Community Life Competence Training...day 3

[Michael Mc Garrell]

Today was presented the opportunity for the participants to practice their SALTiness; their ability to apply the process to a community. The group was divided into two groups to work with the two communities that came today for the sessions. there were the parents' group from Youth Challenge Guyana and the HIV peer educators from the Guyana Defence force. 

 

I had the opportunity to sit in with the group working with the peer educators from the army and my impression is that they did a very good job in keeping the community interested. Again i stress that planning goes a far way in ensuring the fluidity of facilitating as a group. i was impressed the skills demonstrated by the facilitating team. Their after session planning yesterday paid off.

I liked how they were able to adapt activities that were done with them putting an interesting twist to it; for example instead of using fruits to associate with their names foods were used instead. I like this twist for participants connected with it. Facilitators the use the famous "are we human?" question which as usual brought out the connection with hopes and concerns. As humans we have hopes and concerns which as individuals we feel not capable to mitigate.It is only  when we sit as a group and we hear and understand that others have similiar hopes and concerns that we realize that we are all sailing in the same big ship. It brings about the realization as well that if we work together as a team we can achieve more.

the group then moved into doing dream building with the participants, it was interesting to see the dreams that these that these army personnel had. One of the dreams that stood out to me was one that wanted to do his " masters" however because of the policies and guidelines which governs the army it is harder for him than a civilian. Other dreams were related to the concerns of participants, most persons dreamed of a community where all was perfect, a community that was clean, healthy, self sufficient, impartial and more. It was good to observe how the facilitators were able to work with the group after just two days of exposure to the process. It warms my heart to see the enthusiasm and feel the energy.

 

Facilitators did an AAR 

 

Lunch

Autry with the help Of Michael did an AAR with the entire group aftet communities would have left. participants were able to reflect on how they worked as a team in applying the SALT process. All in all they had fun accomplishing the task at hand..

 

feeling sleepy....travelling in the morning...post more tomorrow night

[Gaston]

Beautiful blogs and great comments. I simply feel inspired by this. The way you use Ning to share with a wider community is a great example for other teams. Although the majority of readers won't comment, we know many facilitators around the world read this and will use this in their own practice. We just did a large scale Ning research that showed this as well. So keep the postings going! Bravo!

[Naomi Singh]

My pleasure in day three was to see how this group of soldiers (usually so stiff and serious) repond with laugh and good camraderie with their other colleagues and with us.. It brought home the point that was pre-eminent in our training - we are (only) humans after all. I still smile when I think of our first SALT visit.

Good report of the day Michael. Keep up the good work.

[Usa Duongsaa]

Many thanks Michael for your posts sharing the 3 days' experiences of the Guyanacompetence facilitation team. It's very interesting and sounds like a wonderful and fruitful event, enjoyed by both the participants and the facilitators.  I also like the level of details described and the depth of reflections that you had;  it enables me to learn much from your experience.  Can't express well enough how proud and impressed I am of what you guys and dolls (to use your term) are doing!  Kudos to you all, and keep up the great work!

[Tricia Francis]

Love the post Michael

[Marissa Massiah]

Day 3 my expectation was to be stimulated by the transfers between our fledgeling community and an established one. I'm happy to be human.