Tutu Model | TUTU Rural Training Centre

The Tutu Model of Human Development (Series 1)

by Fr. Petero Matairatu | Nov 5, 2020 | 2020, Adult Education, Human Development, Tutu Model

By: Fr Michael McVerry sm

This process is at the heart of what we mean by Rural Adult Education for Self – employment. We call it “Adult Learning.”

Because we are involved in a human process, our expertise needs to be in the field of human development in the broadest sense. As part of the learning or development process, Tutu programs include specific sessions in human development. These take priority and are held early each day in all courses including the longer program for Young Farmers as judged appropriate. These sessions need the atmosphere and quality of our staff ‘presence’, together with the structures which all lead to support growth towards autonomy. This is an important aspect of the overall Tutu programs, and of the quality of staff presence and personal dedication which determines the outcome.

Empowerment of the human person means new enlightenment and new ways of looking at oneself and the surrounding world. It the awakening in participants, of a new awareness of the resources, the opportunities, the dignity, the unperceived possibilities that exist for them in the land and sea which they own. Then in turn, participants gain the energy to take hold of their lives and to take up the skills of farm management. This entails management of one’s own person, one’s time, the soil, the crops, and the fruits of one’s labor, which can be counted in financial terms. So, we define the process of human development as:

a process whereby a person in and through community, assumes responsibility for his/her growth as a person, in the service of the world in which he/she lives. It is a process of liberation by which, under skilled guides, a person grows in freeing himself/herself from constraints of a personal order and a social or cultural order.