by Ehi Iden
Training and capacity building has always been close to my heart, perhaps because my parents were both teachers. To help people improve skills, I started holding class sessions professionally in 2005 and it has been a fast evolving journey since then.
The OSHversity project was a dream that COVID-19 lockdown helped me fast track. I have always known the future of education will be driven by on-line learning which I am also a product of. I have taken so many online classes in my life and the knowledge I have acquired through the generosity of this virtual learning space cannot be quantified.
When we were forced into isolation unpreparedly, I told myself I needed to use the period wisely because no one was sure how long this process would last. I went in search of online courses and that was how I got into a Train-The-Trainers class as facilitated by TJ Walker, who is now one of my mentors and about the best trainer and public speaking expert I have ever met.
I had to go through 600 videos to complete the course, which is the highest I have ever been through in my entire time in online learning. In one of the videos, Mr. Walker said “do you know online training is the future”. He further said, “you may be so strong now and able to hop from one flight to the other, flying from a city to another, have you ever imagined a time will come when your health or age may not allow you to do all these”. These few words of his got me thinking. A few months before, I had already played with the idea of OSHversity Training and Development Company, and now it was time to make it a reality.
OSHversity’s overall goal is to make FREE OSH trainings accessible to citizens from low and medium income countries (LMIC) who may not be able to afford the exorbitant cost of existing OSH certifications.
OSHversity offers them something to build on at no cost and this goes a long way in bridging the competency gap in OSH within low income countries. Because our courses are all virtual, you can join our classes from any country so long as you get pre-registered for proper profiling and have access to either a smart phone or a computer with internet connectivity.
We used the remote working period to structure the organisation and held the formal launch via zoom during November 2020 with attendees from over 19 countries. This was a huge moment for us and we moved quickly. Our first class was presented in December 2020, “Managing Mental Health at Workplaces”. To our amazement, 61 participants from 11 countries registered, we saw people willing to learn and the feedback was very impressive. Excited with this initial support, we advertised yet another class titled “Workplace Health, Wellness and Productivity” which we designed as a two-week class during February, 2021. This time, we recorded 69 registrations from 14 countries. The participants enjoyed the course so much, and got so much benefit that they did not want it to come to an end. Most importantly, a number of the attendees started making actionable lifestyle improvement plans even after the first week of the training. We found these very impressive.
Altogether we recorded 130 registrations for the two courses we have hosted so far. It is important to mention that we use pre-class assessment and post-class assessment questionnaires as our training evaluation model. With this, we are able measure the knowledge level of the participants prior to training and we are also able to measure the impact of the training at the end of the class sessions.
We have derived great fulfilment from the OSHversity project, the feedback emails we get from participants are amazing.
We have achieved all this through self-funding and we look forward to do more in the coming months and years. We have a list of courses lined up for the year and the one I feel most strongly about is “Train the OSH Trainer”. This is close to my heart, the need to raise more trainers is crucial in this part of the world, whether they are safety officers, supervisors or managers, they need to be trained so they can start delivering quality safety training within their organisations.
Our goal is to train a minimum of 800 people during our first year and we are working hard towards increasing the frequency of our classes. We are in discussion with guest experts to facilitate the class sessions during the second quarter of 2021. Our next class scheduled for 8th April, 2021 already has over 50 registrations from 12 countries.
We are looking forward to a more impressive performance in Q2.
