Training Day 1

Today was training day 1 here in Adama. Before I get to that, though, I had a pretty much 'lost' day yesterday. Our first night here I woke up at 2:30 am and was pretty ill all night and most of the rest of the day. I was worried it was from dinner and since 4 out of 5 of us had the same thing, that would have taken the whole team out!  Turns out it was just me, and thankfully I was on the mend by about 7 pm. I wasn't too helpful when we went to the training site to set up the room and assemble the tote bags with the training binders, etc. I think it was Deman who helped make me feel better when she joked during a photo op. The 4 volunteers had our company T-shirts on and asked her and Getachew, the EHNRI training coordinator, to get in the photo. When we said they should get in the middle, Deman shot back, "Why? Because we are black?". We all howled with laughter. I'm sure this will be the joke of the trip - in fact, it came up again today already!

So, back to training today. Somehow I slept well last night and wasn't up tossing and turning, being nervous about the presentations today. That probably helped things go as smoothly as they did. We were up early and at the hotel a few doors down well before 8 am, doing the final set up and settling ourselves down. We started with 21 students (we were expecting 30), but by the end of the day we had 25. I was surprised that only 4 of those were women - I figured it would be more evenly matched based on photos from the previous pilot trainings. Another obvious difference was the participation rate in our group - apparently in past sessions the students had been too shy to say much until a couple of days into training. Today, we had no trouble getting a great level of engagement during the various activities, and there were even some heated (but good-spirited) discussions.  It's very gratifying teaching a group of people who are so interested and willing to learn. Our group is a little bit different, being higher level managers and/or trainers from regional centers versus the local health care workers in the other sessions. Our training this week is a Training of Trainers session so these students are expected to go back to their regional centers and deliver this material to other groups, making the program sustainable once our involvement in the SRS program is over.  We also have 2 CARDNO external consultants observing - they are a 3rd party group assessing our public/private partnership and this was one trip they were able to coordinate with.

Overall, it was a great day and makes me excited for the rest of the training this week, lab assessments and prep work for some of the new 'trainers' next week, and finally observing and mentoring the trainers when they in turn deliver this material at another region the following week.  Off to review materials for tomorrow's sessions....

Today's joke came about after I had climbed the 4 flights of stairs back up to the training room after the break and as soon as I sat down, Deman asked me to fetch her a cup of coffee. Debbie asked, "Why? Because she's white?"...

The photos below show the students working on various parts of the Process Mapping activity, which can be a bit confusing and difficult, but makes for great team building and discussion opportunities.