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Distance learning modules to be available across the country
VANCOUVER - Poor management and an unhealthy work environment too often characterise the workplace for women toiling in Bangladesh's booming export garment industry. Now, through international co-operation, a new management-training programme will be available to garment industry managers throughout the country. The initiative was launched with an agreement signed last month by the Vancouver-based Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and the Bangladeshi non-governmental organisation, South Asia Enterprise Development Facility (SEDF).
"Stitching Values Together", a "modular" self-instructional course, is designed for cost-effective and flexible delivery of training to improve the management skills of shop-floor supervisors in the export garment industry. It emphasises occupational health, welfare and safety as well as the particular role of women in the industry.
The Commonwealth of Learning played a catalytic role in developing the course through a partnership with OXFAM and the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (PWIBLF), UK, in conjunction with Bangladeshi NGOs. The learning package was first developed in English and subsequently translated into Bangla (Bengali) and adapted to local circumstances. It was then piloted successfully in five factories in Dhaka.
The agreement with SEDF involves taking the course materials, upgrading them as recommended by the pilot/evaluation process and promoting them throughout the country. It also provides for marketing of the materials in the other countries that SEDF works with and allows COL to use the material as models through its work in other Commonwealth countries.
The Commonwealth of Learning is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies.
The South Asia Enterprise Development Facility is a multi-donor funded, International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group) managed, initiative with a broad goal of developing viable small and medium sized, private sector enterprises in Bangladesh, Northeast India and Nepal.
Further information:
Stitching Values Together: Implementing Core Labour Standards through Management Training in the Bangladesh Ready-Made Garment Sector (PDF) by Julian Parr (International Business Leaders Forum) and Sumi Dhanarajan (Oxfam GB). 2002, Resource Centre for the Social Dimensions of Business Practice ("In Focus 6"), International Business Leaders Forum, Oxfam and the Commonwealth of Learning. (266 Kb. Acrobat PDF download). The report identifies one of the blockages to achieving long-term attitudinal change in implementing core labour standards in the ready-made garment sector in Bangladesh - the need to build management capacity at middle-management level (predominantly female workers). One of the major issues in delivering training to key workers is the inability for them to take time away from the production line, so this pilot sought to develop and trial a set of training modules based on distance learning that could be utilised by the women whilst on the factory floor.
Copies of all six core "modules" are available on the Resource Centre for the Social Dimensions of Business Practice web site: www.resource-centre.org/links/#modules |