Agricultural Volunteers trained in the context of E-TIC.net

Yoff, Senegal. From 1st to 3rd April 2010, E-TIC trained 22 young people of the National Civic Service of Senegal, recently recruited as Agricultural Volunteers. The seminar was organized at the CRESP/Global Eco-Village Network Senegal training center and focused on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It was organized in the context of a partnership between the National Civic Service and ICVolunteers for the implementation of the E-TIC project.

The National Civic Service (SCN) is a program run by the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Leisure of Senegal, which coordinates a team of volunteers mobilized to work in the field of agriculture. Close to 2000 young people have been trained in this applied way to be agricultural engineers. For the most part from rural areas, many of these young people are students, but there are also some with experience as workers, in areas such as the transportation business.

The three days of training at the training Center in Yoff enabled the young people, the majority of whom do not have access to ICTs, to acquire basic computer skills or improve existing knowledge.

Over the period of three days, the young agricultural volunteers were supervised by Jim Rudolf and Moustapha Ndiaye, who taught them how to use tools such as Google Mail and Skype. The work these volunteers will accomplish in the near future requires them to be able to contact the project coordinators at all times.

These young people are participating in a study for E-TIC.net, a project which aims to provide tools and information to small farmers, herders and fishermen in Mali and Senegal, in order for them to be better informed about ways to market their products as well as about issues related to food production and sanitation.

In the rural areas, where they  will be appointed for a two year term, the volunteers  will collect information linked to agricultural practices, challenges related to husbandry and the use ICTs in this context.

To this end, copies of the field study questionnaire were distributed and explained to them during the seminar. Once they will have finished collecting information, the volunteers will be asked to send a report to the E-TIC.net team or to hand in the results to their supervisor, who will forward the results.

"I am very happy to see that the agreement signed at the end of 2007 between ICVolunteers and the National Civic Service is taking on a concrete form today with this training program, which introduces our young people to new technologies,” underlines Colonel Guèye, administrator of the National Civic Service.

At the end of the session, satisfaction could be read on many faces. This project is giving to many  the  opportunity to touch a computer mouse for the very first time.

Also see:

• E-TIC.net project website
  
• Breeding information points in Sahel: the project is on the move, published in October 2007