In the last week of September twelve managers and officials responsible for cooperation with the business sector at GIZ-supported TVET institutes joined the three-days training course “Seeing through the Eyes of Business Sector” in Bangkok, Thailand. The workshop was organised by GIZ in collaboration with the Academy for International Cooperation (AIZ).  

Based on the guideline “Down to Earth – how to successfully work with Business and Industry in TVET”, a manual developed by GIZ experts working on private sector cooperation in TVET across various Asian countries, the workshop aimed to provide the participants with:

• a better understanding of the interests and perspectives of the business sector;
• practical strategies, tools and measures to improve communication between TVET schools and industry;
• shared experiences, success stories and lessons learnt on how to convince the business sector to participate in TVET, especially regarding cooperative training.

The interactive and participatory training course was jointly conducted by training experts from Germany and AIZ Bangkok.

Attending the training with his colleague from Nha Trang College of Technology, Mr Nguyen Manh Hung, Vice-rector, is positive about the experience: “The training allowed myself and my colleague to gain new perspectives on industry linkages. We are confident that the lessons learnt from the training can be applicable to our current work”.

As the demand from VET practitioners to be equipped with proper skills and tools to approach and create win-win partnerships with the business sector is on the rise, GIZ is planning to roll out the training to a wider range of VET institutes.
To this purpose, six national multipliers attended a follow-up training-of-the-trainers (TOT) programme to deliver the course content to peer VET practitioners at their own institutes and across the country.

“The TOT training is a great opportunity for business cooperation officers to hone our skills through the tools and tips provided by international experts. We are eager to share these good practices with colleagues in the VET community in Vietnam” – shared Ms Nguyen thi Thuy Trang, business cooperation officer from the Vietnam-German Technical College of Ha Tinh.