In Service Training

For the past two days, I have been at the training center for In Service Training (IST) in Thies. This is mostly to help volunteers acquire more technical skills in their sector to be efficient during their service. Some of the sessions include maternal and child health mortality prevention, nutrition, grant writing etc. I had to give a presentation on my village in front of my Peace Corps stage. I had to use the Participatory Analysis for Community Action (PACA) model. The PACA methodology aids the volunteers to facilitate representative groups within the community's own assessment of ther own needs. Overall, the presentation went very well.

Since the health hut project, I connected with my PTA and health program manager to talk about how to teach my host nationals how to manage the hut once it has been built. It is an amazing to provide your village with a new building but you have to evaluate the community's involvement in the maintenance of the hut. One of the problems countries like Senegal sometimes face is that NGOs come and build all these infrastructures but they do not educate anyone in the community on how to take care of it. Therefore, these buildings go unused as time moves on. Although the NGO had good intentions but their approach failed because the community is oblivious on how to use what they have been given.

I was thinking about having Pharmaciens sans Frontieres hold sessions with the three villages the health health hut serves on maintenance and management. I would eventually want the health hut to become a heath post because of the size of the population it serves and I have confidence on my ASC/counterpart. I feel if more attention is paid on training other matrones, his burden would be lightened andhe would not feel burned out. The health workers are not paid a salary like the ICP from the government. They work as volunteers and rely on the profit from the selling of the medicines.  It is not stable and I would hope that by building a new health hut, and having the NGO give us medicines, it will continue to motivate the ASC to serve those communities.

The next plan is to invite as many NGOs to the health causeries hosted in my village. It will foster more collaboration between Peace Corps and other NGOs intervening in Senegal. It is a win-win situation for everyone involved because people always seek to exand their networks (that's a fact!). I think it would be an advantage for future projects I would want to work with them. In the next month, I will be writing the final report with my counterpart and the Director to send for the competion of the project. As usual, I continue taking notes of all the meetings/activites I have to show th NGO that I am constantly active. The construction will begin in October or November InshAllah.  

 I plan to talk on a volunteer's radio show on certain topics next month. I would be a great way to represent my village. Two weeks ago, I held meetings with the arabic and french schools  about the eduational resources they will need. The previous month, I had spoken to a volunteer who knows someone at the U.S. Embassy in charge of donating books to schools. Although i know the Embasssy cannot do all the job, I will use this as my foundation for the project.

 Next week, I will be speaking to the Director on how we can introduce the idea of building a library for the village. It will facilitate the task because the idea will be part of an established program. This project has been approved by the NGO but the report will not be written until I come back from IST. My mind is just whirling with ideas all the time and this can be exhausting.Overall, my goal is to conquer smiles and make someone else's life better.  

Today we had a session on Malaria and we met with the PRP of Center of Diseases and Control (CDC). This session helped me think about research opportunities I might have with CDC. CDC currently is collaborating with Peace Corps. This is important because all volunteers have to complete a baseline survey of their village/towns. Those surveys will help us do a comparative analysis between the needs identified by the key community members and of the community itself.

We also looked at different types of studies, confounding variables and how to design a survey. I have not quite thought about what I want to focus for the household survey but it will probably be on maternal and child health. I just know that my sample size will include all three villags where i work. Peace Corps volunteers will be great resources to CDC since we live in the communities where they want to do research. She will have the contact information of all volunteers by region. I am very excited about this collaboration because it shows that Peace Corps is broadening the scope and direction of the program.  

 I also learned that when you create visual aids in causeries and during home visits, I need to make sure the images are conveying the message I am trying to get across. In some cases, people may not possess the knowledge of the significance of some symbols. For example, when we talk about the Do Not Smoke sign, you will see a cigarette with a cross on it; but, some people may not understand the meaning of the cross on the cigarette picture. I will check with my counterpart and the ICP on th visual aids they already use and make suggestions on how we can add to them to make our health deliveries more efficient.  I am feeling more confident everyday because IST is giving me the tools to do my job more efficiently.