The applicabilty of skills training for local economic development: a case study of the Thusanang Training Centre

Abstract

The experience drawn from development programmes, has shown that the translation of policy and theory into workable action programmes, is an art form that is little understood and seldom practised successfully, Within the development context, Sbapiero (1984) argues that “no where is the gap between theory and useful action more apparent than in the fielu of economic development” (Shapiero,1984;14). Past top-down exogenous economic development strategies have failed to achieve their objectives, and communities have traditionally lacked the means by which to initiate development. Structural changes in the global arena have also made it difficult for governments to protect their local markets because of competition in the global arena. This means that economic growth in each local area can follow only from the development of a new capacity to respond to global economic changes. Recently, more bottom-up endogenous approaches, to economic development, have been formulated. LED is viewed as a mechanism which could help fill the void which exists, through the effective mobilisation o f community resources. LED could thus enable the poor and structurally unemployed to participate in the economy, by focusing on Human Resource Development, Entrepreneuralism which is geared towards Community Development. New legislation and policy changes have led to more pragmatic and supportive environments which foster LED, LED is in effect a local response which ideally relies on local initiatives, and the communities taking ownership of the development process. This dissertation cannot be comprehensive, Instead it suggests a general framework to problem solving in the field of LED. The Thusanang Training Centre is thus promoted as a synthetic instrument with which to provide a general economic development mechanism at the local level. Training Centres represent areas with interesting and innovative initiatives, that may serve as indicators of ‘good practice* for LED within communities. However when a commitment is made to engage h LED strategies, organisations need to consider the ramifications of their actions on the entire community.