BGE Guyane Who are we? What do we do? Which learning postulates?

1. BGE GuyaneWho are we?What do we do?Which learning postulates? Corsica  Grundtvig Partnership  October 2011 Spokesman: Julien VALETTE

2. … But first thing first: where are we ?

3. Keys : Siège de la Boutique de Gestion Activité Conseil Cayenne Antennes de la Boutique de Gestion Activité Conseil Kourou St Laurent du Maroni St Georges Lieux de permanences ponctuelles Rémire-Montjoly Mana Maripasoula Awala-Yalimapo Zones d’intervention habituelle de la Boutique de Gestion de Guyane

4.  French Guiana in short : • The only Europan region in South America • Roughly 90 000 km² : same as Portugal • 210’000 inhabitants all by the coastline, the rest is rain forest. • A very young population: more than 50% of which is less than 26 years old. • Dramatically expanding demographics: depending on the area, population has multiplied by 5 to 9 in 50 years. • Rough social and economical context: high unemployment (3 times higher than in mainland France), uncontroled inmigration, violence, unproper housing, etc. • However, the region seems less impacted by « the crisis »

5. BGE in short : • An association created in 1996 • Part of a wide national network • 30 employees • 4 branches : • Entrepreneurship (to help people set up a business) • Integration (to help people find a job) • Training (more on this later) • Plus a branch with no real name where all the unusual or one-shot projects go (mainly development programs)

6. … to sum up things, various areas but some defining factors : • Even in the entrepreneurship branch, we all work with less advantaged people (long term unemployed people, disabled people, young people with no work experience, non-french speakers, people with a social stigma, etc.) • We work hand in hand with the administration and the institutions (kind of subscontracting), so that no money is ever involved for the beneficiaries.

7. Focus : training • At BGE Guyane, training mainly involves a mobile service which is part of a wider program called « To work and learn ». • It has the « mobile » tag because trainers can meet learners at their company’s. • It is a very specialized unit: training there deals with « basic learning ». In other words: • Basic language skills • Basic mathematics • Logical thinking • The key skills for a particular job • It is aimed at job-seekers and employed people alike.

8. Focus : training • More specifically, this program can help job-seekers and the employees having troubles fulfilling their current mission: • Understand, speak, read and write French • Try computers • Develop logical thinking and memory • Learn numbers, operations and measures • Etc. • All this is tailored to fit each learner and adapted to the job he/she has or he/she is currently seeking.

9. One example ! Employed learners • For UNIFIPECHE, a fishing company, this mobile training unit worked with captains. The goal was to make them proficient with the log book, which is a compulsory legal document to be filled by them every time they take the sea. • The challenging part of this mission was that said captains weren’t fluent french speakers. • To gain proficiency with the log book, training involved lexical learning, readable handwriting, time calculations, etc. • In 12 to 22 hours, the captains became proficient with this legal document which had been an everyday pain and they reinforced their employability.

10. Another one ! Unemployed learners • For job-seekers in the cleaning sector this unit insured that they could understand spoken and written instructions left by the manager, organize their work in a logical way (following a logical path), read the important notices on products (instructions for prooper usage), make basic calculations (measures for dosage, timing, and even pricing) and recognize tags and labels (for safety reasons). • This mission also involved developing their presentation skills so these newely empowered job-seekers could really make a difference in a somehow crowded sector.

11.  Various contents • To develop presentation skills • To read and understand written instructions and safety or legal notices • To establish a planning or find one’s way into it • To develop one’s vocabulary for a precise job or task • To read and understand a company’s internal ruleset • To fill in an invoice and other legal documents • To find and understand job openings published online or in the press, even when shortened • To navigate the web and use a personal account online for job seeking purposes (Pole Emploi website)

12. Some data • Roughly 15 000 hours training per year • Roughly 150 learners per year • As much female learners as male learners • 48% unemployed people • 41% employees • 11% self-employed people • Most (71%) are 35 years old + • Only 24% followed a curriculum in France • 63% followed a curriculum abroad • 13% never followed a curriculum • Only 1 out of 4 learners is a native french speaker

13. Learning postulates • Even if it is younger than that, the origin of our training unit dates back to 1996 when a « Permanent Taskforce Against Illiteracy » was set up in French Guiana. • The backbone of this « taskforce » was to concentrate on persons rather than on training contents. In other words, trainers had to pay greater attention to the cultural diversity even if it was at the expense of certain goals. • Of course, our training unit adopted this model and thus developped a multicultural approach.

14. Learning postulates • A « multicultural approach » is a big word. More specifically, it is rooted in the following learning postulates: • To abandon « cultural deficit » model. This model leads to evaluate a learner’s needs by comparing the cultural norm of the learner to the cultural norm of the trainer. Instead of singling out the gaps, it is thus prefered to recognize and value learners’ skills and inner strength so that they true potential can emerge. • For the trainer to de-focus on his/her own cultural norm, values and customs to let true dialogue happen between cultural communities.

15. Learning postulates • As a result, vernacular and traditional lore, folklore, knowledge stemming from experience and oral tradition, the many languages and dialects spoken in French Guiana, have all their place at our training unit. • It means, identifying, valuing and managing the cutural diversity are compulsory skills for our trainers. • This goes hand in hand with a profesional behaviour engineered towards collaborative learning (which favor the expression of all participants), and a mindset that considers people, languages and cultural traits as interractive dynamic phenomenons rather than fixed frozen inheritances or blocks.