Swiss Embassy Senior Management Visit the Skills for Employment Tanzania Project

Initial vocational education and training
25.06.2021
On 17th June 2021, three senior management team members from the Swiss Embassy paid a courtesy field visit to the Skills for Employment Tanzania (SET) project. 

Swisscontact is currently implementing the project in the Morogoro region of Tanzania with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The project seeks to improve youth self-employment through actively contributing to vocational skills development.  SET focus on improving the livelihoods of youth, with a specific focus on young women and mothers to access relevant vocational training courses that can provided tangible opportunities for meaningful employment.

The visiting team included H.E. Mr. Didier Chassot, Ambassador of Switzerland to Tanzania, Mr. Claude Voutat, the Head of Consular Affairs and Ms. Marloes Philippo, the Senior Program Officer for Employment and  Income. They were introduced to the SET team who provided a detailed update on the rollout plan and facilitated exchanges with key implementing partners and project beneficiaries.

Ms. Janet Maro, Executive Director of SAT (left), Mr. Didier Chassot, Ambassador of Switzerland to Tanzania  (centre) and Ms. Marloes Philippo, Senior Program Officer for Employment and  Income (right) examine a demonstration garden

Since partnerships are integral to the success of the project, Swisscontact organised site visits and bilateral discussions with two implementing partners supporting the project namely, Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT) and Sokoine University Graduate Entrepreneurs Cooperative (SUGECO). SAT is a leading member of the Training Providers Platform and the chair of the Agricultural Skills Development Consortium (ASDC). The two platforms are supported by the project to hold constructive discussions and create innovations that will improve the TVET system in Tanzania. SUGECO, also a member of the ASDC stakeholder platform, is a cooperative working closely with SET to develop a curriculum in beekeeping, entrepreneurship and innovation. The tour included on-site demonstrations of the plots, training facilities as well as incubation and processing centres.

As gender transformation and inclusion are key to the project, the management team also had in-depth discussions with the SET Gender Expert and two female trainers around the approach being applied.

“SET has adopted an effective approach to address gender inequality and has established a pool of female leaders to work with. We have empowered them on gender transformation and linked them to work with the public and private training providers. Gender barriers transect not only households but the community at large. These female trainers are now equipped to challenge the gender norms within their organizations. They have gained appropriate skills to develop gender-sensitive training material, policies and now complement our Training of Trainers (ToT) initiatives,” affirmed Mr. Stephen Morley, the SET Team Leader.