The 2022 online training is being attended by 20 participants from the Nyamanga Water Users Association in Malawi, funded by Transform International, with support from Niagra-on-the-lake Rotary Club.
The participants are now in the implementation phase of the project. Having been trained in the theory of the CHC Approach in 2021, they then developed a Plan of Action later last year, conducted a base line survey in February 2022 before the CHC was trained and are now in the process of training the facilitators from 11 villages who will lead the community training.
Each week the 11 facilitators, 3 Project staff and 6 Health Surveillance Assistants from the Ministry of Health meet online with Africa AHEAD and are trained in the methods used to promote full participation of the audience. The training is conducted in English by Dr. Waterkeyn and is facilitated locally by Tablespoon Chirambo, the Manager of the Nyamanga Water Users Association, who translates and ensured all the key messages are well understood. The group practices the participatory activities that they will then conduct in their own CHC, using the visual aids which they can download and print as part of the training package. The training for 16 out of 24 topics should be completed by the end of May, with the balance of 8 topics being done in August once the CHCs have completed the backlog of sessions. They must then conduct one of the topics each in their village.
This weekly meeting is proving very effective in giving facilitators ongoing support and monitoring their progress in the field. It is exciting to see how the training online can be so easily transferred to the field using this virtual contact on Zoom.
Within the first week of the training, all facilitators had started their own CHC in their village and had a combined registration of 1541 members of the CHC, so proving the effectiveness of online training as the project is being set up with minimal external support.