SALT Approach and Demistification

[wiwin winarni]

Dear All;

This is what I have been learned from facilitating UNICEF Project review at 7 January 2009. At that time I had only 1.5 hour to share SALT as a way of thinkimg and working.

My college from UNICEF and me agreed to maintain reporting and recording (RR) mechanism due to maternal and child health among other priorities. Session was intended by 58 participants from 19 basic healt provider/clinic. As all of participants admit thta providing RR system due the program is almost impossible to be done regarding alot of challenges. All in all most of challenges and obstacles is that lack of commitment and compliance of related staffs to keep record. I introduced SALT approach and try to break it down into key practices they selected need to be done to ensure thta RR mechanism rum well.

We found that a foundamental lack of this difficult process is that most of staheholders did not think that RR system were simple integrated working task to achieve maternal and child health status. Than we tried to prioritize some steps on improving knowledge and acknoledgment of RR system as integrated mechanisme of being maternal and child health competence.

Up to this phase, participant could easily identify their steps of knowledge, understanding and things need to be conducted to ensure thta RR mechanims run well and could assess them self in what level they as a team at clinic due to RR system that in fact open their mind that actually the system is one of feature of being maternal and child health competence.

My facilitation was only that steps. However, most of us realize that this approach enable them working step by step to provide data by conducting RR mechanism. No need of being affraid thta the task is difficult if not said as impossible as initially perceived. SALT makes it easy to identify step by step working, self assess toward respective output and to put integrally one single piece of work into comprehensive competence and status we need to achieve.

Two districts invite me next two month to see their RR system. I said no, I will not come there to see RR system I will see only status of self assessment of their practices and see what have they have learned. Participants were smile, then they said, wiwin you did not care of the RR system what you only care is to self assessment and it's status, that actually you will find thta we at clinic will have RR system run well if we keep doing self assessment and identify learning. That's smart and eventhough tricky. We love this approach because this seems to be not output oriented, facilitator is not demanding. SALT is about processed oriented. However, by doing the process output will outomatically be available along with better understanding of this.

I found that SALT demistifies big and completed task into managable and assessible step of working that also alow us to share and to care of others related task to due comptence we would like to acquired.

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Thanks for this wonderful sharing. That's what I love about SALT. Its so simple. I was recently with a group of community facilitators and was sharing SALT approach with them. One of them smiled and said that that's what do all the time but now we will do it consciously.

[Jean-Louis Lamboray]

Many thanks for your blog Wiwin!

You share your experience with facilitating local responses, and that makes them so interesting.

I never thought of SALT as demystifying, but that is a great way of presenting our way of working. Because we believe that people have capacity, and refuse to come across as experts (on AIDS, on RR, or whavever else), things become simple...We don't need to mystify anyone into believing that we know best!

That is what you did in saying "no" to the two districts: you showed your trust in the districts' capacity.

And once we relinquish our expert mode, things become part of a brooader whole, because, the people we interact with naturally see the connections...

Keep the blogs coming, we'll try to follow your lead!

JL..

[Gaston]

wonderful Wiwin. Thank you for sharing this. It deepens my own understanding on the potential of SALT.