Building on lessons learned at ILO working with dozens of NGOs (Plan, Oxfam, Care...), UN agencies (UNDP, UNHCR) and government ministries of labour and education across Asia, the community-based approach is one grounded in the realities facing organizations working with hard to reach groups, including youth, women's business associations
Building on lessons learned at ILO working with dozens of NGOs (Plan, Oxfam, Care...), UN agencies (UNDP, UNHCR) and government ministries of labour and education across Asia, the community-based approach is one grounded in the realities facing organizations working with hard to reach groups, including youth, women's business associations, and indigenous communities. Approaches are easy to adopt and adapt, and tools are engaging people and can be run at scale at the national and regional level.
Peer-to-peer learning modules that can help participants learn how to effectively improve their interpersonal skills, driving better team participation, enhancing their outcomes and better fulfiling their and their team's goals. Based on work with leading multinationals, resulting in considerable increases in productivity. Topics includ
Peer-to-peer learning modules that can help participants learn how to effectively improve their interpersonal skills, driving better team participation, enhancing their outcomes and better fulfiling their and their team's goals. Based on work with leading multinationals, resulting in considerable increases in productivity. Topics include team building, problem solving, creativity, starting to manage, cross-cultural understand and many more.
Helping factories help themselves to improve across a wide range of areas, from quality and productivity to labour practices, health and safety, and workplace relations. Tools can be introduced either independently or with a faciliator. Experience comes from developing factory upgrading tools, covering over 80 topics across multiple se
Helping factories help themselves to improve across a wide range of areas, from quality and productivity to labour practices, health and safety, and workplace relations. Tools can be introduced either independently or with a faciliator. Experience comes from developing factory upgrading tools, covering over 80 topics across multiple sectors. Buyer or brands can provide support to large groups of supplier factories at a reasonable cost, empowering these facilities to drive their own improvement and compliance.
Since 1991, we have been developing training for the United Nations that is sustainable and impactful. Working in the UN, the challenge has consistently been one of providing training solutions that reach scale, fit budgets and continue once UN funding runs out. The answer, which only emerged over time, has been to go away from the traditional trainer-based, expert-dependent model favored by many development programmes to one of activity-based, peer-to-peer learning, empowering workers, youth and others.
The development journey started at UNIDO in the early 90s, with the TQM Awareness Programme - run across five countries in Africa. There, the first realization was clear - to change production operations, you have to go to the operational level, to its reality - classroom and theoretical training alone was not effective. From there to the early 2000s, where at ILO research on codes of conduct and corporate social responsibility highlighted that for real impact, firms need to integrate compliance goals with bottom line goals. Then on to the ILO's Factory Improvement Programme (later renamed SCORE) - an initiative that, through a training-consultancy model, made this link between productivity, labour practices and environmental impact.
Finally, in the early 2010s, it became clear that expert-based, 'train the trainer' approaches were difficult for many partners to sustain due to costs. Work started on a range of activity-based learning tools, empowering learners to own their own development, cutting the costs for institutions and reducing the capacity requirements for reaching hard to reach communities. These activity-based training approaches have now been taken up globally, for youth entrepreneurship (where ILO set a Guinness World Record for the largest business seminar), small business development, soft skills training and factory and supply chain upgrading. (see more videos on ILO's activity-based training at this YouTube link)
Our approach is one of working with partners to determine their goals in relation to training needs identified - then developing a solution that is low cost and well suited to the participants. After that, the solution - typically based on a peer-to-peer, activity-based learning model - is piloted with an increasingly larger target group, adjusting at each step to address improvements identified. The result is a low cost-to-participant ratio and an enjoyable, engaging and empowering experience for all.
The founder of Empowered.Works, Charlie Bodwell, has been developing and providing training solutions since the early 1980s, working with leading multinationals (Schlumberger, IBM, Agfa-Bayer), followed by 30+ years expanding on that experience through global development programmes of the UN. Training partners have included multinationals - including Seagate, Google, Nestle, IBM and many others - and the supply chains of leading buyers - including Nike, Gap, H&M, Amazon, Ikea, Target and other firms.