After the great response and feedback from our first Introductory Zoom training we launched Module 2; Planning a CHC – providing a step-by-step method of crafting a successful CHC Project. For this session participants had to have an actual project site for a Community Health Club. Module 2 which ran from from 10th November twice a week until 11th December in ten two hour inactive sessions was likely to be a challenge as this was a participatory training not a top-down presentation as Module 1 had been.
Participants were expected to work in groups and draft a proposal based on assignments in their village. Session 1 was the mapping of the proposed site, and participants learnt how to share their screen and walk up through a hand drawn Map of their village. Next they had to visit the Health Centre and bring back an analysis of the top ten diseases found in the village. Then they conducted a pairwise ranking as a Needs Assessment to ensure community priorities were considered as formative research.
With much confusion we finally mastered how to get everyone into their breakout rooms where they discuss the operational issues which would define the success or failure of their proposed project – who will be the trainers, what transport is needed, have we got the appropriate training materials and when is the best timing of the project.
We had a room full of people in Zambia acting out a drama of the perfect ‘village entry’ simulating how to involve village leaders properly, which was watched with great interest from two different parts of Malawi, from Kisii Kenya, from a refugee camp in NE Kenya and Somaliland, all sharing different development challenges. We even had a room of participants from Mexico working on adapting the CHC Methodology to South and Central America.
By the end of the course, each country had designed a tailor made membership card with topics appropriate to their area. Each room of participants had made up health songs and chanted each others slogans in different languages – a truly cross cultural exchange – a call to action from different countries. ‘Chinga Mitiro’ from Zimbabwe – we need change. By the end of the training each group had a Plan of Action for a CHC project or a proposal to start up CHC in their country. Of this three projects went onto the next course to learn how to monitor CHCs. All through Zoom… it could not have been easier.