Master Class - Advancing Your Skills

PFF Mentors Katende Godfrey (AKA Blak) and Fiona Naigwe traveled from Kampala to Kasese to offer a Master Class focused on using sustainable and local materials to create products that will sell on the global and local marketplace. As an organization, we are committed not only to supporting advanced skills training for our graduates so they can become financially independent. On top of that, we want to be a part of a sustainable future where local, natural, and reclaimed materials are used as much as possible.

“It was by far the best Master Class we have led so far,” said Fiona Naigwe. First of all, we have grown as teachers. I felt that when we guided people, they listened and they pushed through.”

Ms. Naigwe, who has now led four Master Classes with PFF, has changed her way of speaking to her students. She wants to be an example, and for the students to grow in confidence as well as skill.

“I focused more on how to encourage them, how to motivate them, how to inspire them,” she said.

The students, who are all graduates of the PFF Skills Training Program interested in growing their skills and their businesses through the Alumni Association, learned how to make three different items: tote bags, small wallets, and bracelets. PFF will invest in some of the most committed students, purchasing many of our donor thank you gifts from them. This will help them to reinvest in their own businesses, to purchase more materials for sale at the local level.

One thing that Mr. Godfrey was satisfied to see in this most recent Master Class was that the students are starting to share their knowledge.

“On the first day, everyone would come up to Fiona and me to ask questions,” he said. “But by the middle of the second day, they started cooperating and reaching out to each other. It wasn’t like that at the beginning. Now they can really share, and they start learning so fast. We hope that everyone we teach will share it with someone else.”

In the future, Ms. Naigwe and Mr. Godfrey hope to offer more personalized and advanced training for the teachers, because that’s how they can keep the learning going even fter the mentors have gone back to Kampala.

“The point is to get them to understand that they are leaders in these classes,” she said, “and they have to keep leading their team to victory.”