Above: ECT’s Principal Mr Austine Omeno giving a speech
In front of you is an Eastlands community that is part of the larger Strathmore family. They are some of the beneficiaries of the Eastlands Project that has span an era of more than 10 years. A lot of hard work, a lot sacrifice and prayers have been put to make this day come true. With the passage of time these efforts will yield even more abundant fruits. Eastlands College of Technology has come a long way. It has evolved from its inception in 2003 to its current state, thanks to the assistance of partners and stakeholders such as Microsoft, International Youth Foundation, Samsung, ICEP, an Austrian NGO in collaboration with the Austrian Government and ACTEC, a Belgian NGO in collaboration with the Belgian Government and many others.
The Eastlands College of Technology started and will always try to meet the real needs of the society in the technical and vocational field.
The Informal Sector Business Institute, a department of the College that runs the entrepreneurship programmes has trained “jua kali” artisans to open up and run successful small business enterprises like bodaboda, workshops, repair and maintenance shops among others.
Some other beneficiaries have been employed in the different Business Process Outsourcing enterprises, BPOs and are able to help sustain their families. others have gone through the Youth Empowerment Programme (YEP) and are currently employing fellow Kenyans.
Even some youths are now solar experts installing solar power in their respective homes and rural areas, and will comfortably install solar even in your homestead your Excellency. This after having gone through the Technician 1 and Technician 2 stand alone Solar course at the College.
For the long term courses, we are in the process of commencing the Dual Training System (DTS), a way of training in which the student has two training venues, the industry and the College. This promises to be an exciting encounter in a win-win situation where in the first analysis, the industries will not only get better trained man-power and cut costs in upgrading their personnel, but will also participate directly in a socially conscience project and in the second analysis the College students will get practical and relevant training and have an easier transition from College to employment.
We are at the closing stages with some industries that have agreed to this co-training of our students. 2016 should see our students going through the DTS, working but at the same time learning in the industries.
ECT has surely made an impact in their lives or how else will you describe the fact that more bread can now be put on the table of the families of these students? We are truly living to the motto of the College, per aspera ad astra (through the tough backgrounds to the stars!)
Above: Guests listening to the speech.
In subsequent visits, don’t get surprised your Excellency to see some of the students at the root tops doing repair work. They are being trained for such tasks. They are here for that. It is our ethos.
They were instrumental in setting up the solar power around the workshop, they also helped set up the electric fence around and recently, they have just finished installing the networking system in the new building. I don’t need to add more, the facts speak for themselves.Our reach out programme your Excellency has stretched from the confines of the surrounding informal settlements to other Counties.
Every so often, our students, aware of the needs of their neighbors, give a helping hand by providing technical repairs to the various broken components in the neighborhood. They also assist by visiting and comforting the disadvantaged in the surrounding settlements.
Six months ago, some of them were involved in doing electrical installation of a Church in the County of Muranga, thanks to an exchange programme by Xabec, a college in Spain with similar aspirations as College. The boys also helped set up solar power in the Church. Spaniards, non English speakers, and Kenyans, non Spanish speakers, met for the first time. We don’t know how they communicated but what we know is that the work was well done.
Our clients your Excellency are not the parents, our clients your Excellency are not the students…..our clients your Excellency are the industries. We hope to work with industries and provide for their real needs, offering market oriented or demand driven programmes. With this in mind, we are training our students to have a corporate mind. Our classrooms and workshops are being transformed into factories, our disciplinary procedures are being attuned to the rules and regulations of factories and not of schools or universities, our attire is that of factories.
Not all has been rosy your Excellency, for where there are roses there are also thorns. We have some challenges which I would like to pay to your ears.
The first is the accessibility of the College. It is a challenge for us, to our neighbors and the community at large to reach here. You must have wondered where the road was leading to as you meandered through the path leading you here.
The next is assistance to reach more people. As much as we are making head ways in the region, we could do more through professional or otherwise monetary assistance in assisting in the technical field as many people as possible within the locality.
With those few remarks, I would like to end by saying that this is one of the foundational stages in the history of Eastlands College of Technology that will usher in a new era. May we live to remember it.