Honduras: National Center for Vocational Education (CENET)

Context

 Honduras has an education system that requires various measures in different areas. For instance, according to official figures for 2000, the illiteracy rate among the population aged 15 to 24 is 19.5%; net primary school enrollment (among children aged 6 to 14) is 66%. Therefore, Honduras faces the major challenge of providing the necessary tools for people to succeed in the labor market, given the formal education deficit among the population. The need to strengthen the Centro Nacional de Educación para el Trabajo [National Center of Education for Work] (CENET), whose scope encompasses all the country’s regions, is an attempt to address this problem. The program targets youths and adults of both sexes in order to provide them the necessary training and therefore increase their possibilities of finding a job. The program, operating outside of the school system, thus seeks to increase the well being of the population and to ensure sustainable development for communities.

Objectives

The objectives of CENET are to:
    Implement education-for-work programs in adult education and occupational training, in order to support potential medium- and long-term development in the agricultural, industrial and trade sectors.
      Address immediate needs in the areas of literacy education, educational leveling, labor training, and business advisory services.
        Provide training with a special emphasis on youths and adults of both sexes in urban and rural areas.
          Conduct research with to design, apply and disseminate the use of technologies in support of education for work, systematize those technologies and provide information on them to educational programs.

          Pedagogical Challenges

          The education-for-work methodology employed by CENET has the following components: Instrumental learning; occupational training; municipal strengthening; gender focus and environment; credit and marketing; research; systematization; and methodology transfer.

          General Description

          The methodology used to implement CENET follows different stages:
            Promotion: raising community awareness of the importance of the program, reaching for their support. The Community Research Committee (CIC) is then created.
              Community Research: learning about and analysis of the local reality in the community.
                Community Development Planning: preparation of a community development plan, taking into account the community’s analysis and the goals set by its members.
                  Social and Business Organization: organization of welfare and productive groups; the latter composed of community members who have joined the education program. Preliminary ideas are proposed on work-related issues.
                    Implementation of the Welfare and Productive Projects: increased emphasis on occupational training components in response to the needs of productive projects. The most important outcome is the existence of groups whose members have together generated organizational strengths through productive or social work (that is, use of literacy skills, productive techniques, etc.)
                      Business Consolidation and Integration: it is an effort to provide sustainability and permanence to the groups participating in the education program, in order for them to become entirely independently managed and to establish longer-term horizons. In this phase the assumption is that productive groups will turn into permanent productive units, cooperatives, producers’ associations, or other types of organization.

                      Participating Individuals and Institutions

                      CENET has an advisory council composed of representatives from the Ministry of Education, the Instituto Nacional de Formación Profesional [National Institute of Professional Education] (INFOP), and the Association of Municipalities of Honduras (AMHON). The community also takes part by conducting an analysis of local needs and proposing solutions.

                      Budget and Financing

                      The source of financing is the National Treasury, through the Ministry of Education and INFOP.

                      Strengths

                      The program:
                    1. Targets the population outside of the education system, offering them development opportunities.
                    2. Successfully connects the formal education system with adult education for work.
                    3. Works jointly with the community.

                      Lessons Learned

                    4. The most important outcome was that productive work led to the creation among members of organizational strengths, the capacity to use literacy skills and knowledge for productive techniques, and management capacity.
                    5. Community involvement in all aspects of the process is important to ensure its success.

                      Future Challenges

                    6. Make CENET an independent and efficient institution, functioning as a leader at the national and international level and providing technical and methodological services in the area of education for work.
                    7. Strengthen the program in order to tackle the extreme poverty that affects Honduras.

                      Responding to the Summit Challenges

                      The Honduras program addresses the commitments defined in the area of adult and life-long education.

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