Qualification for Community Development Workers

Press Release

4 November 2008

SAQA is currently revising the unit standards for “development practice”. 

The first unit standards in the field of development practice were widely seen as unsuitable for building the capacity of community based development workers mainly because they did not describe the competencies that community development practitioners really needed in their day to day work. As a result many decided not to bother with accreditation certification of their capacity building courses and programmes.  Others have been forced to include what they see as irrelevant content to their courses simply in order to get some form of certification which is of little relevance or credibility in the development sector. 

Yet the need for accreditation and certification remains as strong as ever.
 
SAQA has drafted new revised unit standards for comment. Historically, only a very few people respond – and those often have a stake in the system. We feel that the professional certification of development practitioners is a critically important issue for the development sector, and that comment on the new unit standards should be as wide as possible. Done well, it could bring huge benefits to the sector. But done poorly it could make things worse than if there were no certification at all. For this reason we have drafted this short survey and urge everyone who is interested in the field of capacity building for community development to respond.
 
Please click here to access the survey questionnaire. It will take no more than 10 minutes of your time.

And please pass this on to anyone you know. More responses will provide more reliable and convincing data. 
 
From SAQA website:
A qualification is the formal recognition by the SETA of the achievement of the required number and range of credits and other requirements at a specific level of the NQF. The requirements is characterized by learning outcomes – critical cross-field and specific outcomes. These are described in a predetermined list of unit standards consisting of a set of fundamental and core unit standards and a choice of elective unit standards. 

For further details feel free to contact mariette@sustainabilityinstitute.net or 021 881 3196