Part 1: Sending Visual Tools to Africa
Part 2: Adjusting images for Africa
Part 3: Stories from Africa
Part 4: Safe Passage to Motherhood 2010
One woman started teaching Home Based Life Saving Skills (HBLSS) in 2009 by training 15 people. One year later those 15 have reached 10,000 people.
But really, what does that mean? Did the people who heard about the program actually learn something that will make a difference? The over arching goal is to reduce infant and maternal mortality. The numbers are alarming, everywhere from 1-13 to 1-22 risk of dying in childbirth in Africa. Many of the deaths are from complications that can be treated if the risk is identified and the woman gets help.
Going to the clinic
One of the core teachings in the HBLSS training is identifying the signs that a mother needs some kind of assistance in her birth. Most women birth at home, so the clinic is a place where women go who need some skilled assistance.
The year before HBLSS, there were 53 births at the clinic. There were 166 births in the clinic in 2009, 90 already in 2010.
There have been no maternal deaths in the last year. Up until then, there had been 2-3 a year.
Spreading the word to other villages
The Safe Passage to Motherhood (SPM) team knew the biggest challenges the trainers in Kenya were facing from the VisualsSpeak session they did with the group.
- Transport
- Umbrellas, rain boots, shoes
- Bag for carrying materials
- Money for transportation
- Badges and uniforms
All of these things relate to spreading the training to nearby villages. The team in Bware walk to do their work. For hours. In all kinds of weather. Carrying all their materials and supplies. The villages they go have limited resources, so there were times they were not even offered food and water.
Given all of this, the SPM team needed to go to the places the group considered trained, and see what those communities really knew about how to offer assistance to birthing women. They set off walking to the remote sites.
What helped communities learn
The results from the communities were mixed. When the trainers went and simply talked about HBLSS and the steps people could take to assist in birth, people did not remember enough detail to be able to take effective action. When the trainers went several times to the community and did the interactive training that involved role playing the interventions, the information was remembered.
Similar to my experience training with a wide variety of people in the US, lecture didn’t stick and experiential learning did.
Balancing empowerment and effectiveness
There is a certain amount of power in standing before a group to impart knowledge. SPM saw that empowerment in the Bware trainers. Some of it is really important, and shows new levels of confidence. As developing educators, we also need to guard against putting too much emphasis on ourselves, and serve the groups we work with. I know at times I can feel almost lonely facilitating a particularly dynamic conversation. Everyone else is fully engaged and I almost step back to allow the space for it to happen.
The work continues
SPM brought a lot of information back from Bware that is still being tabulated and analyzed. I know there are a lot more stories coming. The group plans to continue working with Bware, but also dreams of working on projects in other part of the developing world. Like so many others, funding is what limits their abilities to do more. If you’d like to help, I’m sure they would put your donation to good use.
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