How to organise training in Nigeria 101

Organising a training session in Nigeria is in actuality quite an experience! Basically, it can be a logistical nightmare cause not only do you have to attend to the usual contentions of preparing material customised to a local audience – there are also a plethora of issues like the venue to hold the training with sufficient working computers, power, back up generators, transportation. The list of things to organise and things going wrong are frighteningly endless. However, in my humble opinion, I am happy to report it was a success from Team IBM and Team CruTech.

To start from the genesis of this idea, we would need to cast our minds back to last weekend, specifically, Sunday afternoon. Our first formal team meeting in the conference room at the hotel to discuss commonalities amongst our various projects and clients. We identified the need to conduct some basic and intermediate Excel training across the ministries. Boris and I volunteered ourselves as this was right up our allies being daily Excel users and advocates, not to mention, excitable and enthusiastic people.

First and our most significant difficulty – where would this be held? When you’re in Nigeria with lack of reliable power and IT infrastructure, this is a most considerable issue. Heesoek and KJ thoughtfully offered to speak to Mr Terence Eyo (Director of Cross River State University of Technology) about using the uni’s facilities. This was confirmed on Tue night after much investigation whether there would be enough power to generate the total desktops required and Mr Terence having to cancel classes for the day!! We are indebted to CruTech for their assistance and support. Leading up to the day, we were still confirming final numbers and made the decision to run two sessions, in case, the large computer room was unavailable. In my summary of the events, it sounds relatively easy and smooth but trust me, there were lots of last minute frantic phone calls.

On Wednesday, Jane and the Governor’s driver kindly drove Fiona, Lekshmy and I around the markets to buy CDs, markers, covers and refreshments for the training sessions. We also realised there would be transportation issues as staff were coming up to us asking for transportation money (CruTech is around 30mins away from the Agric office). Enter superwoman Jane who coordinated picking up the Agricultural staff in the morning, then picking up Forestry staff at 12pm then driving Agric staff back to the office at 1pm.

Boris and I worked right up nervously through our dinner preparing the training material as we have been uber busy and productive at our workplaces this week. There is a funny shot of us sitting seriously and manically typing away at our laptops right up to about 10pm. The rest of the team patiently waited for us to transfer the finalised training materials to their laptops in order to burn 50 CDs before the morning. An early night for the two trainers (I went to bed, Boris went to the bar! lol )

In the morning, we both woke up energised and ready to tackle the tasks ahead. We took a laissez-faire approach as there are mutiple things that could go wrong like power going off, too many people turning up to the sessions (it had spread through word of mouth and as free training is rare, we generated much interest). This was tested when it was 10am (the scheduled start of the first session) and we were still waiting for the keys to the computer lab. I was impatiently pacing around Heeseok’s and KJ’s office. We killed some time by taking silly photos.

Once we got the keys and opened up the computer lab, the bus with Agriculture staff of around 12 had arrived!! There was a mad dash to test the power, get the projector up and running, getting the desktops booted before ushering in the first “students” of the day. Before we knew it, the training had started and it went smoothly from there onwards. No technology or power glitches - hurrah!!

The students from both sessions were very engaged and it was so gratifying to be able to help them with something tangible. I was somewhat concerned that the training was seen as a novelty for some but my fears were unfounded, most people were genuinely eager to learn how to apply Excel to their daily jobs. The biggest barrier now is access to computers to continuously practice. (Also, a typing course is required as staff have limited access to computers hence, their typing is quite slow. I’ve taken for granted that we are actually quite fast typists back home.)

Some funny memorable moments from the training:
- when we started the class with ‘Good Morning Class”, everyone stood up. So very formal and polite of them!
- Boris and I made daggy jokes and Excel examples with little success. Tough crowd! :
- The excitement and happiness when we told the students that they could keep the CDs
- My Agriculture employees were quite excited to have their girl training the class. They all wanted photos with me. I believe I spent more time posing than actually helping! ;)

It was such a wonderful day and will stand out as one of the coolest satisfying things I’ve been involved in. I suspect I will reminisce about it fondly in the future and feel all warm and fuzzy. It could not have happened without CruTech’s support with Mr Terence backing the project, Team IBM organising logistics and staying up burning CDs, Heeseok and KJ hosting and assisting us during the day, Iwara – our technical support officer and all the wonderful “students” who participated. Last but not least, my totally awesome co-trainer, Boris, who worked tirelessly and patiently with me. :-) I am so proud of Team IBM! xx

My extraordinary Agric staff with Boris and I :-)

Our computer room for the training

Having fun running the sessions