Courses

Reviews from Course participants

2020
Helen Timofee, Director of  Malawi Water Project, whose team were trained in 2020 evaluated the training as follows:

‘Even though our organization, The Malawi Water Project, already provided training on proper sanitation and hygiene to interested villagers, the training was not sufficient to achieve the behaviour change needed to improve the standard of health in families which would result in the prevention of infectious diseases. A much more intensive long term approach was needed.

I learned about the Community Health Club model developed by Dr. Juliet Waterkeyn and implemented by Africa AHEAD. The model is participatory and works on a community development basis with ownership being taken by the community members themselves through mutual support groups. The idea of forming Clubs intrigued me mainly because there is such a lack of opportunity for women in particular to get together to enjoy each other’s company socially and it is much more fun to join together to tackle a problem than is it working on our own. Since the concept has proven to be successful in many countries in Africa, I decided that our team in Malawi would benefit from the training and the villages they are working alongside of would benefit from the implementation of the CHC model.

Dr. Waterkeyn organized a training session on Zoom. Our Community Health Promoters along with Government of Malawi Health Surveillance Assistants took all 4 Modules of the training. It was very comprehensive and participatory. It was so beneficial to take the training with teams from Kenya and South Sudan. The participants received the benefit of Dr. Waterkeyn’s experience of more than 25 years implementing the Community Health Club model so it was very helpful to have real life examples of the successes that can be achieved by a CHC.

Participants were encouraged to develop a name for their club, a slogan, a song and they were encouraged to role play just as though they were forming a CHC themselves. The “learn to do by doing” motto always produces better results than “learn by being told”.

I would highly recommend the training for any community health care worker responsible for helping a community to improve their public health.’

March 2021. 

Prof. Blair Gifford, University  of Colorado,  Director of Global Health Connections has a team in Kenya who were trained in our first e-learning course in 2020:

‘Africa AHEAD provided outstanding, in depth and experiential training.  Africa AHEAD provided all the necessary materials and more for us to start community health clubs.  We are about 8 weeks into our first CHC, and are starting numbers 2 and 3 now.  Africa AHEAD has years of excellent experience to help others along.  I fully endorse their CHC training.’ 
April 2021.
Jaih Kanyondo. Ex.Director. YIELD Water User Association  joined the Introductory CHC course to see if they would like to start CHCs in Malawi, writes: 
‘I am very thankful for this opportunity by the Nkhamanga Water Users Association to participate in this very important training as far as Community Health is concerned. What inspires me most is that the lessons are within my profession. I am a student and graduate of an Advanced Diploma in Professional Community Development. My plan is to pursue with a Degree Program on Transformative Social Sciences so that I gain more capacity towards assisting communities on sustainable development. I am also the Executive Director of Youth Initiative for Empowerment of Leadership and Development (YIELD) Organization which is an umbrella body of several Youth Clubs which are actively participating in all developmental aspects.
 
We will mainstream this initiative, and possibly push our initiative towards serving as CHCs because to my understanding, whatsoever we do at present falls under this theme as our main objective is to uplift the livelihood through good community health and hygiene. Thanks for your initiative Juliet to assist African countries with this noble initiative.  May Our Almighty God bless you!’