Rungs on a Ladder to Empowerment: Transforming End-user Computing Training in Port Vila, Vanuatu

<p>End-user training in ICT is a question that currently lurks on the outskirts of development activity. The focus of ICT in development is on implementation of the 'machinery' but lacks specific attention in the building of human capacity to drive and maintain this 'machinery'. The question of training end-users in computing in Port Vila, Vanuatu, was a driving force of this research. In pursuing the question, however, the participatory process, using focus groups to research local industry needs for training, led to the discovery of links between the participation used in researching this question to its use as pedagogy for end-user training. Using participatory action, we are more likely to encourage initiative in pursuing questions and achieving a more localised approach to endeavours such as training, research and development. This participatory approach is also seen as a method more widely applicable in education as well as development. The process lead to empowerment of the individuals involved in the research through raising critical consciousness and providing a form of agency. It raises the question of how to sustain this empowerment in order to lead to transformation. Actual transformation is seen as a quality that takes more than one attempt at empowerment and a temporary taste of agency. The thesis draws on the analogy of a group of people building a ladder together. They have rough building materials to work with but an abundance of their own ideas and their own ability. The ladder construction is participation, its frame exists but the rungs have yet to be attached. It is the process of interaction, exploration and communication in building the ladder together that becomes important. Transformation is in the process of building of the ladder as well as the finished product. It takes a continual construction effort, building on rungs put in place previously.</p>