The management of Monrovia Vocational Training  Center (MVTC) has designed and adopted a new training guide to make teaching and learning easy at the center, says center director Boye Robertson.

Titled the Ladder Approach, the guide is structured into six stages, with each running for three months. Stages one, two and three deal with trade/department overview; tool, equipment, and material overview; and discussion on components and application, respectively.

At stage four, trainees are prepared to perform acquired skills with occasional supervision; stage five positions them to perform independently, while the last stage exposes them to the world of work, with the institution assigning them to industrial areas for job experience. 

Robertson describes adoption of the guide as part of necessary steps taken to return the Ministry of Youth and Sports-run center to its pre-war status, after a period of operating it for mainly ex-combatants.

Established by government in 1980, MVTC was created to run a three-year vocational program that would help make the Liberian youth technically productive to participate in the nation’s development.

The center lived up to expectation until the civil war forced it to abandon the program in 1990. During the course of the crisis, the institution adopted an eight-month training curriculum under the UNDP-sponsored Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration and Resettlement (DDRR) program to help ex-combatants acquire some life skills and re-enter civilian life.

With Liberia now moving into recovery and reconstruction, the need for which MVTC was founded has become more vital.

“As Liberia moves forward in its reconstruction drive, the ministry is keen to re-strengthen learning and formal education at MVTC as a way of helping to meet the rebuilding needs of the country; hence the adoption of the new training guide,” Robertson says.

Offering training in electronics, electricity, tailoring, air conditioning/refrigeration, plumbing, masonry, welding & fabrication, auto and general mechanics, computer education, graphic arts, and carpentry, MVTC currently runs an 18-month curriculum, with plans to revert to the three-year program.

Five hundred fifty-one students are presently enrolled at the center, with a male dominance of 497 and 54 females.