HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY!

In December 2006 we received some help from two very special ladies from one very special company!

Even though we had employed our staff for the Education Centre we were in a bit of a pickle in early December...how could we carry out an amazing induction and some initial training that would have everyone not only excited about the prospect of working at the Centre but also ready to provide innovative, creative, fun and interesting learning sessions?!

Luckily a forunately-timed email from us landed in the Inbox of "Happy", a training company based in the UK (www.happy.co.uk). We had read about their style of training on the internet and it looked just the ticket - they provide not only learner focused, creative IT training in-house but they also go around and teach other people how to provide such training! We initially asked if they would share some ideas and resources with us...but they went one better than that and sent us two of their workers instead!


In December we welcomed Nicole and Nicky to Uganda and together began planning how they could help us! On December 11th our 10 members of staff arrived for their first day at work and over the next two weeks Nicole and Nicky took us through the most amazing training that showed us exactly how we could turn our lil ole Education Centre into a vibrant, exciting, innovative and learner-focused environment! Everyone learnt so much during this training from Happy - whilst also having loads of fun and doing lots of stupid things like pretending to be witch doctors, playing confusing hand-twisting games and even getting into a bit of a tangle together.....

At the end of the two weeks we had not only discovered what a marvellous, fun-loving and committed bunch we had employed but they had all learnt an incredible amount from Happy and are desperate to get back to work in January and start making things happen in the Centre!

We would not and could not have done anything even remotely as effective as the training that Nicole, Nicky and Happy provided for us. It really made us come together as a team and discover what we want to achieve in the Education Centre.

So...an ENORMOUS thank you to Nicole, Nicky and to their boss, Henry, and all at 'Happy', UK.

And, if anyone can help us persuade them to come back next year and do some follow up work with us we would be overjoyed!