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Refugees Acquire Vocational Skills Thanks to a USG-Funded Training Project

Paul Mwenze Anastasio hopes someday to leave the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Dowa and repatriate to his native country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  His dream is to play a role in his country’s reconstruction rather than become a burden on its economy.  To reach that goal, Anastasio completed a vocational skills program at the refugee camp funded by the United States Government.

The training project in tailoring and carpentry skills has been conducted at Dzaleka over the past year and four months. “I have been in the camp for so many years, but I had nothing to do, I was just idle but I hope that the vocational skills that I have acquired are going to assist me and my family to get some basic income,” said a French-speaking Anastasio who had previously not learned any trade.

He added: “life was very difficult because we were only expecting rations from UNHCR but now I can at least improve the standard of my life and my family’s through the vocational skills that I have acquired.”  Altogether, 40 students are expected to be trained and provided with materials needed to set up their own businesses.
United States Ambassador Peter Bodde presided over the program’s first graduation ceremony on April 27 and commented, “I am very impressed with what I have seen today and it is exactly the type of program I like to support because it is grassroots, it gets right to the people and you see the results.”

Ambassador Bodde expressed optimism about the success of the project, adding “we have a very skilled group of students, they are highly motivated but they also understand that it all depends on what they do with their skills – one of the critical things is how to market your goods, the basic accounting, a little bit more than just the average vocational skills.”
The World University Service of Canada (WUSC) and Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) are implementing the vocational skills training project.  On graduation day, graduates received a certificate from the Technical, Entrepreneurial and Vocational Education Training Authority of Malawi (TEVETA), which is a recognized qualification.