I have had the chance in the past to work in West Africa in Burkina Faso, in Nunavik with Inuit workers as well as in James Bay with people from the Cree community. These have been extraordinary and very enriching experiences and today it helped me to become a better trainer.

When I think back on all the training positions I’ve held in remote region, I often have in mind the same comment from many expat managers when talking about local workers “damn, they don’t understand anything, it’s simple though!” Influenced by this comment during my first experience as expatriate, and I deeply apologize for it to this day, I could not understand why local workers had difficulty completing exams that yet in my eyes were very easy to do.

Talking with community leaders, I realized that even though we all have instant access to a lot of information and the best technology available today, nothing can ever erase the deep roots and origins of our childhood.

It was then that I remembered the famous quote that says: “You have to know your origin to know where you are going.” Today as I write this article, I am 51 years old, many of you reading this right now may be older or younger than me, but let’s remember dear reader, as a child, for most of us, we had access to kindergarten, elementary school and high school.

Then it was the beginning of our adult choices, but I go back to where we came from… our earliest childhood. Those of us, like me, grew up in urban and rural areas, we learned to read, to write, to calculate at a very young age. Our teachers taught us how to use documents to do research, to work in teams, to make oral presentations in front of the class, to think and to have a creative and critical mind on many subjects.

You will say “Well Sylvain, there is nothing extraordinary in what you have just listed!” It is true and I agree, but for us who grew up in this system there is nothing phenomenal, but for many people who grew up in remote areas, this system was not available or was simply not adapted to their environment or culture.

Is the system I grew up in better than the Inuit, Cree, or Burkinabe?

No it’s just different. How many times in my childhood I was asked “Hey Sylvain! What are you going to do when you grow up?” or rather older, because I’m not very tall today, only 1.67m, but I had to accept it.

At a very young age, according to my interests, without resentment, I was encouraged to develop various skills to direct me towards a career choice. Among the people I met, industrialization never existed in their environment. They could not develop skills related to this sector of activity and this is normal, because “out of sight, out of mind” as they say, being in a remote region, the teaching they received was naturally centered on human development such as respect, mutual aid, family and nature that surrounded and raised them.

But even though their background is different from mine, I have found that we have one thing in common when learning a new task and that is companionship: Someone with an experience and who understands the difficulties the apprentice may experience.

In these communities, buddy learning is a powerful teaching method that gives confidence to the new learner and pride to the buddy instructor. Once I understood this, I was able to create culturally appropriate learning programs centered on buddy learning with a trusted person for the learner. If a new learner is having difficulty writing to complete a production report, they can confide in their buddy and the buddy can find the resources in the training department to help their student overcome this obstacle.

But before we got to the point of companionship and to facilitate the integration of the local workers to their new industrial work, my friend Marc Rivest (experienced trainer in the cultural environment) and I set up an evaluation program for various employers, originating from the federal government, which consists in verifying the level of knowledge of the workers on 9 essential skills 

These skills are:

• Numeracy
• Oral Communication
• Working With Others
• Continuous Learning
• Reading
• Writing
• Thinking
• Document Use
• Digital Skills

So at the end of the evaluation on these fields, we would be able to properly direct the new employee to the right position so that he can use most of his strengths to start and improve his weak points as he evolves in the company. You will agree with me that our motivation and self-esteem are at their best when we are in the right place and we feel that we are in control of the new environment we are in.

The employer who succeeds in keeping his local workers is an employer who respects his commitment to the community that accepted his arrival on his territory and it is a way to develop a good corporate citizenship in the area. These great experiences in the Burkinabe, Inuit and Cree communities have really made me realize how important it is to know where you come from in order to know where you want to go.