The POCET Project – Honduras

The ‘Comayagua Project on Education for Work’ (POCET) was initiated by the Ministry of Education and the National Vocational Training Institution (INFOP). It has received international assistance from the ILO, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (in its first phase) and the Government of the Netherlands. It started its activities in 1990 in three zones of the Comayagua region, and was extended in 1994 to two other regions, La Paz and Intibuca. An average of 7,800 people took part. All the communities selected had a high level of illiteracy and poverty.

The target group consists of people between 15 and 49 years of age in rural and semi-urban communities. There has been an explicit attempt to reach women. The goal of the first phase was for 50 per cent of participants to be women.

In addition to a high level of illiteracy, particularly in rural areas, women face restrictions in the occupational area due to the social construction of certain kinds of work on the basis of gender, to lack of information, lack of appropriate technology, lack of access to productive assets, deficient community health services, and having numerous family members to take care of.

The general methodology. The methodology of ‘Education for Work – Educación para el trabajo’, designed for POCET, focuses on persons and their labour activity by providing them with instrumental knowledge (such as literacy and post-literacy) and occupational knowledge (technical, administrative and organizational training).

The gender approach. POCET aims to contribute to a new culture of men-women relations based on a better appreciation and redistribution of their tasks, through awareness-raising among men and women. It also aims to improve women’s access to economically sustainable productive activities.

The gender approach is integrated into different levels of the programme. The technical component, ‘Education, Work, Women’, is responsible for designing strategies and instruments (e.g. a methodological guide), as well as for training and advising the personnel in charge of technical and operational issues. Inter-institutional coordination is another of its features.

At the micro, communal level, the programme includes: (a) measures aimed at facilitating women’s participation, such as ensuring convenient times and places for training sessions, and providing childcare; (b) sensitisation of male partners; (c) strengthening of women’s self-esteem and capacity to act in public, (d) stimulation of organizational dynamics, (e) positive discrimination in women’s access to credit; (f) offering of a broad range of alternative and viable productive activities through training.

Results and impact. Over a five-year period, the programme has achieved a gradual increase in women’s participation. The total rate of female participants has reached 35 per cent (38 per cent in general-instrumental education and 33 per cent in vocational training and productive activities). Productive activities developed by women have been quite varied: farming (coffee, cane), raising of small animals and fish, food processing. There has also been increased participation by women n local decision-making bodies such as the Communal Committee for Education and Work.

Lessons. Women’s participation, particularly in productive projects, could certainly have been even higher. The programme has touched on delicate issues – individual interests and cultural attitudes that are deeply entrenched in both men and women. The programme shows that in this kind of context, women’s integration can be only gradual and slow.

It also shows the need for systematic assistance from trainers and for a methodology that integrates gender issues into the whole policy process instead of considering it merely as an optional extra.

Source: Suyapa Fajando and Lis Joosten: ‘La integración del enfoque de género en el POCET de Honduras’, in Boletín Técnico Interamericano de Formación Profesional, Nos. 132-133, July-December 1995.

Reader’s Kit on Gender, Poverty and Employment, Module 5. Investing in Human Capital: Focus on Training