“Dear Mother, Dear Father, I am becoming a community health worker! Older sister, little brother, I am going to be a community health worker!” Every morning before starting sessions the training staff and 36 participants sang and danced together. The pride, hope, and joy in the room were palpable.
In July, Hope Through Health hosted an 18 day Community Health Worker training. For the majority of the participants, this was the longest they had ever spent outside of their village.
The training curriculum used a participatory approach and integrated the principles of adult learning. Therefore, sessions were held in small groups and involved practical exercises. In the photograph above a participant practices performing a rapid malaria test as others in her small group look on.
Participants were chosen by their community because of their demonstrated leadership potential and not because of their family ties, social status, or academic level. The majority of participants have only completed primary school. Attending HTH’s maternal and child health program community health worker training was an opportunity to gain a professional skill that will both benefit themselves and their family because of a salary as well as the community at large through the identification and treatment of sick children and support given to pregnant women.
At the end of the training spirits were high as participants left with a sense of accomplishment and a newfound hope for the future of their communities. In the words of a participant and now one of HTH’s CHWs named Florence: “As a community health worker I will make my father proud by contributing to our family, I will provide for myself and my baby, and I will save the lives of small children in my community. I am very proud.”
Another similar sentiment from CHW Prénam: “I am motivated to be a CHW because this work is about life or death. If we do not do something, children will continue to die. The child of another person is not just their child—it is the community’s child. This effects all of us.”