5 Highlights from AviAssist Volunteer Event

Last week on Thursday we held our professionals’ volunteer’s day to celebrate their work. We also updated them on a number of key developments at AviAssist and informed them on a number of new opportunities to help boost aviation safety in Africa. 

At AviAssist we believe your company can benefit from professional volunteers’ expertise. Visit our website, to see how we can help improve safety requirements in your company.

5. Updates on Development

Increased marketing and visibility

We recently had a new marketing intern, Klaudia Hanssen join our team. And with the help of our previous intern Jordan Hammond, we have realised a remarkable growth on our website and social media pages.  

Image of a graph showing growth in the AviAssist website.

Our goal for this year is to reach the milestone of having 1,000 followers on the AviAssist Foundation page on LinkedIn. More followers mean we can increase the awareness of our work and the impact it has.

Payment platform by Africa for Africa

We now offer a mobile money platform for our customers in Africa. A mobile money platform is used frequently in Africa to pay for goods and services. Unlike everyday banking in western parts of the world, in Africa, it’s completely different. Africa is the global leader in mobile money, which has become an important component of Africa’s financial services landscape. Mobile money enables customers to send, receive, and store money using their mobile phone and doesn’t directly involve a bank. You can use mobile money without a traditional bank account. Having a mobile money platform in Africa will make the process easier for people in Africa to pay for AviAssist courses.

Image showing different brands of mobile money platforms in Africa.

Supplementing classroom training with online training

Classroom training has had a shift towards online training. We received valuable feedback from the post-course survey on our first online course, a maintenance management course we recently completed. One of the interesting things that came out from the survey, is that a number of women who otherwise would not have been able to participate in classroom courses because of obligations to their families, were now able to take part and participate much sooner than they were anticipating.

An image of AviAssist Foundation's zoom meeting.

Ramping up online training products

We are working to finalise a digital content production handbook, made by one of our volunteers. The handbooks will provide the standards on the recording and production of our online course modules. It will enable AviAssist to increase the production of online courses in a modular fashion. AviAssist has chosen to build its online courses from collections of seven videos of 7 minutes each which can then make up a course module. Initially, 4 to 5 modules are foreseen for our online courses.

A orange book, with words in 'Digital Content Production Handbook AviAssist Foundation' in blue.

4. Favourite Moments from working in AviAssist Foundation

Upon being asked by Joeri Rijkeboer about their favourite memories from volunteering with Aviassist Foundation, both Frank Klap and Rolf Overduyen could agree on one important thing. That it was the students enrolled on the course that made them keep on doing the work that they do.

Frank Klap mentioned that he was particularly fond of the course participants that would make him feel appreciated. And how eager they were to learn about. While also demonstrating that they were glad to have him there teaching the course.

While Ralf Overduyn, said that nothing could compare to the enthusiasm the students showed about learning aviation safety. But also, how warmly they welcomed him in their country. 

3. Our Work

Currently, the aviation industry is in a financial crisis. At the same time, there is an exponential growth in the aviation industry. 

The more people we have that follow us from Africa the more we can help them. We can help them by providing teaching to both training and future professionals in aviation industry in Africa. We can only do that with the help from our volunteers.

To enhance our recourses and work, we will be doing a fundraiser event. We will be aiming to raise €9,000.  The fundraising event will be taking place sometime in December. This will help us secure more fonds for AviAssist Foundation, but also showcase the volunteers who are at the heart of the organisation.

2. The future

During the volunteer event we received good feedback on how we can improve the run of AviAsisst online courses. 

1-on-1 Sessions 

We can start pairing a student from Africa with an industry professional, which would serve the role of a supervisor to the students. This would give the students a possibility to connect to professionals in the aviation industry outside of the classroom designated time. Also, the students would have someone that would guide them and give them answers to their aviation-related questions. 

Communication Aspect of the Course

We can start improving on the online course, so, it will live off communication in the same way as an in-person course. The 7x7min format that is already in place in the online courses, seems fitting. But it lacks the interactive element you would find in an in-person classroom. We can try enhancing the interactive element by introducing a blog or peer reviews aspect to the course. Which would enable the students to interact with each other and the instructors in the course.

1. Volunteer Spotlight

Because we wanted to shine some light on our hardworking and dedicated volunteers. Praising their expertise that makes it all possible. We have put a couple of our devoted volunteers in the spotlight to learn more about them. 

Mashadi Ntenge, one of volunteers interviewed by Joeri Rijkeboer, mentioned that prior to getting involved with AviAssist, she did not know much about the foundation. It was not until Frank Klap explaining to her what AviAssist Foundation was, that she started to be eager to be a volunteer at AviAssist.

A picture of Mashadi Ntenge from the meeting.

Again, AviAssist Foundation would like to thank all of our wonderful volunteers for their dedicated and consistent work they keep on delivering.