After a little more than half a year, our Colombia project is making good progress. The two focus sectors of digitalisation and tourism hold enormous potential for local companies and at the same time promise many qualified training positions for young Colombians. The interest in needs-oriented, practical vocational training is higher than ever before. And so, since the beginning of the year, there has been a lively exchange in various clusters and forums of IT and tourism on the topic of dual vocational training. Together with our main partner, the Medellín Chamber of Commerce (CCMA), our team in Colombia first surveyed the needs of the individual companies. An awareness-raising workshop at the end of March was intended to familiarise interested companies in both sectors and the educational institutions involved with the dual system, to standardise ideas and concepts for it and to develop an initial roadmap for the near future with our project partners CCMA and SENA. Our project team received support from the Head of the Sustainability & Education Department of the German Chamber of Foreign Trade (AHK) in Bogotá, who is also the Director of the Dual University of Latin America. During the visit of Ana Puyalto (Finance Manager AFOS) and Daniela Tscherpel (Project Manager Colombia & Mexico) from the Cologne head office, existing connections to the local partners and relevant German actors such as the German Embassy and the AHK could be strengthened. The course has been set for a successful project: The first train-the-trainer courses are to start this summer so that the first trainees can start their dual training in the very near future, too.
