Participatory Learning: A case of the training of community health workers on Infant and Young Feeding Practices (IYFP) in Kyangwali refugee settlement

Training community health workers can turn out to be a sluggish and boring activity if participation of the trainees in under looked. This 3 day training (27^th to 29^th September) was a great experience to test how participatory learning can make training fun and much more beneficial to the trainees and the trainer.

At the end of the second day, we decided to introduce what we called “problem based learning”. This is a scenario where you formulate a problem statement close to real life encompassing the topics that you already discussed with the trainees. You then let them divide in groups and tackle the problem while jotting down the solutions and then pick a group member from them to present on behalf of the entire group.

Trainees tackling the scenario in their group

The group representative discussing their solution

Lessons drawn from the “problem based learning”:

The participants become more active and you will not see any of them dozing off be it after lunch hours.

It greatly imparts communication skills to the trainees

The trainees feel valued and thus will better own the training and its objectives

This makes the assessment of whether the trainees have understood the training content easier for the trainer.

Norms, beliefs and customs of the community are easily spelt out when one of the members is given opportunity to solve a scenario.

It creates opportunity for the trainer to build on local or available knowledge and skills of the community

It emphasizes creativity in problem solving

It creates opportunity for the facilitator to re-emphasize messages or to communicate what was forgotten or accidentally left out.

The training ended on a good note but more importantly, we were generally satisfied that the trainees had widely benefited and that they are capable of putting what they had learnt in appropriate practice. We concluded by asking them how we could improve the trainings and they listed a number of things that we too had identified along the way:

·         They demanded for the use of audio-visual training materials from which they will watch what the trainers are emphasizing as opposed to just imagining.

·         They demanded for some incentives that could motivate them to carry on with this voluntary role that they play in the community. Such include; T-shirts with health messages, gum boots, certificates etc.

·         They however pointed out that at times they are over ridden by various trainings and other roles by various implementing partners and therefore proper timing and prior communication are key in mobilizing them for the training.

From our own view, we noticed that the trainings will be much beneficial if other influential people capable of determining and promoting health in the community take part. We thus decided that during other trainings, we shall invite some community leaders to attend.