Hangana tackles adult education
Never to old to learn; Part of the Hangana staff members who are focused on developing their basic literacy skills while employed by Hangana Seafood Group.
Elina Hashiti, Generic Trainer & Training Coordinator at Hangana Seafood said that the division of Adult Education offered teaching and learning in both theory and practice for functional literacy purposes.
“This 8 month programme is designed for those wishing to start or continue professional development that primarily focuses on basic literacy-skills in different languages. Learners are prepared to apply this knowledge to practical issues of poverty, civic affairs and social change, while at the same time learning how to read and write,” she said.
“Adult learners are encouraged to develop a critical understanding and thinking of major current affairs debates, theories and strategic interventions. The programme further consists of classwork, assignments, debates and group work, amongst others,” she added.
She said, ‘when looking at Namibia’s past history, very few manual labourers acquired advanced education resulting in the lack of basic literacy skills in one or more languages that their employers spoke’. The literacy phase of the National Literacy Programme’s Adult Basic Education, comprises three formative eight-months training stages, each averaging about 240 learning/lesson hours in which basic mother tongue literacy is taught as well as intermediate literacy, and in the third stage Communicative English.”
“In line with our value ‘We grow people’, Hangana saw the need for employees to be well-trained for effective communication in the workplace. Most of our employees could not read and write, and as such they could not communicate in English before the programme was launched,” Hashiti said. “In cases of hearings and or meetings these employees would need an interpreter which is sometimes a challenge. We offer the course to anyone who has the need to improve their language and numeric skills. Some of our employees did not know how to count their earnings and could not read or write their names. Today, we share in their pride to do so,” she said.
