Re: Teaching bookkeeping to the unemployed

Thanks for your comments and sorry I have been very busy buit now I can tell you it was very interesting!
F
irstly apologies for not giving my feedback earlier on this,
The course went down very well, and I really enjoyed it as it did stretch me a lot and I had to be creative in the way I would normally teach bookkeeping.

The first day was really a fact finding as all I knew was that the individuals were unemployed. During the first hour I realized I had a mix bunch of 3 people who had done bookkeeping in school, 2 people who used to be self employed 4 others said they loved working with figures, and one man just said he was made redundant but was told by a friend that accountants got paid a lot of money so he just wanted to know how much he could earn after the course I had to remind him it was a taster course and he could not expect to become a bookkeeper after 3 days!

So this first day was great as I went through the history of money and looked at attitudes and beliefs about money. I also got them to write up a simple cash book of their income and expenditure which they all seemed to find useful. I even got them to do a simple exercise based on their own personal balance sheet which for some was an eye opener as they realised they were in financial difficulties. We ended up discussing what their attitudes and beliefs were about accountants and HMRC! Most had an admiration for accountants but they referred to HMRC as the enemy! One of the individuals who used to be self employed said he used to do his own accounts and tax returns as he felt that his accountant had become too expensive! He did confess that he latter realised why the accountant was charging him a lot as he used to just give them a plastic bag of receipts etc

Day 2 and 3
The main challenges were that some did not know how to use a calculator and it was a bit of a challenge trying to teach basic principles of double entry. Fortunately half of the group understood it but the other half seemed really perplexed. I even resorted to telling them this joke about the reason we have debits and credits. “There was a man called Pacoli, who was sitting in his garden one day by a pond, he was trying to figure out word for money going in and money going out, he saw two frogs jumping up and down and he thought that the one jumping up was saying “Debit Debit” and the other jumping out was saying “Credit Credit” well they seemed to enjoy this joke

I then got them to do a lot of simple practical tasks on double entry and by the 3rd day I was quite impressed that only 2 had given up on it! On the last day of the course, 6 of the participants wanted to do a longer bookkeeping course and one of the others said if he was in business he would just pay an accountant to do the work for him!

The great news for me, is that next year I will be running a 12 weeks bookkeeping course for those interested.

Re: Teaching bookkeeping to the unemployed

Thanks for your reply.

The organisation I did the work for received the funding to pay me as a trainer, and the participants were not charged! It was part of tryning to get pople to do taster into different type of jobs!

Their is funding from an organization called UNLTD - you can initially apply for up to £2,500 to cover your costs, but they won't pay you a fee. They expect you to do it voluntarily as you have to show how it would benefit individuals.

One of my fellow bookkeepers is going to apply for the funding to teach students who have done an accounting qualification but cannot find a job. The aim is to get these students trained in charity bookkeeping, get them to do some voluntary work with charities and in the long run help them to get jobs.

If i can help in anyway do let me know, as i do have access to information to funding sources for community based projects