CENTRE PROFESSIONNEL DE DEVELOPPEMENT COMMUNAUTAIRE "CPDC"
Centre Professionnel de Developpement Communautaire (CPDC) is a partner of short courses and skills development of Eben-Eben University of Minembwe (UEMI).
It is accredited by the National Ministry of Professional Training Art and Craft in DRC under accreditation number: 033CABMIN/MIN-FPAM/JPN/RLK/spdy/2020 of 05 NOV 2020. Vocational center offers programmes in agriculture and forestry; wildering and electricity; livestock and veterinary; mechanics and automobile; construction and masonry; craft, knitting and sewing. Programs are organized from 3 months to 2 years. Skills training provide “training for work" courses, short training programmes. The curriculum includes half of theory and half of practice. After completing the programme, students may enter the labour market.
This programme does not provide direct access to tertiary education. When young people who are still active, fail to gain life skills, they can easily be trapped into a cycle of dependency, delinquency, aggression and/or depression and hopelessness. Skills training in Minembwe provides a means of reducing the psychosocial impact of trauma and allow people to begin to re-establish some sense of normalcy and security, after being forced to leave their homes during armed groups and intertribal conflicts.
Mission and Vision
The vision of CPDC is to create conducive skill learning environment that empowers youth for community transformation and rural development. The mission of the CPDC is to train young people in skills for life and acquire knowledge that is practical and sustainable in reducing poverty and rebuilding communities affected by conflicts.
Target Group
CPDC is part of the sustainable approach in Minembwe to train young people’s skills for life. Affected by tribal conflicts, many young people (boys and girls) interrupt formal education at early age due to displacement of families or due to lack of means to continue with studies. There are others who finish their primary and secondary schools but don’t get chance to continue with university.
Many young boys’ dropout of schools and joined armed groups and some of them comeback and reintegrate social life. Some go back to formal school in secondary school and college, while others prefer to do short skill life trainings and Minembwe had not had vocational training center ever since.
The other category of people to that CPDC wants to serve, are single mothers and widows. Culturally, girls get into marriages at early age. This has several consequences. One, girls don’t have chances to finish their secondary schools and go to colleges. Very few make it to colleges while married. Others fall victims of wars that kill their husbands in battlefields and other circumstances. Some have no skills to survive and about 30% of young women in Minembwe are in this category, unfortunately. CPDC wants to encourage these young women for skills training in order to help them be more independent and active in building their own lives and those of their dependents.
Objectives
This programm is designed to support social and economic recovery for people affected by socio-economic hardships and tribal and armed conflicts in Minembwe and its environs. CPDC’s objectives include:
• To address immediate needs for income to insure people affected by conflicts or who had no chance/access to formal education and ex-armed groups members are able to find other alternative means to make a living. Vocational training and livelihoods skills training programmes provide a psychosocial element to aid local communities of Minembwe adjust to new realities. They give a reason to believe in life and in a future.
• To build human capital required for community’s reconstruction and rural development. Affected by cultural influences of youths’ early marriages (boys and girls); lack of means and access to formal education; and recruitment of children and youth in armed conflict in the region, often comprise a gap generation, “lost generation”, which mainly remain illiterate with no marketable skills on the marketplace.
• To bridge relief-to-development approach. Despite the wars, and conflicts that have affected local communities in Minembwe and Eastern DRC, dependency on humanitarian aid cannot develop and stabilize communities. But skills training is a tool and alternate solution to local development and tangible peace dividend. Although, Minembwe population was not so well equipped with structured skills training due to their agricultural and livestock tradition for a century, the current destruction of their socio-economic fabrics of local communities.
• To provide, promote and coordinate quality education through training and research that integrates science, technology and innovation into production systems for rural sustainable development.
CPDC is the only and first accredited vocational training in Minembwe. For this reason, it focuses on job creation and improve employment of youth and graduates in the region of Minembwe. The goal is to link skilled knowledge to economic opportunities within the local context of Minembwe and its environs. Empowering youth not only gives an opportunity for economic advantages, but also a sense of local empowerment and community values.
