation, with NGO's, those who receive the services and those who pay for them are different entities. The participants in this course will receive practical, hands-on training.
Managing Time
The expression "African time" suggests that this resource is managed in different ways in different settings. Participants will learn that they must unerstand and pay attention to not only their own sense of timing, but in the marketplace more importantly to the timing needs of their customers and clients, where “time is money”.
Managing Technology
Technology purchases are a big-ticket item for any organization, so choices have to be made that are appropriate to the context and requirements. This module helps to line up and evaluate the criteria for selection, based on the needs and situation.
Managing Information
There is more and more data to be managed in an organization - whether in a simple phone directory or from a complex Monitoring System. The options are explored.
Experiential Team Building
Pamoja
Pamoja, a Swahili adverb meaning together, is what we call a special 3-day - 2 night corporate package at the C4L campus which combines some classroom time on group dynamics and team building with the experiential approach of our obstacle course.
The obstacle course, called Pilgrims' Progress, features 18 challenges which require team effort to overcome. Each obstacle has to be approached with courage, ingenuity - and old clothes! It is part of our strategy to emphasize collaborative team approaches to management and decision making.
This package includes some socializing time as well, so it is designed to stimulate motivation and cohesiveness in the workplace.
A minimum of 8 and a maximum of 20 participants can tackle the course at any one time.
Rates and Registration
To obtain
a list of course rates, current availability and scheduling, and forms
for registration, please contact us by e-mail at: hospitality@C4L.org
Or see C4L's mailing address and telephone number below.