Last time I blogged (many moons ago…) I heralded the start of a new era at the Centre – one of an outreach programme breaking down the barriers for those who can’t get to the Centre. Next week we hope to see a new programme starting at the other end of the spectrum – a work experience scheme to help students who’ve been through our courses find work. Initial research was done today and we’ve got five potential placements lined up in teaching, mechanics, community development, an energy company and at the national museum.
It fits in perfectly with the end of exams, which I’ve had my head stuck in for the past few weeks, hence the lack of blog activity. We have been doing exams since we opened in 2005 but we had identified it as a process which we need to look at in order to ensure that we have a consistently high standard every time. The success of LivLife Centres in getting people into the job market depends not only on our abilities to turn out good students, but also on our abilities to be able to assess who is a good student.
The staff here at the Centre have had it tough the past couple of weeks with numerous training sessions, hours going through exam questions, marking schemes coming out of their ears and me picking up the smallest of errors, even if it actually wasn’t an error but an interesting talking/learning point. They’ve done tremendously well and the students exam results look to have been the same with some superb performances from Maths, Reading & Writing and the Computer students.
We have graduation to look forward to on Saturday, and then another week before I return to the UK for a month’s meetings and fundraising. But before that we’ve quickly moved from marking week to review week and we’re busy implementing a new monitoring & evaluation process which will take data from all areas of the community and assess all parts of the Centre – including what we don’t yet do! It’s going to be a very powerful tool and, most importantly, will give the Centre staff the capabilities to develop the Centre the way their community needs it to.
Back in the cyber world we’ve launched our new donate page on Virgin Money Giving – http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/charities/livlife which gives a much easier way of supporting the work we are doing.
Another update to come next week along with photos from graduation…
