Training Reports

Photos from this training:

• Buying Supplies for Jingpo Village Training
• Dinner Planning Session for Jingpo Village Training
• Jingpo Village Training 03/09 Slideshow 1
• Jingpo Village Training 03/09 Slideshow 2

The group running our training consisted of 3 senior staff from the CDC, and 4 junior staff/volunteers. Claire, Ben, and myself made our group 10, plus the local village doctor and the village heads who organized and encouraged the villagers to attend.

First, we met at a small roadside restaurant near the turnoff to the mountain road that leads to the village to design the night’s activities and to discuss statistics and particulars of the area we were heading to. We all went as a group to the village around 7 pm. We had already bought the supplies for the evening and when we arrived we immediately began organizing the area the training would take place in. We also divided up the prizes and goods for the training (every family who attends gets a “goodie bag” and there are also prizes for participation).

During the last training in a Jingphaw village, our group had divided the training into 3 groups by age, in an effort to try something a bit different than usual. The more usual practice would be dividing the group into 4 groups: older aged men and women together, younger men and women separated by gender, and then children together. The last time our group had wanted to see if the younger men and women could be trained together, thus giving an opportunity for opening up discussion amongst them that might not happen in previous scenarios. However, this didn’t work. When the training focused on a more sexual nature, people started showing signs of embarrassment and acted uncomfortable, such as refusing to participate and creating jokes and other disturbances during the training. When the subject matter got more serious (for example, condoms and how to use them properly, some people simply got up and left!).

Therefore, for this training, our group went back to dividing the participants into 4 groups again: older aged men and women together, younger men and women separated by gender, and then children together. We had learned our lesson! This method seems to work much better.