School transformation project: personal development and coaching arrive in Africa

Education beyond borders!

IPT – Institute of Professions and Technologies is the largest private company existing today in Guinea Bissau. IPT belongs to the Ensinus Group, an educational institution that boasts 17 schools in two continents. The project for the realisation of IPT was led by Ensinus Group’s CEO, Dr. Teresa Damasio, and initiated in October 2018. Today, IPT has 200 students, collaborates with 10 national and international companies, and is planning to grow exponentially in the next years.

In the last two years, I have developed various training courses and Executive Coaching courses for the Ensinus Group. This year I worked on the innovative project “Human Capital Development Training for Mentoring in Education”, linked to the development of Soft Skills, coaching and mentoring techniques for school directors, professors and coordinators. The first training cycle of this project started with the IPT course, for a duration of three and a half days; in the next five weeks, every other school of the Group, based in Lisbon and Porto (Portugal), will follow.

The focus of the competences for IPT is centered on the understanding of cultural and social diversities, on the belief and value systems and on the functioning of the human being (mind, brain, body). The course aims to improve relationships, interpersonal communication and work performance. The objective is to enhance self-awareness among participants, focusing on who they are and how they work. It is a profound work of empowerment. I designed the training on the principles of cybernetic science, NLP and the SANE method – Neuro Emotional Alignment System.

It is the first time in Guinea Bissau’s history that a Coach comes to the country giving a course on personal development and transversal skills (Soft Skills). It is an extraordinary and new event for the whole community. This training is taking place in one of the five poorest countries in the world and here I understood that personal conflicts, interpersonal problems and relational dynamics are the same that we find in every culture and in every social class. Each human being needs to understand themselves, comprehend their own functioning and take control of themselves in order to become authors of their own life.

At the end of the first day of the course, a participant coming out of the classroom, told me she already felt lighter and freed from a burden that she carried inside, and this is precisely the final purpose of my formations: to get free from contradictions in order to embrace oneself, embrace the past and move forward in the journey of life with pride.

The training is still ongoing and every day the participants make a qualitative leap in their way of perceiving, reflecting, feeling emotions, communicating and relating to others. We will be able to measure the effectiveness of this training only after the completion of the course, and we will be able to evaluate the results over the next few weeks and months, when the participants will have integrated the skills.

Thanks to Dr. Teresa Damasio, CEO of Ensinus Group, for her trust in my work and for the opportunity to carry out this incredible project.