First Basic Financial Management training Burkina Faso

Last week, team Burkina Faso carried out a training in Basic Financial Management with 4 of their clients. This was the first activity this year with clients.

This training was planned to be executed last year by Jaime de Alfonso, who is the programme manager for this training, at the same time as a Training of Trainers with business advisors in West Africa. Unfortunately, it has been cancelled because of COVID-19.

With this pandemic, team Burkina Faso has adapted. They did the ToT online with Jaime; a first one also for this training. After an online ToT, the challenge is even bigger to successfully train clients. Team Burkina Faso thinks they have met this challenge when they could see the concrete improvements that each cooperation has made to improve financial management within its organisation. During the 5 days of the training, participants mentioned that they have improved their ability to communicate more with the Board and their members regarding financial information.

This is a successful first for team Burkina Faso and their clients, and of course the team is waiting to see improvements in cooperatives. It is possible to conduct the ToT online, and to pass the knowledge to the clients; but to do so, to meet this challenge, team Burkina Faso thinks it takes two things: good preparation and discipline.

It is necessary to take time to prepare, and be comfortable with the different modules (in addition to the experience of the trainer). For this training, this meant at least a full week of preparation. This preparation allows the trainer to master the content and methods to avoid improvisation. This preparation also allows the trainer to control the time of each session and especially to know when to give more time to discussions and when to give less time. For a first training, the support of the programme officer Jaime de Alfonso is very useful during this phase. Also, it has proved to be an advantage have an extra person to assist you either in the content (in case that person is also a trainer) or the logistics. This allows the trainer to focus more on the content.

The result of good preparation is discipline. The discipline of the spirit of training, methods of training and time of training. Without this discipline, the 5 days dedicated to the training can appear very long or very short.

Beyond Burkina Faso, for all of West Africa and especially French countries, team Burkina Faso now has a trainer for this service, which is so important to their clients. Team Burkina Faso remains available to accompany the other teams for this service.