During the 1980’s and in response to the economic crisis that afflicted the country, the National Training Service (Spanish acronym INA) of Costa Rica created its Public Workshops. This training approach, which differed from the traditional methodological conception, implied great flexibility and offered persons in disfavoured population sectors of both urban and rural areas, an option to improve their earnings and employment possibilities.

Through the training activities implemented in those Workshops, INA intends to raise the overall living conditions of the Costa Rican people. This general objective can be broken down into several more specific ones. The idea is to offer training in productive trades and activities that may increase individual and family earnings, crafts production in a small or medium scale, self-employment on a personal or associative basis, and in some cases to provide marginalised groups with skills enabling them to join the work force in productive activities. The model for these programmes lays down four types of basic services:

• Cutting down of family expenses through the manufacture of items for family consumption, as a form of expenditure substitution or economising.
• Obtaining supplementary income by producing goods and services for the informal market.
• Setting up of small firms or enterprises providing self-employment on an individual, family or associative basis, and integrating them to the semi-structured market.
• Incorporation to the informal labour market, by providing additional, higher technical training after regular INA courses, enabling persons to join the formal labour market.

The methodology consists of implementing an open, non-schoolroom programme of training activities, with very flexible tuition and hours, to fit the needs of the students, but within rational limits.

The role assigned to the instructor(s) is essentially to facilitate the training process and co-operate in it, rather than to act in a traditional teaching function.

In summary, the purpose of the Workshops is to adapt teaching methods and techniques to the educational level and characteristics of the trainees, to the technical requirements of each trade and the objectives of each student.

On the other hand, the methodological process of the Workshops assumes participation by the communities in which they operate, as well as the intervention of key private organisations that may lend support to them, to the trainees and the community.