Africa AHEAD, like many organisations in this time of the Covid pandemic, is trying to continue activities despite the difficulty of travel. In order to adapt our standard training in the Community Health Club approach we launched an online course using Zoom, and were encouraged by the response.
In total there were 49 registered participants, from 13 Organisations across 16 countries across the world from India to Mexico we shared ideas, and the rooster crowing outside the home of our collegues in Rwanda and Zimbabwe added an extra flavour to our delibertions. Twelve of the participants were Africa AHEAD Associates, contributing their CHC experiences to add authenticity to the theoretical training.
Module 1 which ran between 2nd – 13th October 2020, was divided into four two-hour sessions held twice a week on Zoom.
Each session had a particular focus: namely an introduction to the key concepts of CHC theory, the theoretical background of how the CHC Model developed over time within the context of other similar programmes, the replication and adaption of the CHC concept to different contexts and the scaling up to national programme, and finally the Theory of Change of the CHC concept and how the programme can be monitored.
Each session provided a key-note presentation by Dr. Juliet Waterkeyn supported by an invited expert in the field, with a video to enable visualisation of the topic from CHC projects, and discussion time with questions brainstorming and feedback reactions from all participants.
Online participants were from all levels: three University Professors (Denver, Texas and Rwanda), two retired Heads of Environmental Health (Uganda and Rwanda), and four Head of Programmes, with Director level in Zimbabwe, South Africa, India and Malawi to Government Health Assistants and Project Officers in Malawi, Zambia, Somaliland and Kenya.
The 2nd Module of this series will run for 10 sessions from 10th November, 2020.