HIIT develops training for Cooks in Mali

The High Impact Tourism Training (HITT) team in Mali has successfully carried out the first training of trainers and training of beneficiaries on ‘Traditional Malian Cooking’.

The six days course, which took place from 12th to 19th July 2012 in Bamako, involved 6 trainers and 42 beneficiaries. These trainings were held and delivered at Centre Aoua Keita (CAK), SNV local partner of the HITT program.

This course on ‘Traditional Malian Cooking’ was developed after the situation analysis phase emphasized that a big part of the money spent by tourists leaks out of the country instead of creating linkages within the various communities.  Promote the use of traditional Malian dishes for tourists enable the training to address such issue by:

• Answering tourists’ expectations who are often eager to discover this part of the Malian culture.
• Ensuring that tourists' expenses directly benefit to communities, as the cooking products used are locally cultivated.

 To guarantee effectiveness and high impact of the training, Centre Aoua Keita developed the training curricula in close consultation with the end beneficiaries (small restaurant owners and cooks). These close consultation and collaboration allowed CAK to identify the relevant topics and content of the training, to develop a better understanding of the constraints of target beneficiaries, and to structure training delivery strategies according to beneficiaries' needs and learning constraints. The outcome of these processes resulted in the adoption of four training modules:

• Traditional dishes: learn how to improve cooking technics of local meals
• Hygiene: focus on how to respect hygiene rules, security norms and avoid food intoxications
• Food preservation: improve different technics to manage a stock of food so that it resist decomposition or fermentation
• Marketing and hospitality: promote their restaurant more efficiently and attract more customers

Training of trainers approach followed

The first training sessions were led by the CAK experts who built the curriculum. To ensure successful learning of HITT training methods, future trainers had an active participation role, taking in several instances an ‘assistant’ role during the Training of Trainers sessions. In addition, future trainers joined a four day training course on the following topics: curriculum design (pre-training), debriefing and adaptation of curriculum (post-training), and HITT learning principles (andragogy and active learning).

Training of beneficiaries

A total of 42 cooks and managers of small restaurants were trained over a period of 6 days. To ensure the training fits to the usual working conditions of trainees, most of the course was held in an outside kitchen. Only the marketing and kitchen hygiene module took place in a classroom environment.

At the end of the training, beneficiaries were enthusiastic about what they learned. One on them even wanted to come back for the next session! The following summarizes some observations made by beneficiaries after the training:

• “I used to put stock cube in all my meals, but now I’ve learned better way to cook without it”
• “From now on, I will propose a special offer to my faithful customers”
• “I already ordered a special material to do the doughnuts we have learned, as I am sure it will be a success in my restaurant”
• “I used to keep the “millet and peanut couscous” for the banquets, but I will add it on my weekly menu”
• “I was very interested by the marketing course, and I am going to propose new services such as catering or delivery”
• “I am now going to prospect the companies located around my restaurant”
•  “I will limit the amount of sugar I used to put in the doughnuts, and replace it by eggs. Besides, I won’t put anymore milk as it makes them burn quickly”.

Learning and next steps

Beyond the trainees’ satisfaction, the first two sessions allowed us to adjust the curricula to the needs of the trainees. For example, we will add two meals, a sauce, and a local juice to the next programme. Moreover, we realised that two sessions on the same day are too much, as people cannot free themselves to attend classes early in the morning; also it would be best to have only one session per week with two trainers (one master trainer and one assistant) leading the course.

Next sessions are planned towards the end of August in Bamako and in Kayes, since the trainers from Kayes have been already trained. In the meantime, the CAK have recently provided us with interesting news as the word of mouth advertising of the previous beneficiaries seems to have raised the interest of around 80 potential learners for the next training sessions.

Plat de Tô (pate de maîs) accompagné des sauces gombo et tomate