What is Reskilling?

By Wade Wiebe

When you look around where you are now, how many items do you see that are were not  mass-produced?  Take a few seconds to look around right now.  Did you find one?  It would be unusual if you did.  Consider that many of the important items around you are the products of processes you don’t understand.  Today we enjoy the benefits of a modern society that offers us mechanization, industrialization and global trade.  We are experiencing unheard-of wealth and prosperity (though admittedly often at the expense of the environment and poorer regions of the world).  However, inevitably, like a child whose every desire is fulfilled, we are growing dependent on a world that offers us everything – no skills required.

Reskilling is an effort to rediscover and pass on the basic skills that our forefathers took for granted.  This includes the very basic skills of how to feed ourselves and how to clothe ourselves; in short, how to be responsible for our own well-being.  We all remember with admiration the skills that our parents and grandparents had.  Grandma cooked from scratch, Dad fixed the washing machine, great-uncle Joe had a farm with pigs, a cow and chickens.  But as each generation passes, we need to look further and further back to find a time when those skills were commonplace.  Children today may need to look back four or five generations, and have no personal memory of any of these skills at all.  One wonders what their children will find when they look back?  But not all is lost.  On the contrary, with the rise of the digital technology, the sum of all human knowledge (or a good portion of it) is now at our fingertips. The same technology that distracts us from attending to these basic skills is also capable of helping us rediscover them.  This is resulting in a resurgence of interest in skills and knowledge once thought obsolete.

However, YouTube videos and blogs are not enough. At some point, we need to turn off the computer and experience things for ourselves. Join us for our EcoFair!  this Saturday, October 22.  From 10am to 4pm, we’re offering folks the opportunity to explore – in the real world – an exciting variety of traditional skills and knowledge.  Workshops on food preservation, backyard chickens, basket-making, composting, herbal remedies, agriculture, wool-spinning and knitting will all be held in a heated venue.  A delicious lunch cooked over a hot fire will be included, as well as live music, walking trails, a bouncy castle and entertainment for the kids (Kids 12 and under are free!)

Building the resilience and self-reliance of our community is as fun and rewarding as it is important.    Visit setimanitoba.org for more information, and to buy tickets. We’d be thrilled if you would join us.