Ladies with newly acquired hairdressing skills from In-Style Salon receive certificates |10 June 2022

The participants with Ms Henry and Mrs Armoogum (Photo contributed)

Ten ladies who have followed and successfully completed a Level 1 course in hair dressing at In-Style Salon on the first floor of Orion Mall have received their certificate.

This was in the presence of two representatives from the Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs which funded the course, under the reskilling programme.

The course is designed for learners who have little to no experience in the hairdressing business.

An introduction to hairdressing and its basic technical skills were taught throughout the three-month long course. The participants included two ladies from Praslin and one from La Digue, while the rest of the group was from Mahé.

The ladies were aged between 17 and 40 years.

Valina Armoogum, a beautician by profession from Mauritius, was the trainer who led the training course lessons.

“The ladies know how to do many things but they did not really know much about techniques. Here they got a lot more experience and learned the different techniques and got to learn about the anatomy of hair as well,” Mrs Armoogum noted.

She said all the participants were very interested in all the tasks they were given to do.

“They captured everything really quickly,” she remarked.

The owner of In-Style salon, Shirley Henry, also mentioned that all materials and resources required for the course were provided by the salon during their training.

“Everything they needed to work with was given to them. All they had to come with was their clear mind ready to learn and take in as much as they could,” she stated.

Mrs Armoogum is urging other people who are interested in hairdressing and want to build a career out of it to take advantage of this opportunity being offered. The level 1 course is available for a fee of R16,000 and there is also a Level 2 course which focuses on the use of chemical products in hairdressing, for R20, 000. The Level 2 course began on June 9 and will end towards the end of August.

One of the representatives of the ministry, Marinette Freminot, the director for special employment programmes, remarked that hairdressing is one of the areas of demand where there is a lack of individuals with qualifications, hence why they funded nine of the 10 participants of the course.

While most of the participants want to work in someone else’s hair salon, some of them wish to open and manage their own hair salon in the future.

Sylia Ah-Time