Counterpart Workshop

One of the last things we’re doing at during IST is hosting a counterpart workshop. Basically, everyone has a homologue come to talk about the peace corps development philosophy, project planning, and other things like that. When I heard this I thought awesome, I’ll bring my major because we both missed the first counterpart workshop (he was in Taiwan, I was in South Africa). Well, remember the golden rule because the Ministry of Health (or maybe it was the District) announced a mandatory meeting for all the Majors about a Polio campaign. Oops. Long story short, my major sent the nurse who went to the first counterpart workshop in his place. Alright, cool.

So the first day we learned about malnutrition and a big nutrition project that in French is called a FARN but in English we call it the Hearth model. Basically, it’s a super intense 12 day program designed to rehabilitate moderately malnourished children. The key word is here is moderately- if the child is severely malnourished there’s not much you can do but send them to a CREN- center for the rehabilitation of infants. Each hearth model can be run with a group of about 12 women- any more than that it just becomes too much and too complicated. The group meets every day and each day they prepare bouille together (usually comprised of some type of flour, sugar, oil, etc) and then talk about a pressing health issue such as hygiene, nutrition, family planning, etc. The possibilities are endless. Anyway, I’m definitely going to do one of these. I’ve only heard good things about them and the message really does seem to stick (cause let’s face it- it’s two weeks long and repetition is key here).

The second day, we talked about project design and management. This is something that in the US we tend to think of as not really worth a thought and easy to do but here it’s not so simple. In order to have a solid project, you need to have a solid base. This is where the design comes in; it is the who, what, where, when, why, and how of your project. If you can answer all those questions- you’re in good shape and you can start moving towards some type of realization of your project.

What: What’s the problem? What is the root of the problem? What do you want to do about it?

Who: Who are you trying to help? Who is going to help you?

Where: Where will you hold this project? A central place is better because if it’s too far, people won’t go.

When: Timing is important. If people are working or they have other duties to attend to- no one will show up.

Why: Why are you doing this? What will it do? What does your project hope to achieve?

How: How will this project realize your overall goal?

And this is just trying to get a general framework. Once you have this, then it gets tough! You have a goal (long term) but what are your objectives (short term). Are they specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound? If the answer to any of these questions is “no” go back to the drawing board. What are the signs of success? What does each of the signs mean? Do you have signs for each objective? Tasks: what will you do? In what order? Who will do them? When will they do them?

That’s actually as far as we got today but here’s my project so far:

My project deals with hygiene. Now, hygiene is actually a huge topic: you’ve got personal hygiene, food hygiene, house hygiene, and clothes hygiene. You can’t tackle all those at once- so we decided to work on personal hygiene with the thought that worst case scenario- people themselves would be cleaner. Best case scenario- they’d carry the lessons on to other aspects of their life and go from there. It’s a win-win really, right?

So Personal Hygiene. What resources do we have to work with? Well with have health agents, positive deviants (a good example of someone that does the behavior we’re trying to promote), village leaders, groups that exist in the village, schools, and alphabetization centers. We also have material resources like soap, clean water, technical skills, bikes and motos to travel, meeting places, and radio stations.

What are the potential strategies we could use? We could do home visits with hygienic demonstrations (with 7716 people- this would take a while). We could go to schools and daycare centers. This would be awesome cause there’s a captive audience. However, kids can be ignored by parents and that wouldn’t convey the message we want conveyed. We could use village storytellers to pass along the message and they might be able to say it’s important but it’s hard to convey through a story how to be clean- without a demonstration. We could also host a demonstration at the CSPS- but maybe people won’t come for that- if they have other things to do. So, we settled on combining a few options. We are going to use the alphabetization centers (where people go who are too old for school but want to learn to read and write) and see if they’re interested in helping us. We’ll then teach them about good hygiene and after that teach them how to teach others. Then, each of those 10 (ish) people will then go and spread the lesson to 10 other people. And all of a sudden, we’ve hit 100 people.

What do we want to happen? Well during 2012 we want there to be a 30% reduction in cases at the CSPS dealing with diarrhea (caused by a lack of hygiene) and waterborne illnesses (also caused by a lack of hygiene). So now you’re saying “Drew, don’t other sicknesses cause diarrhea as well?” Yep. They do. But you can’t control every variable and a reduction is a reduction. We have other numbers that will help track progress as well. Such is the nature of development work. It’s not an exact science.

Our objectives are: 1)  After three months of sensibilizations there will be a 50% increase in women who use good hygienic practices at home. 1.1) 3 months after the formation of the group- 80% of the people who have been trained as trainers will go and teach good hygienic practices at other households. 2) After three months of sensibilizations, there will be a 50% increase in the hygienic practices of the mothers and their children who come to the CSPS for baby weighings and consultations. 3) After three months of sensibilizations, there will be a 50% increase in the number of students at the CEG (kinda like high school) who use good hygienic practices.

The signs of success are all based around an increase in the number of households that use soap, number of people who are clean when they come to the CSPS, and the number of kids who use soap while at school. We’ll be looking at these through both questions directed towards our intended audience and also observations.

It has the makings of a good project (I think) but we still need to refine it a little bit and come up with actual data for our budget (I don’t think it will be incredibly expensive- one of the benefits of doing hygiene is that it’s simple, cheap, and affordable). But, since I came up with the project- I’m a bit biased. Now you have to do a feasibility test. What factors are there that you can’t control but could make the project fail? What could you do to negate this problem? And are the benefits of this program worth more than the cost (labor, time, money, etc)?

If the idea passes the feasibility test, you move on to the Action Plan! This is where you lay out each individual task (envision the steps of the program from start to finish with everything in between), who does each task, and when it needs to be done by. This is actually really important because life in Burkina Faso is like an incredibly large Bureaucracy, and people take their titles very seriously. If you do something without informing the Chief, Imam, Pastor, or any other incredibly important person- they might actually tell people to not go to your project and actively work against you. Don’t make the important people angry. And it’s usually really easy to get their support:

Me: Good Morning Chief!

Chief: Hi Andre. How are you?

Me: I’m good. How’d you sleep?

Chief: Very well thanks, you?

Me: Very well, thanks for asking. (This goes on for a bit). So, we (the health community of Poa) would like to do a project about hygiene, and we were just hoping for your support.

Chief: Absolutely, what can I do to help?

So yea, that’s an ideal conversation, but most of my conversations with important people go that way. It’s awesome.

You then compare this with the seasonal calendar (which happens each month in your village) to see if there are conflicts and if there are- change them. For example if you want to do something with women in June, better think again cause that’s when the rainy season is. If you want to do something with students in August, think again cause there’s no school, etc.

Then you have to form a budget, determine where the money is going to come from, and then work from there. You also have to hope that the people in your village like your project as much as you do. But, that’s all in how you sell it, right?