Nurses' Nutrition Training

The nutrition training for the community nurses here in Thyolo finished on Friday. It was two sessions each a week long. We split it up because we couldn't take all of the nurses away at once because then there would be no one to deliver care to the clinics. Both weeks of the training were funded by a grant that I received from Peace Corps. Although I submitted all of my paperwork back at the beginning of December, because of the holidays and other delays the actual funding proposal wasn't submitted until about 2 weeks before the training. The money was supposed to come the week the training started. The planning committee and I decided to go ahead with the training in anticipation of receiving the money in good time. Unfortunately it took almost 3 weeks for the funding to come through, which meant that money for the entire training didn't come until it was almost over.

So what was the money for? We some was for stationary supplies like folders and pens for the participants, some was for food supplies for a cooking demonstration. The bulk however was for per diem for the trainers, the drivers and the participants. It was a little stressful to have to ask people daily to be patient and to guarantee that the money was coming. It was such a relief when it was finally here. I was discussing my experience with a friend who works for Medecins sans Frontieres who basically organizes trainings and has been doing so for the past 9 months. She said that my experience is actually quite typical and that sometimes participants or even trainers stop coming if the per diem doesn't come in time. Fortunately only 2 participants stopped attending but for reasons other than funding.

The next step is to complete a month's work of monitoring and evaluation. Each participant will complete a short form for each outreach clinic they attend to indiciate whether or not they delivered the information they learned about nutrition education and nutritional assessment to the patients. From these forms we will be able to determine if the training was effective in the short-term.