Participatory Action Training for Informal Sector (PATRIS): Trainer's guide

This brief guide explains how to organise and carry out training designed to improve safety, health and working conditions in the informal sector workplaces by using the attached training materials.

Instructional material | 01 March 1999

The guide is using the PATRIS training method which is based on pilot studies, extensive field experience and careful analysis of the real needs of informal sector operators. In order to encourage operators to make concrete improvements at the shop-floor level, it emphasises training methods which build upon local experience in Africa.

The implementation of this training approach is based on a participatory training method involving owners and operators in informal sector workplaces. This type of action oriented training is quite different from the usual classroom style of training. The practical and simple training method emphasises voluntary participation in the implementation of concrete improvements, the use of local examples, practical systematic activities in the participants' workplaces, the establishment of Occupational Safety and Health Committees to promote mutually supportive improvements and the use of feed-back on hazards for preventive purposes in the form a record keeping system.

The training methodology, this guide, and its related training materials have been developed based on pilot testing in the Interdepartmental Project on the Urban Informal Sector of the ILO and other technical cooperation projects. ILO's manuals "Ergonomic Checkpoints" and "Safety-Health and Working Conditions" have been used as references for the present training materials.