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‘TRAINING ORGANIZERS’ OR ‘BACK-UP PERSONS’
Supportive back-up (supervision) can be as important for instructors as for health
workers. This is true for instructors who are doctors and nurses, as well as for village-
level instructors. We all can benefit when someone with more experience, or a
different perspective, observes our teaching and makes helpful suggestions.
The person who provides this sort of support and suggestions can be called a
‘back-up person’, ‘advisor’, or ‘training organizer’. Since her main goal is to help
people meet their needs, the training adviser should not only be an experienced
health worker, but should also sympathize and identify with the poor.
The role of the training organizer in a health worker training program in Bangladesh
has been described as follows:*
“The ‘Training Organizer’ will sit in the class, quietly and discreetly at the back,
and then review the class with the teacher afterwards, with emphasis on points
like:
• Did the message get
across clearly?
• Did the trainees have an
active or passive role in
the class?
• Were visual aids used
effectively?
• How many of the trainees
fell asleep before the end
of the class?
“The ‘Training Organizer’
will review some of the above
points with the trainees as
well as the teacher.”
Village health workers can make excellent instructors. But at first they often
lack basic teaching skills and experience in course planning. It is here that the
training organizer can help. But it is essential that he or she be willing to stay in the
background and let the community-based instructors assume full responsibility.
Once again:
Advise, don’t boss!
To emphasize the secondary role of this advisor, ‘training assistant’ might be a
better term than ‘training organizer’. To move into this back-up role is a natural step
for the outside professional or foreigner who has been active as an instructor early
in the program. It allows the outside person to begin phasing herself out, to pass
teaching and organizing responsibilities to local workers. In time, outstanding local
instructors (who started off as community health workers) may likewise be able to
take over the role of ‘training assistant’. In this way, the outsider moves one more
step into the background. The sooner she is not needed, the more successful she
has been.
* From a personal communication with Martin Schweiger, Medical Adviser/Administrator, Rangput
Dinajpur Rehabilitation Service Program, Lalmanirhat-Rangpur. Bangladesh.